Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary, Longfleet Road, Poole

Church built between 1830 and 1833 to designs by Edward Blore. The chancel was added in 1863 by George Edmund Street. The west end, including the south porch, tower and spire, was added in 1883 by G R Crickmay & Son of Weymouth. The chancel was lengthened and vestries added in 1893, probably by the same architects. The nave was rebuilt between 1914 and 1915 with aisles and transepts by Herbert Kendell of Poole. The north transept was converted to a parish room and other alterations made in the late 20th century.

The church is constructed of coursed squared, rock-faced Purbeck stone with Bath stone dressings and plain-tile roofs. The plan comprises a chancel with vestries to the north, north and south transepts, an aisled nave, a southwest porch and a northwest tower with spire. The architectural style draws on First and Second Pointed Gothic.

The chancel contains three bays and has a three-light east window with Geometrical tracery including large and small trefoils to the head and a cinquefoiled head to the central light. Two-light windows to the south include one with a quatrefoil in a vesica piscis to the head and others with cusped Y-tracery, quatrefoils and trefoils above the outer lights. All windows have hoodmoulds. A range of vestries with twin gabled roofs adjoins the north side of the chancel, featuring a chamfered doorway and small paired and single cusped one-light windows with hoodmoulding continued as a string course.

Both transepts are symmetrically arranged with two-light windows either side of a central offset buttress to the gable end walls, featuring cusped Y-tracery and hoodmoulds, and lancet windows to the sides with hoodmoulds and label stops. The south transept has an additional chamfered side doorway with hoodmould and label stops, and an octagonal stone stack for a basement boiler room.

The nave has a clerestory with three bays of three-light windows with cusped intersecting tracery. The aisles have paired lancet windows. The south aisle includes a porch to the westernmost bay with a doorway (now blocked) with two orders of shafts, a double keel-moulded head, a tympanum with a blank circle and lintel moulding, and a hoodmould. Flanking buttresses to the front and a group of three small cusped one-light windows to the south side are topped with a single hoodmould continued as a string course.

The west window of the nave has Geometrical tracery with a large cinquefoiled circle to the head and quatrefoiled circles above the outer lights, with a hoodmould continued as a string course. Below this is a group of four cusped one-light windows lighting a baptistery, with a single hoodmould continued as a string course and an offset buttress to the right side of the front.

The northwest tower, approximately 35 metres high with spire, comprises four stages with offset angle buttresses, string courses and a high chamfered plinth. The porch doorway to the north side has three orders of shafts, a triple keel-moulded head, a tympanum with a blank quatrefoil and a hoodmould with a carved head of a King to the left label stop and a Bishop to the right label stop. A diagonally positioned stair turret doorway between the northwest angle buttresses has a Caernarvon-arched head and a stone gablet with carved dragon kneelers to the coping and a trefoil to the apex. Three stepped lancet windows to the west side light the stair with a string course forming a continuous stepped hoodmould. Groups of three cusped one-light windows appear on the west side of the next stage. Clock faces to the west and north sides of the third stage are framed by gabled hoodmoulds continued as string courses. Pairs of tall bell-chamber windows to the top stage have trefoil-headed lights, quatrefoils to the heads and double hoodmoulds with label stops. A corbel table and moulded cornice top the tower, with octagonal pinnacles at the angles forming the base of the broaches, which have smaller diagonal pinnacles at the top at the same level as the spires. A single tier of lucarnes faces the cardinal directions.

The church has chamfered plinths, string courses at the cill level of windows, stone-coped gables with kneelers, offset buttresses flanking the east end and between bays.

The interior of the nave has three-bay arcades with double-chamfered arches dying into square chamfered piers. A boarded waggon roof rests on wall shafts. The chancel contains two-seat sedilia with moulded trefoiled heads resting on a central shaft with foliage capital. A carved wood reredos of 1894 decorates the High Altar. The pulpit is carved wood featuring figures of Saints and Prophets.

The church contains a variety of stained-glass windows. Four small windows to the baptistery at the west end, erected in 1893 by Cakebread and Robey, depict the four Evangelists. A fine west window of 1920 by Clayton and Bell depicts Christ in Judgement and serves as a First World War memorial. A window in the south transept is described by Canon Basil Clarke as "a comic window (by, we imagine, Bacon) in the south transept of a soldier waking up to find himself in Heaven". Other stained-glass windows of quality appear in the transepts and a good east window.

Despite its complicated development over time, the church is an effective architectural composition. Its major accent, the northwest tower and spire, is one of Poole's most important landmarks.