Church of St Juthware and St Mary

Church of St Juthware and St Mary

This is an Anglican parish church comprising a west tower, nave, chancel, north aisle and south porch, with a vestry added in the late 20th century. The west tower dates from the 15th century, while the remainder of the church was substantially rebuilt in 1770, with the nave and chancel further rebuilt in 1845-6 by Thomas Stent to the designs of AWN Pugin.

The church is constructed of local Forest Marble stone rubble with Hamstone dressings, roofed with stone-slate under stone copings to the gables. Some re-roofing took place in the early 21st century.

The 15th-century tower is attached to the west end with a square stair turret at its north-east corner. It has three stages marked by string courses, with diagonal buttresses to the lowest stage. A 19th-century pointed-arched west doorway contains a pair of studded timber doors with strap hinges. The west window has two trefoil-cusped lights, also 19th-century. The upper stage has two-light bell openings with vertical tracery and a quatrefoil to the head, with carved gargoyles set diagonally on the corners and an embattled parapet above.

The nave comprises three bays without a clerestory, having three-light windows with trefoil tracery under segmental-arched heads with a trefoil at the top of each light. The label stops to all windows remain uncarved. The north aisle windows are of similar design. The south elevation to the chancel has a two-light window with Y-tracery and a falchion above, with uncarved label stops. The four-light east window displays elaborate Y, trefoil and falchion tracery, with three trefoils in a roundel in its head. The south porch has a pointed-arched entrance with respond shafting and ovolo and wave-mouldings, above which is a small niche with a trefoil head and label.

Internally, the four-bay north arcade has short octagonal piers and arches with two shallow-sunk segmental mouldings. The 15th-century tower arch has two chamfered orders, the outer continuous and the inner springing from attached shafts with splayed capitals and moulded bases. The tower houses five bells; three were cast by the Purdue family at nearby Closworth in Somerset during the 17th century. The mid-19th-century chancel arch has two respond orders of chamfered and half-octagonal form and a pointed arch of two orders with a label.

The roofs are simple and unadorned. The nave and chancel have close-coupled rafters and scissor braces to the principals, the braces descending onto large square corbels that remain uncarved. The aisle has a plain collar-braced roof.

Fittings include a 19th-century octagonal stone font with convex lower part, octagonal stem and chamfered base. Approximately two-thirds of the seating survives, all with plain rectangular bench ends. The floors have red and black quarry tiles in the nave and aisle, while the sanctuary has red, buff and blue encaustic tiles, possibly of 1846-7. Wall monuments in white marble and slate include one to Reverend W Thompson (1842) and another to Joseph Gill of the Island of Nevis, who died on 18 April 1828 aged 80 years. The east window contains stained glass from 1874 commemorating Mary Russell Meredith, wife of Reverend RF Meredith. One nave window commemorates churchwarden Walter Holloway and depicts St Francis of Assisi with Holloway's pet spaniel at his feet. The west window contains stained glass from 2012.