Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary

This is an Anglican parish church, mainly dating from the 13th century with a chapel of around 1500, substantial 19th-century restorations, and a late 19th-century rebuild of the spire. The building is constructed in thin-bedded sandstone rubble with large flush quoin stones and a Welsh slate roof to coped gables with crosses.

The church comprises a west tower and spire, nave, north and south aisles, a deep north porch, a deep vestry to the south aisle, a chancel also with a vestry, and a chapel at the east end of the north aisle.

The tower is 13th-century, rising in four stages with crenellation. It features a rebuilt octagonal spire with roll mould arrises and heavy buttresses in two stages, bold string courses at each stage, and a bold stair turret on the north side in three stages. The tower has a 13th-century doorway with a 19th-century door bearing strap hinges and rail head, set under a cusped niche containing a 20th-century figure of Christ. Cusped lancets appear in stages 2 and 3, with twin cusped belfry openings above. The south side has a central buttress with one offset to the first stage only, and further cusped lancets.

The south aisle contains three-light lancets, with the central one cusped and standing under a continuous moulded string with leaf stops. The south side has two tall lancets and one four-light window of the 15th century, while the east end features a three-light 13th-century plate tracery window. A deep projecting vestry of late 19th-century date stands at the south end.

The chancel has two two-light plate tracery lancets with stopped drips on the south side, a triple lancet at the east end (not stepped), and a plain lancet on the north side. The chapel at the east end has a three-light window under a square stopped drip, and to the north, reached by four steps, a four-centred door and four-light windows similar to those on the east end. The north aisle contains two cusped lancets and a four-light window, whilst the north porch has a plain roll-mould door surround set under a coped gable with a cross.

The interior contains a tower arch with two broad chamfers internally and three orders toward the nave, with a string as a capital band. A glazed screen of 1927 commemorates Charles Eldridge Besant, with an organ above. The nave is five bays long with slender circular piers bearing 19th-century caps and bases set on square plinth blocks. Double chamfer arches support the structure, and a clerestory contains three-light cusped openings with flat rere-arches. A fine waggon roof with gilded bosses and two tie-beams completes the nave. The wide south aisle has a waggon roof with 18 gilded bosses and four tie-beams. The wide north aisle features a north door with a segmental pointed moulded head; to its right is a pointed arch to a holy water stoup. The four-light window serves as a 1914–1918 memorial. At the east end, an arch in two orders with shafts on high plinths and a double-ware mould leads via five steps to the Bledisloe Chapel, which has four-light north and three-light east Tudor windows containing distinctive 20th-century glass commemorating Arthur Henry Bathurst (1872–1936). The east window depicts the Franz Josef Glacier, Waiho, New Zealand. The chapel has a stone floor, an arch-braced roof, and to the south a moulded segmental-headed opening with plain glass and a four-centred opening with responds, caps, and double chamfer. The chapel contains 12 Bathurst memorials dating from 1754 to 1979, and a hatchment bearing the Bathurst motto "TIEN TA FOY". The chancel has a large flat opening to the organ chamber on the north side and an arch-braced five-bay roof with 18 bosses.

Monuments include a series of upright ledger slabs of the 17th and 18th centuries in the tower, some badly worn; various memorials of the 18th and 19th centuries elsewhere, including a tablet by William Paty; and a 14th-century stone effigy of a lady carrying a heart. A Perpendicular octagonal font has Tudor roses in quatrefoils to square panels.