Church Of Saint Mary The Virgin

Church of Saint Mary the Virgin

An Anglican parish church of the 15th century with major extension and restoration in 1849 by S.C. Fripp. The building is constructed of coursed rubble with freestone dressings and slate roofs. It comprises a west tower, nave, chancel, north vestry, and south aisle, all in Perpendicular style.

The west tower is three stages tall with a plinth and diagonal buttresses rising to crocketed finials. A polygonal stair turret projects from the south east corner. The first stage contains a 15th-century plank west door set within a richly moulded four-centered arch under a drip mould with angel stops below a 3-light window. The second stage has blank 2-light openings with grotesque stops on three faces; the north face is interrupted by a clock of 1887 where the string course is broken. The third stage features paired 2-light windows to the bell chamber on each face, with the outer lights left blank and inner lights bearing crocketed finials. The tower is topped with gargoyles and a trefoil pierced parapet. The stair turret displays cusped panels and is crowned by a hexagonal spirelet.

The 2-bay nave has 3-light windows set between buttresses. At the east end stands a polygonal, battlemented rood stair turret with a single tiny quatrefoil light. A sanctus bell cote of 15th-century work, now reset, sits at the gable head. The gabled chancel dates to 1849 and contains a 3-light east window and two 2-light windows to the south flanking a plain priest's door, all beneath a continuous string course. The similar north vestry of 1870 has a 2-light east window and cusped lancets to the north and west. The 3-bay gabled south aisle, also of 1849, sits between two buttresses of the original south wall and features three 3-light windows. A 15th-century canopied niche is reset in the east gable.

Interior features include a tall, moulded tower arch of waves and hollows rising to a lierne tracery vault on angel corbels, and a 19th-century screen with mock linenfold. The nave retains a wagon roof with decorated wall plate and bosses. Openings for the former rood stair now house stairs to a refixed stone pulpit from the local school. This pulpit is corbelled with friezes rising from a narrow stem, each panel displaying two cusped lights separated by crocketed finials, crowned with two further floreate friezes.

The wave and step moulded 15th-century chancel arch leads into the 1849 chancel work, which has a wagon roof and a wide north arch to the vestry housing the organ. A reset 16th-century niche features a Tudor arch with cusped panels in the soffit and decorated spandrels, now containing a damaged mural brass to the Payne family of 1528. The south aisle features a 3-bay arcade with octagonal piers and attached shafts.

The east window in the nave contains fragments of 15th-century and later heraldic glass, with Victorian and later replacements forming the remainder. The font is simple and octagonal, of late date. Plain box pews of 1785 line the north nave. A stone reredos of 1858 stands between crocketed and canopied niches.

Tablets and monuments are scattered throughout: in the south aisle, a marble and slate tablet with crown bearing arms and family effigies commemorates Nathaniel Still (1626), and a chest tomb on dark ground records Thomas Watson (1833), sculpted by Wheeler of Gloucester. In the chancel, a slate lozenge tablet flanked by naive columns commemorates Robert Willis (1719), with an hourglass above and cherubs and skull below. The south chancel wall bears a freestone tablet with ogee-headed moulded canopy and marble urn on dark ground to J. Smith, Rector (1825), by Lancaster and Walker of Bristol.