Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary, Donhead St Mary

An Anglican parish church of late 12th-century origin, with significant additions and alterations spanning the 13th to 15th centuries and a substantial 19th-century restoration. The church is built of dressed limestone with a tiled roof.

The building comprises a nave with aisles, a chancel with side chapels, a west tower, and a south porch. The south porch is a 14th-century gabled structure with diagonal buttresses and raked sides. It features a Tudor-arched doorway with ovolo moulding, and the stone roof is topped with a coped verge and cross finial. The south aisle contains a blocking course and two 2-light 15th-century windows with cusped lights and hoodmoulds on either side of the porch. The nave clerestory displays five 13th-century lancets with hoodmoulds and a coped verge carrying a sanctus cross.

The south chapel has a chamfered pointed priest's door and two 3-light 15th-century windows with cusped lights and hoodmoulds. Its blocking course features saddleback coping. The chancel contains one 2-light 14th-century window to the south and three 19th-century stepped lancets to the east, with diagonal buttresses and coped verge. A large stone tablet commemorating Jeremiah Bower (died 1759) is set against the north wall.

The north chapel displays a 3-light Perpendicular window with an associated tablet to Elizabeth Bower (died 1791) on its east wall. The north side features two 2-light Perpendicular windows and a blocking course. The north aisle has a central blocked hollow-chamfered doorway with hoodmould, flanked by 2-light 15th-century cusped windows and a blocking course. The nave clerestory on the north side also contains five 13th-century lancets. All chapel and aisle windows are square-headed.

The three-stage west tower dates largely from the 15th century and displays angle buttresses and string courses. It features a double chamfered pointed west doorway with 3-light Perpendicular windows fitted with pierced wooden louvres and hoodmoulds. A moulded string course with gargoyles runs beneath a battlemented parapet topped with eight crocketed pinnacles.

The interior of the south porch features stone benches to either side and a pointed barrel-vaulted roof with ovolo-moulded stone ribs. The inner doorway has cyma moulding and a hoodmould, with 19th-century double doors. The nave is a 5-bay space covered by a 19th-century wagon roof with moulded tie beams and a polychrome tiled floor. A tall chamfered tower arch with a hollow-moulded upper arch supported on 19th-century corbels dominates the west end; a blocked lancet sits above. Wooden newel stairs provide access to the belfry, and a late 19th-century Perpendicular-style screen fills the arch. The clerestory windows have hollow-chamfered rere-arches.

The south arcade is a fine late 12th-century composition of three bays featuring double chamfered arches carried on octagonal abaci and cylindrical piers with multi-scalloped or stylised leaf capitals. A blocked Tudor-arched doorway of the same period survives in the south aisle. The north arcade comprises three bays with double chamfered arches on cylindrical piers with plain chamfered capitals and roll-moulded bases. The aisles retain restored late Medieval lean-to roofs with carved bosses and chamfered ribs.

A wide double hollow-chamfered pointed chancel arch rests on octagonal responds with wind-blown leaf capitals. The chancel contains 13th-style east windows with rere-arches on marble shafts and a 19th-century wooden pointed barrel-vaulted roof. The two-bay chapel arcades feature hollow-chamfered and roll-moulded piers with moulded arches, while roll-moulded pointed transitional archways connect the chapels and aisles. The chapels are covered with 19th-century pitched roofs.

The church contains good 1880s stained glass in the east windows, with the remainder of the glass likely the work of Kempe from the 1860s. Among the furnishings are a restored Jacobean pulpit with carved panels, a 12th-century black marble and stone drum font decorated with arcading and a carved 'woven' frieze, and 19th-century pews. A pedestal piscina in the south chapel displays Dunston memorial glass of 1984.

The church holds a notable collection of wall tablets from the 18th and 19th centuries. These include a slate and stone tablet in the south aisle to John Jeffries (died 1711) with Composite pilasters and a segmental pediment. Several classical tablets by Osmond of Sarum commemorate William Grove of Ferne (died 1855) and Charles Wyndham of Donhead Hall (died 1846). A large marble tablet to Colonel William Burlton (died 1870) was executed by Bedford of London.