Church Of St Mary Magdalene Gates And Wall On West And North Sides Of Churchyard

Church of St Mary Magdalene, Gates and Wall on West and North Sides of Churchyard, Rodborough

St Mary Magdalene is an Anglican parish church with an early 16th-century west tower. The body of the church dates largely from 1842, designed by Thomas Foster and Son of Bristol, with extensions added in 1895 by F S and F W Waller. The west tower is Perpendicular Gothic, while the remainder of the church is in Gothic Revival style.

The church is built from limestone ashlar under a Cotswold stone tile roof, with limestone dressings and cast iron rainwater goods. It is rectangular on plan with a projecting west tower, rectangular chancel and south porch. The building comprises a tower, aisled nave, chancel, north organ chamber, south porch and south chapel.

The three-stage tower is separated by string courses and has diagonal buttresses. The west door is oak with decorative wrought iron strap hinges, set in a moulded doorcasing under a four-centred arch with hood mould. Above this is a Perpendicular traceried three-light window. Copper and gilt clock faces are set in the central section of each face of the tower, and the belfry has two-light louvred openings with tracery under a drip mould on each face. A stair turret is set into the corner between the north face of the tower and the west end of the north aisle. The tower is castellated with pinnacles at each corner.

The south and north aisles are each of five bays, with the fifth bay (an extension at the east end) being lower and slightly set back. The main range has buttresses between two-light windows with geometric tracery, each set under a drip mould. The single-storey south porch, in the westernmost bay, has a gabled roof and a moulded pointed arched doorway with an oak door with wrought iron strap hinges; above this is a trefoil light. The south aisle has a small doorway into the chapel towards its east end, and the chapel window in the south aisle extension consists of three lancets with trefoil heads under a segmental pointed drip mould. The north aisle is similar but has no doorway. The chancel at the east end has a four-light traceried window set under an ogee arch with a blind stepped arcade of trefoil-headed niches above it.

The interior comprises tower, nave, north aisle with north organ bay, south aisle with south chapel, and chancel. The tower arch is 16th century with label stops carved with human heads. The arcades have pointed arches carried on Early English clustered columns with capitals decorated with foliage, acorns and berries, and moulded bases. The aisles have unusual roof trusses in the form of timber arcades with trefoil-headed openings. The ceiling of the nave and chancel are shallow four-centred arched vaults in timber. The nave and aisles have 19th-century pews on a stone flag floor. The chancel floor is tiled in terracotta. The choir stalls and organ are of oak. The hexagonal font of 1842 is carved with quatrefoils.

The chancel has a commemorative window of 1909 to members of the local Apperley family. The window in the south chapel commemorates the Rodborough men who fell in the Great War. A window in the north aisle depicting the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion and the Ascension is by Willement and dates from 1845. There are a number of interesting 18th-century memorials and a Jacobean pulpit given by Jasper Estcourt of nearby Lightpill in 1624.

The churchyard is bounded to the north and west by walls of hammer-dressed limestone with monolithic gatepiers housing 19th-century wrought iron gates to the west.

Rodborough was originally part of the ecclesiastical parish of Minchinhampton. A church had been erected by 1384 but was not consecrated until the 1550s, remaining a chapel of ease to Minchinhampton until 1841, when the new ecclesiastical parish of Rodborough was created. The church was rebuilt in the late 15th or early 16th century, and a tower was added in the second quarter of the 16th century, largely funded by the local Halliday family of clothiers. The current church of St Mary Magdalene retains the 16th-century west tower, but the remainder dates largely from the 1842 rebuilding by Thomas Foster and Son of Bristol. This building incorporated galleries, though these were later removed. The aisles and chancel were extended eastwards in 1895 by F S and F W Waller to provide an organ chamber to the north and an extended chancel and south aisle. In 1939, the easternmost bay of the south aisle was fitted out as a chapel. Stained glass windows were added in 1845, 1909, circa 1920 and 1998.