Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a parish church dating to 1713, with further inscriptions indicating 1728 on the tower downpipe. A portion of the west tower originates from the 15th century. The 18th-century fabric was likely constructed by the Bastards of Blandford for Dr Sloper. The church is built primarily of flint with squared greensand blocks, with 15th-century areas in banded flint and rubble. Ashlar dressings are used throughout. The nave has a tiled roof with stone slate margins and end stone copings, while the tower and north aisle have flat lead roofs concealed behind parapets. A distinctive ogee-moulded cornice runs along the nave and porch. The church plan includes a nave with a continuous chancel, a north aisle and organ chamber, a west tower, and a south porch.

The west tower comprises two stages separated by a weathered string and features square set buttresses. It contains a 15th-century casement moulded window surround holding an 18th-century window with a round head, and an 18th-century doorway with a plain pilaster surround and a six-fielded panel door. The upper stage has a lancet partially obscured by a clock face to the south wall, and two-light 15th-century belfry windows with square heads and Perpendicular tracery. The tower is topped with an 18th-century ashlar parapet featuring central pediments and pyramidal obelisks with ball finials. All the main 18th-century windows have semi-circular heads with ashlar architraves and leaded lights. The north aisle has a plain parapet plat band and a moulded parapet cornice. Plain ashlar architraves frame doorways to the chancel and organ chamber, which contain five-fielded panel doors. Buttresses reset in five weathered stages are found between the nave and chancel and at the chancel ends. The gabled south porch has a stone slate roof, a semi-circular arch with an ashlar architrave, a stone keystone, imposts, and a stone coping terminating in a large sundial finial.

Internally, the 18th-century north aisle features five round arches supported by square piers. The tower arch is pointed, consisting of two chamfered orders dying into responds. A continuous, elliptical, plastered barrel-vaulted roof covers the nave and chancel, with a coved wall plate. The church contains a carved oak reredos with fluted Corinthian pilasters and inscriptions, 18th-century communion rails with posts resembling Doric columns, an 18th-century font with a gadrooned base and a cover with a pineapple finial, an 18th-century octagonal pulpit with fielded marquetry panels and a sounding board, some 18th-century benches, 18th-century panelled doors, and various 18th- and 19th-century monuments, including several commemorating the Bastard family.