Parish Church of St Mary is a Grade I listed building in the North Somerset local planning authority area, England. First listed on 9 February 1961. A Medieval Church.

Parish Church of St Mary

WRENN ID
lone-pewter-ebony
Grade
I
Local Planning Authority
North Somerset
Constituency
Wells and Mendip Hills MP: Tessa Munt (LD)
Country
England
Date first listed
9 February 1961
Type
Church
Period
Medieval
Address
Parish Church of St Mary, Loxton
OS grid reference
ST 379 572
Coordinates
51.31129, -2.89153
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The parish church of St Mary is an Anglican church dating from the 12th century, with significant additions and alterations in the 14th and 16th centuries, and a substantial restoration in 1875. The church is constructed of rubble with squared quoins, and has slate and clay tile roofs with raised, coped verges. It comprises a nave, a south porch, a central tower, and a chancel.

The three-bay nave has heavy, weathered buttresses. The west window is of neo-Norman design, featuring recessed colonnettes with scallop capitals and outer scallopped corbels that carry a decorated dripmould. Similar windows (without inner orders) are present on the north and south sides. The nave has a slate pitched roof with a plain gable. The gabled south porch has a clay tile roof and an arch-head opening leading to a 12th-century doorway. The inner arch features paired chevrons forming lozenges, colonnettes with scallop capitals, a chevron frieze, and a drip decorated with a Greek key design.

The central tower is of two stages. The lower stage has dressed stone corners, single square lights at ground and belfry levels, and a north-east stair turret with a circular light and a lean-to roof. The upper stage has a plain parapet above a string course carried on decorative corbels, which are mainly grotesque. There are single lights below the parapet.

The gabled chancel has rubble in diagonal courses. It has a neo-Norman west window with two round-headed lights, colonnettes with scallop capitals, and a small central oculus in an arched recess. The restored north and south windows, and the south priest’s door, are also present.

Inside the nave, a wagon roof of perpendicular style, dating from 1536, features alternating large and small bosses along the spine and an embattled wallplate. One nave window has a cusped rear arch. The central tower has two restored arches mirroring the motifs of the south door, with colonnettes; the nave arch is twisted, while the chancel arch is plain. Above these arches are paired chevrons forming lozenges topped with a Greek key design. The groin vaulted tower is supported by four heavy ribs resting on grotesque, dragon-like corbels. The chancel's north and south windows have trefoil cusped rear arches.

A 12th-century font, square in shape and decorated with crosses and chevrons on three sides, stands on a plain circular capital atop a plinth. Further furnishings include a neo-Norman pulpit, a timber communion table, a 1950 reredos, and a 1978 boiler screen with fine carved timber detail. A tablet by T. King of Bath commemorates Anne Gore (1793). The tower’s south window contains medieval fragments. The nave’s south window depicts the Madonna and Child and was made by William Morris and Co.

Local climate

Parish Church of St Mary receives an average of 820 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 72% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 23 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 76% of listed buildings. Of these, 8 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.

More on this building

Sign in or create a free account to unlock:

  • No EPC on record for this property
  • No sale records on file
  • No related consent applications matched
  • 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
Create free account

Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.

Similar buildings

The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.

Nearby listed buildings

  1. Christon Court Grade II 113 m
  2. Yarborough Cottage Grade II 1.2 km
  3. Yarberry Farmhouse Grade II 1.2 km
  4. Parish Church of St Andrew Grade II* 1.5 km
  5. Cross in the Churchyard of the Parish Church of St Andrew Grade II 1.5 km
  6. Crinkle-crankle wall forming an enclosed garden at NGR ST 3800 5577 Grade II 1.5 km
  7. Stalactite Cave Entrance Grade II 1.5 km
  8. Bone Cave Entrance Grade II 1.5 km
  9. Manor Farmhouse Grade II 1.6 km
  10. Banwell Monument Grade II 1.6 km