Church Of St Mary The Virgin

Church of St Mary the Virgin

A church of considerable historical importance, dating from around 1200 with significant additions and restorations extending into the 19th century. The building comprises a chancel with chapels, an aisled nave with porches, and a substantial west tower. It is constructed of Pennant rubble with limestone dressings and a slate roof.

The church's origins date to the late 12th century, with the nave and lower tower built around 1200. The upper tower and chancel date to the early 13th century, while the south chapel also belongs to this period. In 1836, Thomas Rickman undertook major restoration work, including the addition of the north chapel. George Edmund Street carried out further significant restoration between 1875 and 1877.

The exterior displays a rich diversity of architectural detail. The chancel stands at an oblique angle to the nave and features an east gable with five stepped lancets. A low 19th-century north vestry with a segmental-arched door and three-light window in a label mould adjoins it. The east gables of the chapels display 19th-century Perpendicular-style four-light windows with panel tracery. The 19th-century north chapel has three stepped lancets with head and foliate hood stops, while a diagonally-set east buttress provides structural support.

The three-bay north aisle features varied buttresses and three-light Perpendicular windows at each end, with a central four-light window displaying ogee-headed lights in a square head positioned above the porch. A 19th-century crenellated brick parapet runs along the aisle. The crenellated porch itself has an arch and hood with a steel ogee gate and brick parapet. Within the porch is an important early 13th-century segmental-arched doorway with moulded reveals, a stilted arch on attached shafts with trumpet capitals, and a small trefoil-headed niche decorated with crockets. A clerestory from around 1300 contains trefoil-headed windows.

The south chapel features two triple stepped lancet windows and an octagonal ashlar stack behind the parapet. The south aisle mirrors the north aisle's design, with a wide porch featuring trefoil-headed side windows with splayed inside reveals.

The tower is a dominant feature: a massive square structure three stages high and the width of the nave. A heavily restored trefoil-headed doorway with matching hood mould sits below a three-light plate tracery window of three stepped lancets with trefoil spandrels. Above this is a narrow second-stage lancet, and two-light belfry windows with Y-tracery and ogee heads. Corner gargoyles adorn the structure, while a 19th-century parapet of coursed Lias crowns the design. On the north side, a shallow square stair turret with arrow slits ascends the tower, and an octagonal clock in a label mould bears the Latin inscription "PULBRIS ET UMBRA SUMUS" (We are dust and shadow). The north aisle contains a wide, plain four-light window with vestigial cinquefoil heads and a label mould with face stops, mirrored by a similar west window in the south aisle.

The interior reveals exceptional craftsmanship and architectural development. A 19th-century reredos of cuspate panels with side buttresses and a foliate frieze dominates the chancel. A 13th-century piscina features a cavetto-moulded arch forming a cusp at the top, set within a semicircular arch on attached shafts with bell capitals. The east window has a pointed rere arch with banded shafts.

The three-bay chancel has square-section pointed arches on square columns with half-round shafts to each face, and a waggon roof with cuspate principal rafters. A tall chancel arch mirrors this design. The nave displays six bays of Transitional architecture, with round shafts to round bases, slightly raised on the north side, round moulded capitals, and square-section gently pointed arches. A 19th-century east bay has been added, while good 13th-century respond corbels at the west end frame a triple-chamfered arch to the tower, with no capitals and widely splayed reveals. Deep, splayed clerestory windows with wide trefoil-headed rere arches sit above alternate piers. A 19th-century stilted waggon roof features principals decorated with sunken quatrefoils. The aisle roofs bear on good painted corbel heads to the south; the north aisle has a pitched roof while the south has a shallow tie-beam roof.

The church contains notable fittings including a coat of arms, an octagonal black marble font of 1806, a 19th-century round stone pulpit with pointed and trefoil panels, a brass eagle lectern, and 19th-century choir stalls with open cusped fronts.

The collection of wall monuments spans the 17th to 19th centuries and represents significant works of craftsmanship. These include a monument to Robert Southwell (died 1633) with a marble panel and curved obelisk with child's heads and urn finial; a monument attributed to Grinling Gibbons for Elizabeth Cromwell (died 1674), featuring a gadrooned sarcophagus and obelisk under a baldacchino with draped putti; monuments to Edward Capel (died 1681), Edward Sampson (died 1695), Edward Southwell (died 1705), John Astrey (died 1712), Christopher Cole (died 1736), John Sampson (died 1753), Mary Teast (died 1766), Catherine Lewis (died 1782), Edward Sampson (died 1795), and Catherine Cave (died 1836). Notable among these are the rocaille and obelisk compositions characteristic of 18th-century taste, the relief of a female figure on Mary Teast's monument by Drewett (1790), and the late Romantic imagery of doves and clouds on Catherine Cave's memorial.