Parish Church Of St Mary

Parish Church of St Mary

This is the parish church of St Mary in Penzance, located on Chapel Street on the southwest side. Built in 1832–5 by architect Charles Hutchens of Torpoint near Plymouth, it is constructed from West Penwith granite with slate roofs.

The church was designed to serve a greatly expanded congregation. The old chapel, first documented in 1321 as a chantry chapel to the parish of Madron, had become severely overcrowded by 1824, when serving a local population of around 7,000. The new church replaced it on the same site after the old building was largely demolished in August 1832. A temporary wooden structure nearby served the parish until the new church opened on 15 November 1835. The church was funded partly by the Church Commissioners and the Incorporated Church Building Society, and initially provided 2,047 seats. The architect explained in detail how he adhered to design precedents of existing Commissioners' churches in Cornwall, particularly a previously approved design for this site and his own plans for Millbrook chapel at Maker, dating to around 1828.

The plan comprises a five-bay nave with full-length aisles and an additional west bay for gallery stairs overlapping the west tower, plus a very shallow chancel projection and a big three-sided gallery.

The exterior displays a solid Gothic style, particularly impressive given the granite construction. A slim tower dominates the surrounding cottages and warehouses on the headland. It has an embattled parapet with tall pinnacles, and offset buttresses that die into the belfry stage with further attached pinnacles. Above the west door is a tall three-light window with transom, and above that the date MDCCCXXXII (1832) in Gothic script. The tower then displays a clock face and twinned belfry lights with louvred openings. The main west door is flanked by subsidiary doors giving access to the aisles, with corresponding doors at the east end for the gallery stairs. The aisles have full gables at the west and east, and continuous embattled parapets running over the gables. The side walls have six bays divided by slim buttresses rising to pinnacles over the parapets, with long two-light windows with transoms at each bay. Five south windows were replaced in 1920–1 by architects Franklin and Deacon with tracery including upper quatrefoils; simpler original tracery survives in the north aisle. The triple-gabled east façade rises impressively above Quay Street. The east window stonework was replaced in 1986–7 with a large untraceried circle above five lancet lights.

The interior displays considerable spatial quality and craftsmanship. The entrance porch contains a well-executed plaster fan vault with a plaster portcullis at its centre, indicating Church Commissioners involvement. The traceried head of the inner doorway carries the Lamb and Flag against a cross, taken from the seal of Penzance. The space beneath the west gallery, partitioned off as an inner lobby with metal and glass screens in 1986–7, has a plaster rib vault designed like a fan vault laid out on a flat ground, with a plaster wreath at the centre. This space now serves as a meeting room. The nave is light and spacious, with nave and aisles having separate roofs of four-centred arched section, with slim ribs forming square panels. The nave ceiling has a large M in a rose at its centre. Five-bay arcades of four-centred arches rise on slim piers that continue through the gallery fronts. The piers have four shafts and four hollows, with moulded capitals to the shafts only. The gallery front features a decorative frieze below blind arcaded panelling and turns the west end with canted angles. The openings below the gallery have cambered arches, possibly of cast iron, with traceried spandrels. Transverse beams of cambered section act as ties to the outer walls. The westernmost bay of the north aisle was screened off as a chapel accessed from the inner lobby in 1986–7. Wood-block floors date from 1986–7.

Principal fixtures include an alms box dated 1612 and a stoup from the former chapel of St Mary. The pulpit is the prayer desk or pulpit of 1835, in cut-down form: white-painted timber with gilded mouldings, a foliate carved panel to the book rest, and polygonal shafts at the corners. Matching communion rails have Gothic piercings. The reredos and sanctuary furnishings are otherwise from around 1987, of pale oak with slightly cambered arched panels. The north-west chapel has a Gothic communion table, probably from 1835. An octagonal font from 1874, executed in fine red and green serpentine with quatrefoil panels, is fitted with a font cover dating to around 1959, a delicate swept spire form topped by a gilded dove. A Gothic three-seater mayoral chair with pinnacled top dates to around 1835. The oak nave pews are from 1986–7. The seating in the north and south galleries is from 1835, stepped up with swept curves to the top rails and simple panelled sides, probably originally with doors. The organ in the west gallery came from the church of St Mary, Oxford in 1986. Its pipework and ornamental case incorporate parts from an instrument by 'Father' Smith dating to 1676, with Gothic rebuilding by Thomas Plowman in 1827. A striking and colourful east window by Alfred Fisher was installed in 1986–7. The aisles contain many minor tablets, mostly from the early 19th century, in Greek Revival taste. In the sanctuary is a Baroque tablet to John Tremenheere, died 1701, with Doric columns, broken segmental pediment and a winged skull at the base.

The churchyard is bounded by high granite walls on the north and east towards Chapel Street and Under Chapel Yard, including re-used stone from the old church and a datestone of 1672. The churchyard walls are separately listed.

The church underwent chancel reordering in 1861, 1885 and 1896. A dramatic Art Deco reredos by Ernest Proctor, installed in 1934, was destroyed by arson in 1985. Interior repairs were carried out by George Vaughan Ellis in 1986–7.