Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary

This is an Anglican parish church of the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, built in ashlar and rubble stone with stone tiled roofs and coped gables. The building comprises a west tower, nave, south porch and south transept, north aisle, north porch, north east chapel and chancel.

The fine 15th-century tower is similar to those at Yatton Keynell and West Kington. It rises in three stages with diagonal buttresses, a heavy moulded plinth and stringcourses. The west doorway is moulded and pointed, with a plank door set in a shallow stone porch with cambered arched head. The west window is fifteenth-century, of four lights with a hood. The second stage is plain, and the top stage has panelled sides with three panels, each containing two tiers of cusped paired panels. The top centre pair is pierced for two-light bell-openings, infilled with quatrefoil pierced stone screens. The tower is finished with a dripcourse, panelled battlements and pinnacles.

The nave has a fifteenth-century Sanctus-bell turret at its east end. The south side is mostly fifteenth-century, with pairs of three-light Perpendicular flat-headed windows with hoods flanking a gabled south porch with moulded archway and plank door. A high plinth moulding runs along the south side.

The south transept appears to be fifteenth-century. It has a stepped buttress in line with the south gable and a three-light pointed window of fifteenth-century date with a hood on its south side. A large flat buttress sits at the angle between the transept and the south east corner of the nave.

The chancel is mostly fifteenth-century with a heavy high plinth moulding, a stepped south buttress and diagonal east buttresses. Its south side features three-light and two-light flat-headed windows with hoods, while the east window is a pointed fifteenth-century three-light with a hood.

The north east chapel has similar high plinth moulding around its north east angle. Its east window is thirteenth-century, with three lights and cusped reticulated tracery. The north side has a fifteenth-century three-light flat-headed window with a hood and a priests' door to the west—a low moulded arched doorway with a framed plank door and sloping stone hood on brackets.

The north aisle is probably thirteenth-century but was much altered in the fifteenth century. It shares a continuous roof with the north east chapel. At its east end are flat buttresses. From the east, the aisle displays a fifteenth-century three-light flat-headed window with a hood and large carved head stops, a trefoil-headed thirteenth-century single-light window, a fine fifteenth-century porch and another fifteenth-century flat-headed three-light window with carved heads to its hood. The porch itself has a high heavy moulded plinth, stepped angle and side buttresses, a stringcourse and moulded parapet course with two carved gargoyles beneath each side. Panelled battlements (missing on the west side) are surmounted by a small gable with a niche to the front. The porch entrance features a moulded pointed archway with a moulded pointed inner archway, oak plank door and a small rectangular trefoil-headed panel above. The porch vault is a fine tierceron-star vault on carved head corner corbels with carved bosses. The gabled west end of the aisle has a pointed fifteenth-century three-light window with a hood.

Interior

The tower arch is moulded and shafted, fifteenth-century work. The nave has a fifteenth-century plastered wagon roof in ten bays with moulded ribs rising from carved corbel heads, divided into panels by moulded ridge and horizontal members each side with carved bosses at intersections. The last two bays are further subdivided into smaller panels. One south window contains a crocketted niche in its east reveal. A stair through the wall at the west side of the transept leads to a fine fifteenth-century stone pulpit with a canted panelled front.

The south transept has a moulded beam across its width, carried on curved brackets from corbel heads. A small niche sits to the left of the south window.

The five-bay north arcade appears to be thirteenth-century with double-chamfered arches with hoods and carved head stops. The piers are circular, set on raised moulded square bases with carved capitals of late Norman or Transitional form, some with scallop carving and some with ballflower to the lower moulding. The capitals are topped with octagonal abaci. A fine Norman circular font displays fluting below, scales above and an upper zigzag band.

The chancel arch features continuous two-hollow mouldings. The chancel has a four-bay fifteenth-century plastered wagon roof, restored, with moulded ribs. The north wall contains a small niche and the south wall a credence shelf.

The north aisle and chapel share a plastered wagon roof with a stone seat on part of the north wall and a small niche in the chapel.

Furnishings

The church retains early eighteenth-century altar rails and a late nineteenth-century reredos with a terracotta Last Supper panel by G. Tinworth of Doulton's. Two early to mid eighteenth-century wall monuments stand on the chancel north wall, with one of around 1714 on the south side. Two late seventeenth-century brasses are positioned by the pulpit. Three eighteenth-century box pews remain in the north aisle.

The stained glass is predominantly nineteenth-century. Some dates to around 1854 and bears the arms of G. P. Scrope of Castle Combe, appearing in the north aisle and south transept (faded). A window of around 1874 is in the north east, and much pictorial glass of around 1890, signed by E. Suffling, fills the east, west and one chancel south window, two nave south windows and one north aisle window.