Church Of St Mark, Lord Mayor'S Chapel

Church of St Mark, Lord Mayor's Chapel

This church dates from 1230, with the south aisle added in 1270, the tower in 1487, the chancel and south aisle chapel in 1500, and the Poyntz chapel in 1523. The roof of the nave is early 16th century. The north transept and west front were rebuilt during the restoration of the chapel by JL Pearson in 1889.

The building is constructed of limestone ashlar with ashlar dressings, and Pennant stone in both ashlar and rubble. It has a cruciform plan with a tower positioned over the east transept. The nave and south aisle are in the Early Decorated Gothic style, whilst the remainder is Perpendicular Gothic.

The east window has six lights beneath a Tudor arch, divided into three sections by king mullions, with a hood terminating in diamond stops. Deep angle buttresses with gable tops are linked by a canted drip, above which runs a parapet decorated with crocketed pinnacles. The north transept features diagonal buttresses rising into slender attached shafts, and a six-light pointed window. An 1889 covered corridor runs beneath the north aisle on the site of the original cloister, with paired cinquefoil windows having mouchettes above, positioned between buttresses beneath a roll-top parapet and slate roof.

The four-bay nave has stilted arches on slender attached columns, with three stepped lancets with trefoil heads and pierced spandrels, all linked by a continuous hood. A crowded corbel table features various heads: grotesque, animal and human. The east window of the Poyntz chapel has an elliptical arch with three lights and angel hood stops, with a drip mould below the parapet featuring large carved gargoyles and central angels, and angle buttresses. Its south elevation comprises two bays. The south chancel window is Tudor-arched with eight lights and angel hood stops.

The tower has two stages, constructed of alternate stripes of Pennant and Bath ashlar up to the first water table, with red sandstone above and Bath ashlar angle buttresses with flush windows. The south doorway is Tudor-arched with a hood and panelled door. Above is a two-light window with trefoil heads, with a lancet at the base of the second stage and to the four sides of the belfry, featuring fretted stonework. A drip with two animals holding shields on each side sits below a tall crenellated parapet and panelled pinnacles with crockets.

The three-bay south aisle chapel has four-light Tudor-arched windows with angel stops, and buttresses between with attached pinnacles. A drip with clambering monkeys runs above the buttresses. The south aisle itself is hidden by an adjacent building.

The much-restored west front features a Geometric window with eight lights and a rose, set within a parapeted gable with buttresses either side and a sundial on the right. The central doorway has two orders with foliate capitals and ball flowers on the moulded archivolt. On either side are two-light blind arches raised on a bench; all three are linked by a hoodmould. The Decorated three-light south aisle window has stellar tracery with chamfered reveals and foliate capitals, all enriched with small ball flowers.

Inside, the church contains a very fine reredos of fretted tabernacle work, rebuilt for Bishop Salley around 1500. This comprises three hemi-octagonal canopied niches, the central one raised, with ogee arches to domed cupolas and flanking buttresses on angel corbels, with image stands and late 19th-century statues. Ogee-arched doorways to each side have crocketed hoodmoulds and panelled doors with carved figures in niches. Between them runs a band of blind traceried panel, a frieze of openwork vine leaves, a row of empty niches, and at the top a parapet of fretted stone with small pinnacles. At the centre of the screen is an altar painting by John King from 1829. A piscina and four sedilia in the same style feature a parapet of shields.

The north transept arch has two orders with attached shafts and deeply cut foliate capitals, the outer order stilted, the inner continuing below the base to a head corbel, with a hoodmould to a head stop. The 19th-century arch to the vestry has king and queen hood stops, and a similar arch leads to the north corridor. The windows to the north side of the nave have attached shafts to bell capitals; the lower part of each window is blind, beneath which runs a sill band, interrupted by a doorway at the west end.

The nave has a very flat tie-beam roof with gilded bosses and quatrefoil panels, with wall posts to angel corbels. The south transept arch contains the organ loft. In the base of the tower is a door to the stair turret and three well-carved head corbels.

The doorway to the Poyntz chapel has a Tudor arch with hollow mouldings and carved spandrels featuring a clenched fist (poing), a rebus of the founder. The top of the label mould extends out on each side. The splayed reveals are decorated with quatrefoil panels. At the east end are two richly carved canopies and an altarpiece in the same style as the chancel, with slender image-stands with concave sides in the niches. Two similar niches appear to the sides and at the west end, from which springs a two-bay fan vault in which the spandrels bear shields of Sir Robert Poyntz and Henry VIII. In the north wall are two barrel-vaulted chambers with Tudor-arched doorways with intersecting mouldings. The floor has 16th-century Spanish tiles with a few English ones mixed in.

The two-bay arcade to the south aisle has chamfered arches to an octagonal shaft and foliate corbels, with hoodmoulds to head stops, and on the south side of the shaft to the head and shoulders of a bishop. The east window above the south aisle chapel contains a surround of pierced quatrefoils. The three-bay south aisle has blocked two-light south windows with cinquefoil heads and deep chamfered reveals.

The entrance to the south aisle chapel has trefoil-headed panelled reveals and an early 18th-century wrought-iron gated screen. The chapel is linked to the chancel by a squint and has a canopied piscina and niches between the windows in the style of the chancel. The roof has gilded bosses with Tudor roses.

The fittings include 19th-century choir stalls with poppy heads, pews with arms, and Lord Mayor's thrones with poppy heads and horses holding shields either side at the front. An octagonal stone pulpit features ogee niches and crocket finials to the arches and buttresses. A sword rest from 1702 by William Edney is of wrought-iron with gilded leaves and the monogram of Anna Regina. A stone font at the west end of the south aisle has an octagonal shaft and flared basin.

