Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary

An Anglican parish church in Wylye, originally built in the 13th century with significant 15th-century additions and substantially rebuilt in 1846 by the architect T.H. Wyatt. The building is constructed of dressed limestone and flint with a tiled roof.

The church plan comprises a west tower, a nave with north aisle, a chancel with north vestry, and a south porch.

The south porch is gabled with a Tudor-arched doorway featuring a blocked, reset 14th-century niche above. It has diagonal buttresses and a cusped lancet window to its west side. The nave features three-light 19th-century Perpendicular-style windows either side of the porch, with a cusped 19th-century lancet to the left, all with scrolled hoodmoulds.

The chancel displays a pair of 13th-century lancets with 19th-century quatrefoil above, forming a plate tracery window, and a 19th-century lancet to the right. The east end has diagonal buttresses and a chequered flint and stone wall with three 13th-century stepped lancets. These lancets have attached billet-moulded shafts with stiff leaf capitals and dogtooth ornament to the arches, with hoodmoulds above and 19th-century quatrefoils. The coped verge rests on Medieval carved head corbels. The north side of the chancel has a 19th-century two-light plate tracery window. The gabled vestry features a two-light plate tracery window and a chamfered Tudor-arched doorway.

The north aisle has a pitched roof, rebuilt in the 19th century with two cusped lancets and two two-light Perpendicular windows. Buttresses with offsets support the walls, and the east window is a 19th-century two-light Perpendicular window.

A stair turret against the north side of the tower contains two arrow loops and a stone pitched roof. The three-stage tower has a cyma-moulded plinth and diagonal buttresses. The west elevation features a moulded Tudor-arched doorway and a three-light pointed Perpendicular window with an octagonal clock face above. The south side has a two-light 16th-century-style window to the second stage. A moulded string course marks the bellstage, which has two-light pointed Perpendicular windows with decorative pierced louvres to the south and west sides, a single light to the north, and a square-headed two-light Perpendicular window to the east. A further moulded string course with gargoyles supports the battlemented parapet, which is finished with corner pinnacles.

Interior

The porch has an arch-braced collar-rafter roof with 19th-century half-glazed inner doors with pointed arch. The nave features a 19th-century three-and-a-half-bay arch-braced collar truss roof on stone corbels and a stone floor. A Perpendicular tower arch, partly filled with a 19th-century wooden screen and door, gives access to the tower stairs via a cyma-moulded Tudor-arched doorway.

The north aisle contains a three-bay arcade with plain chamfered arches on 14th-century-style octagonal piers and an arch-braced collar truss roof.

The chancel has a 19th-century arch and a three-bay roof, with an exceptionally fine Minton tiled floor of 1871. The east windows feature 13th-century billet-moulded rere-arches on shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. Five stone tablets are set in the walls, all bearing heraldic shields; only one inscription is legible—to Mary Stevens, died 1685.

Fittings include a very finely carved Jacobean pulpit with octagonal tester dated 1628, featuring barleysugar balusters to the stairs from the late 17th century. Both the pulpit and a matching reading desk came from Wilton St. Mary. A 19th-century octagonal stone font stands in the chancel, while a retained 18th-century vase font at the west end of the north aisle has a sundial set on top. Three brass candelabra stand in the nave; one is dated 1814 and also came from Wilton St. Mary. Commandment and prayer boards are positioned in the north aisle.

The church contains good late 19th-century and early 20th-century stained glass, including two windows by Kempe in the north aisle and 1840s glass in the chancel. A George III Royal Arms is displayed in the north aisle, alongside a painted triptych behind the altar dated 1891.

Medieval carving on the north wall depicts the Crucifixion and is said to have originally been positioned above the porch door. Classical marble wall tablets include a mid-19th-century tablet to the Perrior family on the south side of the nave, and marble tablets in the chancel include one to Frances Baker, died 1840.

The church contains six bells, including bells from 1587 and 1697.