Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is an Anglican parish church with a 12th-century foundation, significantly altered in the 13th, 15th, and 19th centuries. It is constructed of random coursed rubblestone with lead roofs featuring coped verges and cross finials. The church comprises a nave and aisles of seven bays, with a clerestory on the south side, a north porch, and a lower chancel flanked by chapels. Aisle windows have three stepped lancets with cinquefoil heads, with buttresses dividing them on the north side, stepped accordingly. The chancel has plain 12th-century lancets, and a later, nine-light east window modified from seven lights in 1843. The north porch is two-storied, the lower stage dating to the 14th century with a rib vault featuring a carved central boss and corner corbels, along with stepped diagonal buttresses and a large ogee doorway. The upper stage, built around 1450, has twin ogee lights forming a priest's room to the north and west, topped with a trefoil-head panelled parapet with pinnacles. The west end features five stepped round-headed lancets from the mid-13th century, with three pointed moulded arches below a steep gable, and a central cusped cinquefoil doorway. The south door, opposite the north porch, displays triple round-headed moulding with colonettes in the jambs, a square roll-moulded doorway, and a plank door with elaborate applied ironwork. The Berkeley Chapel, located in the southeast corner, is Perpendicular in style, dating to the mid-15th century, with three-light ogee windows and an elaborate carved parapet featuring crocketed pinnacles above each bay buttress. It also includes a small priest’s door with ogee moulding and the Berkeley arms displayed on a tablet above.

The interior showcases a pointed arcade supported by piers of clustered shafts with stiff-leaf capitals, dating from around 1225 to 1250. Medieval patterns in red and black are painted on the walls, including a fragment of a Doom scene on the chancel arch. The church features 15th-century timber roofs with chamfered and moulded beams supported by corbels. The tall, flattened pointed chancel arch incorporates a rood stair in the pier to the left and a 12th-century piscina to the right. A 15th-century stone screen stands before the altar, incorporating a large two-centred arch containing three smaller cusped pointed arches with quatrefoil and mouchettes. The chancel roof displays openwork quatrefoils over the main beams. A 19th-century reredos with five aedicules and statues is present, along with a large inset ogee arch to the left and a tomb of James, 11th Lord of Berkeley (died 1463), within an archway leading to the Berkeley Chapel, featuring a Perpendicular canopy. A memorial stone to Edward Jenner is on the south wall. The church’s stained glass is primarily 19th century, complemented by fine 17th and 18th-century tomb slabs and wall memorials throughout. In the south arcade, a chest tomb commemorates Thomas, 8th Lord of Berkeley (died 1361) and his wife Katharine (died 1385). A square Norman font, situated near the south door, is characterized by four columns with a central round pier and a scalloped lower edge.