Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is an Anglican parish church dating to the 15th century, with a significant restoration in 1840. Constructed primarily of limestone ashlar with dressed limestone detailing and a stone slate roof featuring coped verges, the church incorporates a west tower, a nave with a north chapel, and a chancel.

The west entrance, located at the base of the tower, features a Tudor-arched doorway, double ledged doors, and a hoodmould. The three-stage tower has diagonal buttresses, string courses, and a three-light Perpendicular window above the doorway. Further details include a chamfered arrowloop to the middle stage, blind traceried panels and three-light open panels with latticed stone louvres to the bell stage, a string course with gargoyles to a battlemented parapet with traceried panels, and crocketed corner pinnacles. An octagonal stair turret on the southeast corner is decorated similarly and topped with a crocketed domed roof. The south side of the nave features three two-light windows dating to the 1840s, alongside a moulded cornice to a battlemented parapet. The chancel’s south side was rebuilt in 1840 and retains a trefoil-headed planked door with incised ornament to the spandrels, a hoodmould, and two cinquefoiled lights. A 18th-century memorial tablet with an open pediment is set into the wall to the right. The east window is a three-light Perpendicular design, while the north wall is of rubble stone and features a chamfered lancet.

The 15th-century north chapel shows set-back buttresses, three-light pointed Perpendicular windows to the east and west, and two to the north. It also features a moulded string course with gargoyles, a battlemented parapet, and broken pinnacles. The north side of the nave has a single pointed light with a square hoodmould to the right of the chapel.

Inside the church, the nave has a late 18th-century coved plaster ceiling in three panels. The tower arch has traceried panelled soffits, and a carved stone Devil is corbelled into the stair turret within the nave. A 20th-century wooden screen and door are also present. The north chapel, dating to around 1400, has moulded piers with attached shafts, pointed arches, and a partly restored roof with finely carved panels, moulded ribs, and bosses. Niches, formerly containing images, flank the east window. A squint is cut into the east respond of the chapel’s aisle arcade. The chancel features a low moulded pointed arch and a collar rafter roof. A double-pointed piscina with nailhead ornament is situated on the south wall.

Fittings include a mid-17th-century chancel screen, formerly a communion rail; 15th-century choir stalls with traceried panels; a polygonal carved wooden pulpit dated 1607; late 19th-century nave seating; and an octagonal stone pulpit with a finely carved ogee-shaped cover, likely dating to the 15th century. Stained glass from the 15th century is present in the chancel, notably depicting Christ on the cross in the east window. Monuments include a Rococo stone tablet in the nave to John Painter, who died in 1723, displaying a scrolled pediment and fluted pilasters, and a large oval marble tablet to Richard Cox, who died in 1789, complete with a female figure and an urn. A stone tablet with heraldic arms commemorates Charles Franklin in the chapel.