Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is an Anglican parish church located in Timsbury, built between 1826 and 1832, with the east end completed in 1852 by Sir George G. Scott. The church is constructed of ashlar stone and features slate roofs. It has a west tower, an aisled nave, a chancel, and north and south chancels.

The west tower consists of two stages, with diagonal buttresses and a tall west window that has subsidiary tracery and glazing. There is a south door beneath a drip, and each side of the second stage has a two-light window under a hoodmould with pierced tracery. A clock is positioned on the east side, and the tower is topped with a very thin battlemented parapet that has ill-proportioned finials. The nave has four bays, with embattled walls and two-light Y-tracery windows under drips, diagonal buttresses with finials, and a gabled south porch. The chancel, built in 1852, features a three-light Perpendicular east window, a quatrefoil frieze on the gable, gargoyles, and diagonal buttresses, with the north and south chapels dressed identically.

Inside, there is a thin arcade with clustered shafts and a similarly detailed arcade that leads to the Lady Chapel. The church contains a notable collection of early 19th-century monuments, including those for Gratiana Palmer (1823), Mary Palmer Smith (1826), John Parish, RN (1837), and Samborne Palmer (1814), all reflecting the long association of the Samborne family with the parish. In the Lady Chapel, there is a fine 17th-century wall monument featuring a gadrooned base with a skull, columns, and a heavy entablature beneath an ogee head with ball finials. In the north vestry, there is a recumbent chivalric figure on a well-crafted chest tomb with heraldry, commemorating Barnaby Samborne, who died in 1610.