Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is an Anglican parish church built in 1849 by J.H. Hakewill. It is constructed of squared rubble stone with a stone slate roof, featuring coped gables, finials, and an ashlar gabled west bellcote. The church is designed in a plain Early English style and includes a nave, south porch, transepts, and chancel. Architectural details include lancet windows, angle buttresses on the nave and chancel, and side buttresses on the transepts and porch. The nave has two west lancets with linked hoodmoulds, paired lancets on each side (two on the north and one with a gabled projecting porch on the south). The transepts feature two end-wall lancets with linked hoodmoulds and one on each side. The chancel has a sill-course, two lancets with hoodmoulds on each side, a central door on the south side, and a three-light window with hoodmould at the east end.

Inside, the church has complete encaustic tile flooring, which appears to be 19th century but is said to include some medieval tiles. The nave features an arch-braced collar rafter roof, while the chancel has a boarded five-sided roof. Notable fittings include a fine stone font from around 1200 with raised triangle-headed arcading, a 15th-century timber screen with four lights on each side of a Tudor-arched center, traceried heads to the lights, carved spandrels, and a brattished cornice. There is a 19th-century pulpit, and on the north wall of the chancel, there is a 14th-century female effigy believed to be of Isabella Mompesson. In the south transept, there is a 13th-century effigy of a knight, said to be W. de Clifford, who founded the church in 1172, along with carved plaques from 1678 and 1700 dedicated to Robert and Rebekah Stratton. The north wall of the nave features a pedimented plaque to J. Jenkins, who died in 1764, and a fine open pedimented plaque to C. Bayliffe, who died in 1735. The stained glass includes an unusual east window from 1849 that combines painted and stained glass, chancel lancets from around 1878 and 1890, and one nave north window from about 1875. The west end organ was made by W. Sweetland of Bath in 1888. The church was built at a cost of £860.