Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is an Anglican parish church located in Coombe Bissett, dating from the 14th century, with a tower added in the early 17th century and restoration work carried out in the 1860s. The church is constructed of flint with limestone dressings and features a tiled roof with ridge tiles and coped verges.

The structure includes a nave, south and north aisles, a chancel, and a south-east tower. The west door, which is from the 19th century, has a hood mould and trefoils in the spandrels. Above the door is a four-light Perpendicular window with a hood mould, flanked by buttresses. The west ends of the aisles are windowless, and the south aisle has a blocked Tudor-arched doorway to the west. On the south side of the aisle, there is a two-light window in a 16th-century style with a hood mould to the left, and to the right, a three-light trefoiled window in a similar style, also with a hood mould.

The three-stage tower features diagonal buttresses, a pair of lancets on the first stage, a small square-headed light on the second stage, and a bell stage with a string course and a pair of square-headed lights with louvres on each face. The tower is topped with a battlemented parapet and a pyramidal tiled roof. The south side of the chancel has two cusped lancets, the east side has a group of three lancets, and the north side has a single lancet. The east window of the north aisle is a two-light window in a 16th-century style with a hood mould and relieving arch, while the north aisle has two two-light windows in the same style, both with hood moulds.

Inside, the nave features a four-bay arch-braced tie-beam roof supported by carved stone corbels. The early 14th-century south arcade consists of three tall double-chamfered arches on octagonal piers with responds, while the north arcade has four shorter pointed arches on octagonal piers without responds. The chancel arch is double-chamfered. There is a plain piscina on the south wall of the chancel and a late 14th-century ogee-headed piscina on the east wall of the north aisle. The church contains Victorian pews, a pulpit, and a font at the west end, along with late 20th-century glass in the east windows.

A marble wall tablet in the north aisle commemorates Edmund Wyndham, who died in 1723, and features the arms of the Wyndham family. There are also several notable 18th-century floor tablets with fine lettering, particularly in the north aisle, and flagstone floors throughout.