Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is an Anglican parish church dating back to the 13th century, with significant alterations in the 15th century and a restoration in 1876-78 by J. Mountford Allen of Crewkerne. It is constructed of dressed limestone and has a tiled roof with ceramic ridge cresting.

The church comprises a west tower, a nave with a south porch, a chancel, and a north organ chamber and vestry. The south porch is gabled and of 19th-century design, featuring double doors within a moulded Tudor-arched doorway with a square hoodmould, diagonal buttresses, and an image niche above the door. A plaque dated 1767 records repairs to the porch. The nave's north side has three 15th-century windows with square heads and cusped lights, and a blocked pointed doorway. The nave’s south side features a 19th-century square-headed two-light window to the left of the porch, and two further two-light windows to the right. The chancel incorporates two 13th-century cusped lancets and a pair of 19th-century lancets; the east end has a 19th-century three-light Perpendicular-style window with a hoodmould, cross finial to the coped verge, and angle buttresses. A lean-to 19th-century organ chamber and vestry are attached to the north side, exhibiting a Tudor-arched door, trefoiled lancets, and a rendered brick stack.

The three-stage west tower has a moulded plinth, diagonal buttresses, string courses, and a Tudor-arched west door with a hoodmould and a three-light Perpendicular window above. Single-light Tudor-arched windows with pierced decorative stone louvres are located on the south and north sides of the middle stage. The bell stage has two-light Tudor-arched Perpendicular stone louvred windows, with a moulded string course to the battlemented parapet topped with crocketed corner pinnacles. A square stair turret features small arrow loops on the south-east corner of the tower.

Inside, the porch has a wooden plaque detailing a £50 grant for the 1878 restoration and a 19th-century planked inner door with ornamental hinges. The nave has a four-bay 19th-century arch-braced collar truss roof supported by stone corbels. A continuously chamfered tower arch is present, separated by a 20th-century screen. The 19th-century chancel arch sits on compound shaft corbels. The chancel roof is boarded, with a double-chamfered pointed 19th-century arch leading to the organ chamber; a pointed archway to the right provides access to the vestry. The chancel also includes a polychrome tiled floor, a trefoiled aumbry on the north wall, and a chamfered trefoiled piscina on the south wall, all likely 13th-century restorations. The church retains choir stalls in the chancel, a 19th-century communion rail, a 19th-century polygonal pulpit with open traceried wooden panels on a stone plinth, and an 18th-century octagonal pedestal font with gadrooning alongside an octagonal carved stone font dating to the 19th century. Painted Royal Arms are hung in the tower. Stained glass is found in the south-east chancel window, depicting George Vander Meulen, who died in 1888. Monuments include a segmental pedimented grey marble tablet to Mary Willoughby, who died in 1736, and an egg and dart moulded panel with painted heraldic arms to Grace Carpenter, who died in 1666. The church houses five bells dated 1605, 1661, 1665, 1671, and 1887.