Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is a parish church built in 1856 by Sir George Gilbert Scott. It is constructed from red Forest ashlar with grey ashlar dressings, featuring a timber porch and a tiled roof with a crested ridge, while the spire is covered in shingles. The church has a nave, a north aisle, a tower at the west end, a chancel, an organ chamber, and a south porch. The nave consists of four bays and includes a plain plinth, a moulded string course at window sill level, and angled gabled buttresses at both the west and square-set east ends. A stone gutter supported by carved corbels features larger carved herds above the downpipes, and the gabled copings are topped with an apex cross. The windows are three-light with traceried heads and have carved stops to the hood moulds.

The timber porch is adorned with carved bargeboards and reticulated tracery on the columns at the sides. The chancel has two bays, with an angled buttress at the corner and a square set in the center. It features two two-light windows similar to those in the nave, but with ball flower corbels at the eaves. The east window is a three-light design with spherical triangles as tracery at the head. The tower is square and consists of three stages, with a projecting stair enclosure that starts square, transitions to a demi-octagon, and culminates in a stone roof with a finial against the side of the tower. The ground floor has a two-light window, the second stage features a trefoil window in a spherical triangle, and above are four blind lancets with trefoil heads set on attached columns, with a smaller lancet opening in the center pierced with timber louvres. The eaves project on corbels, and a broach spire rises above, equipped with gablets for a clock on the north and south faces.

Internally, the main arcade has simple arches with hood moulds on quatrefoil columns, and there is no clerestory. The carved hood mould stops and cornice, along with corbels for the trusses of the open roof, add to the interior detail. The chancel roof is boarded with a panelled pointed barrel vault, and the floor is laid with encaustic tiles. The font is elaborately designed with a bowl on a stem, supported by four marble columns set outside on an octagonal base. Additionally, there is a decorative stone pulpit featuring marble colonnettes at the corners, and an alabaster reredos carved by J. B. Philip.