Church Of St Mary

ST 9958 POTTERNE HIGH STREET (east side)

14/142 Church of St Mary 19.3.62 GV I

Anglican Parish Church, C13 with some C15 work to tower, restored 1870-2 by E. Christian. Rubble stone with stone tiled roofs and coped gables. A remarkably uniform E.E. design of aisleless nave, chancel and transepts with central tower and north and south porches. Long lancet lights throughout linked by continuous hoodmould and sill course. Clasping buttresses. Four-window nave with 3-light west window, 3-window chancel with 3-light east window, 2-window transepts with two lights to north and south walls. Transept east walls have 3 grouped lancets. Chancel south side has low door with depressed arch. Large coped gabled north porch with 2-chamfer pointed arch. Large ashlar south porch with 3-buttress sides and chamfer-and-hollow moulded doorway. Centre tower has fine ashlar bell stage with 2 large 2-light plate- traceried bell-openings each side, infilled with C15 ashlar panelling. Shafted colonnette between openings. C15 pierced panelled battlements, pinnacles and polygonal south-east stair turret. Interior: severely regular, without carved elaboration. Sill- course and hoodmould to windows as outside, 2-chamfer tower arches and stepped 5-light east lancets with Purbeck shafting, the outer two lancets blank. C19 roofs: rafter-roof with braced collars to nave, boarded roofs with some stencilling to chancel and transepts. Boarded tower roof with 1598 on painted panel. Fittings: chancel has good c1870-5 stained glass in all windows but centre south light which is of c1860. Piscina on south wall, aumbry on north wall. South transept is blocked by large organ over vestry screen, 1936 by Sir C. Nicholson. South window glass of c1880. North transept has numerous plaques, on east wall various memorials to the Grubbe family of Eastwell. C15 wood pulpit on C19 base. Nave has C15 octagonal font on shafted base. At west end, rare Anglo-Saxon tub font with rim inscribed in Latin (Psalm 42.1). Above, fine carved Royal Arms, possibly C17 with Hanoverian arms replacing Stuart. Each side of west window commandment boards and large painted panels of Moses and Aaron from dismantled altar-piece of 1723. Fine west window glass of c1880. Nave north door is possibly C13, lattice-framed. On south wall plaque to Kent family - by Nollekens, c1799, and large neo-classical memorial with female figure by an urn, to J. Spearing, d.1831, signed E.H. Baily. Two lancets each side have similar glass of c1902 and c1906. Potterne was a manor of the bishops of Salisbury and pure E.E. style has similarities to Salisbury Cathedral. (N. Pevsner Wiltshire 1975 371)

Listing NGR: ST9955258546