Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is an Anglican parish church, dating primarily to the 13th century with some 15th-century work to the tower, and extensively restored in 1870-2 by E. Christian. It is constructed of rubble stone with stone tiled roofs and coped gables. The church exhibits a remarkably uniform Early English Gothic design, comprising an aisleless nave, chancel, and transepts, with a central tower and north and south porches. The windows are long lancets, unified by a continuous hoodmould and sill course, with clasping buttresses. The nave has four windows, with a three-light west window; the chancel has three windows, including a three-light east window; and the transepts each have two lights to the north and south walls. The east walls of the transepts feature three grouped lancets. A low door with a depressed arch is found on the south side of the chancel. A large, coped gabled north porch has a two-chamfer pointed arch, while a large ashlar south porch features three buttress sides and a chamfer-and-hollow moulded doorway. The tower’s bell stage is finely executed in ashlar, with two large, two-light plate tracery openings on each side, filled with 15th-century ashlar panelling. Shafted colonettes separate these openings. The tower is topped with 15th-century pierced panelled battlements, pinnacles, and a polygonal south-east stair turret.

The interior is characterised by a regular layout and a lack of carved decoration. The windows retain their external sill course and hoodmould. The tower arches are two-chamfered, while the east lancet features stepped five lights with Purbeck shafting, the outer two lancets being blank. The roofs are of 19th-century design: a rafter-roof with braced collars to the nave, boarded roofs with some stencilling in the chancel and transepts, and a boarded tower roof displaying a painted panel dated 1598. The chancel contains stained glass dating from circa 1870-5, with the exception of the south centre light, which is from circa 1860. A piscina and aumbry are located on the south and north walls respectively. The south transept is blocked by an organ over a vestry screen, designed in 1936 by Sir C. Nicholson; the south window glass dates from circa 1880. The north transept displays numerous plaques, including memorials to the Grubbe family of Eastwell. A 15th-century wood pulpit stands on a 19th-century base. The nave houses a 15th-century octagonal font on a shafted base. At the west end is a rare Anglo-Saxon tub font with a rim inscribed in Latin (Psalm 42.1). Above it is a fine carved depiction of the Royal Arms, possibly from the 17th century, with Hanoverian arms replacing earlier Stuart ones. Commandment boards and large painted panels depicting Moses and Aaron (from a dismantled altar-piece of 1723) flank the west window. The west window glass is from circa 1880. The north door to the nave is likely from the 13th century, with a lattice frame. A plaque to the Kent family, by Nollekens (circa 1799), and a neo-classical memorial with a female figure near an urn (to J. Spearing, d.1831, signed E.H. Baily) are on the south wall. Two lancets on each side have glass dating from circa 1902 and 1906. Potterne was historically a manor of the Bishops of Salisbury, and the church’s pure Early English style exhibits similarities to Salisbury Cathedral.