The chancel contains a very fine dresser tomb of Bishop Salley, who died in 1516, with a recumbent effigy of the Bishop on a panelled chest beneath a richly carved ogee hood with pendant cusps and openwork parapet, in the style of the reredos, which was the gift of the Bishop. To the north is the dresser tomb to Sir Maurice Berkeley, who died in 1464, showing a knight and his lady on a panelled chest beneath an elaborate ogee hood with angels to the cusps and large finials, with two painted shields held by standing lions. This was restored by Salley in the same style as his tomb.

The nave has an empty memorial niche in the north wall: a Tudor arch with carved spandrels and trefoil panels beneath. A memorial tablet to Thomas Harris, who died in 1797, by Thomas Paty, comprises an oval slate panel with a marble sarcophagus on animal feet, with a finely carved swag and an angel standing against a panel with a relief head. Beneath it is a brass memorial tablet inscribed to William Searchfield, who died in 1647. A fine dresser tomb to William Birde, who died in 1590, is in Elizabethan style with painted panels to the chest, four reeded, fluted Ionic columns to a richly carved canopy with friezes of mermen, a large shell pediment and shield, flanked by terms. The dresser tomb to Richard Berkeley, who died in 1604, south of the door, is in Classical style with a recumbent figure on a panelled chest within a Corinthian aedicule with marble shafts carrying an epitaph.

The south aisle contains a wall monument to Thomas James, who died in 1619: a painted stone aedicule on brackets with Corinthian shafts and a broken pediment, containing a kneeling figure within an arch. A marble wall monument to Henry Bengough, who died in 1818, by F Chantrey, signed and dated 1828, shows a full-size seated figure over a plinth. A large wall monument to William Hilliard, who died in 1735, by Thomas Paty, has a rusticated base with a semicircular-arched doorway beneath three pedestals, the side pair with putti and the central one bearing a black marble sarcophagus with a bust on top. Behind is a pediment with drapes and a tall slate obelisk above. A chest tomb of a merchant from around 1360 is in Perpendicular Gothic style with traceried panels, showing a recumbent man within an ogee arch and elaborate finial—a rare example of a 14th-century monument with a figure in civilian costume. A marble wall monument to John Cookin, who died in 1627 aged 11, comprises an alabaster aedicule on pendant brackets with Corinthian capitals and a flat hood, containing a kneeling figure of a boy with a book. A marble wall tablet to Catherine Vaughan, who died in 1694, is oval with a cartouche above. A marble wall tablet to Henry Walter, who died in 1737, is an aedicule with fluted pilasters and Corinthian capitals and a swan-neck pediment containing a cartouche, with an apron of cherubs' heads. Beneath it is a 16th-century section of painted wall panel, and beneath that a chest tomb with five heraldic quatrefoil panels.

The south aisle chapel contains a dresser tomb of Maurice de Gaunt, who died in 1230, and Robert de Gourney, who died in 1269, showing two knights, the founders of the Hospital of St Mark's. The effigy of de Gaunt is a vigorously lifelike carving. The dresser tomb to George Upton, who died in 1608, is in Jacobean style: a wide aedicule with Corinthian capitals and a dentil cornice, with a recumbent effigy leaning on one elbow beneath an arch backed by a decorated panel with glass roundels, beneath a rounded moulding with swag. A painted stone wall monument to William Swift, who died in 1622, is an aedicule with dentil cornice and round arch containing a kneeling figure in civilian dress, with a cartouche above.

A large marble wall memorial to Sir Baynham Throckmorton and his wife from 1635 comprises a wide plinth with columns with Corinthian capitals bearing a flat canopy, with heraldic shield in a panel with broken segmental pediment. Above are a recumbent couple, he in armour and she leaning half upright against the wall with a baby, backed by a keyed inscription flanked by a pair of headless figures in classical drapes.

A wall monument to John Aldworth, who died in 1625, and his son Francis, who died in 1623, is in Perpendicular Gothic style with a traceried panelled plinth and octagonal shafts bearing a canopy with quatrefoils, and a parapet of foliage interrupted by pinnacles, over two kneeling men. Above this is a wall monument of foliate side panels and a coffered arch, with a kneeling woman inside and an apron with a winged skull.

At the east end is a large wall monument to Dame Mary Baynton, who died in 1677, and her two sons, in Baroque style. This expressive triptych shows the two men kneeling on pedestals holding drapes from a baldacchino above their mother, kneeling in a niche. Behind the men is a Corinthian aedicule with a broken pediment and two obelisks, and beneath each are term brackets and an apron.

The church contains stained glass of good quality and quantity, though not original. Much was bought by the Corporation at the sale of Fonthill in 1823. The second window in the north aisle is from Ecouen, 1550. The east window contains two French saints from the 15th century. In the Poyntz chapel are three roundels from the 15th century. The east window of the south aisle shows Thomas à Becket, from Fonthill. The south aisle chapel has twenty-four German and Flemish roundels from the 16th and 17th centuries.

The chapel is the only surviving part of the Hospital of St Mark, founded in 1220. It was granted to the Corporation of Bristol in 1539. The original west window was removed and re-erected at Ridgeway, Westbury, in 1822. Until its restoration in 1889, carved screens and arcades of a style similar to the reredos extended along the sides of the nave and in front of the entrance. The Poyntz chantry chapel, left uncompleted in 1520 on the death of Sir Robert Poyntz of Iron Acton, is a very fine example of late Perpendicular Gothic. The magnificent sequence of monuments forms an important element of the interior.