Church of St Mary is a Grade II listed building in the Dorset local planning authority area, England. First listed on 16 August 1960. Rusticated wall.
Church of St Mary
- WRENN ID
- waiting-chalk-pigeon
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Dorset
- Constituency
- North Dorset MP: Simon Hoare (Con)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 16 August 1960
- Type
- Rusticated wall
- Address
- Church of St Mary, Main Road, Compton Abbas
- OS grid reference
- ST 869 184
- Coordinates
- 50.96543, -2.18777
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of St Mary is a parish church dating to 1868, designed by George Evans. It is constructed of snecked rubble with ashlar dressings and has a tiled, gable-ended roof with stone copings. The church plan includes a nave, chancel, south tower/porch, south aisle, and north vestry/organ chamber. The architecture is in the Early English style.
The south tower/porch is buttressed, without distinct stages, featuring a two-centred moulded arch with shafted jambs and stiff-leaf capitals, surmounted by a label with head stops. An ashlar vice turret is situated to the west, and above the arch is a lancet with a labelled head stop. The tower's arcaded bell openings have three arches on each face, with the two outermost arches being blind. The top is a broachspire with gablets. Other windows are mainly lancets with labels and carved stops. The west window comprises three graduated lancets. The south chancel window has a two-centred head and plate tracery. The vestry features an octagonal stack and a west door with shafted jambs.
Inside, the chancel arch is moulded and two-centred, with marble shafted jambs boasting carved capitals and a label with carved stops. A two-bay, two-centred arcade has flat soffits and plain jambs, with a massive round central pier featuring a carved capital. The vestry/organ chamber arch is segmental pointed with flat soffits and jambs. The nave roof is four-bay and sub-divided with arch-braced collars, king-posts, and struts, spring-from corbels. The scissor-braced sub-principals spring from wall-plates. A quadripartite, ribbed stone vault covers the chancel, springing from marble vaulting shafts with carved capitals and corbels, and terminating in an apsidal end. A 12th-century circular font with foliate scroll decoration has been recut in the 19th century and sits on a cylindrical pier with a square base. A 19th-century wooden font with shafted arcading rests on a stone base. Other features include 19th-century pews, trefoiled rere-arches, a 17th-century brass wall memorial to Thomas Lawrence, and glasswork from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Local climate
Church of St Mary receives an average of 830 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 53% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 58% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 59% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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