Church Of St Mary And Corpus Christi

An Anglican parish church with a 15th-century Perpendicular tower, otherwise rebuilt around 1860 by the Gloucester architects Fulljames and Waller. The tower is constructed of coursed, squared and dressed limestone, while the rest of the church is built in coursed, rock-faced limestone.

The church comprises a nave and south aisle with a projecting porch, a chancel with vestry and organ chamber on the south side, and a west tower.

The two-stage west tower has diagonal buttresses, a plinth with moulded capping, and a moulded string between the stages. The entrance is through a 19th-century plank door on the west wall with decorative strap hinges, topped by a Tudor-arched three-light window with Perpendicular tracery, moulded surround, and stopped hood. The belfry windows are two-light openings with Tudor-arched surrounds and stone louvres in all four faces of the tower. The tower is finished with an embattlemented parapet with a moulded string below and gargoyles at each corner. A scratch sundial is scored high on the south-east buttress.

The buttressed nave is lit by four two-light 19th-century windows with tracery and hoods topped with carved head stops. The chancel south wall contains one single and one two-light window in rectangular surrounds with quatrefoils at the top of each light, and a three-light pointed east window with tracery and hood with head stops. A 19th-century plank door in a pointed surround is set in the north wall of the vestry, with three trefoil-headed lights to the right. Single lights with trefoil heads light the south walls of the vestry and organ chamber respectively.

The buttressed south aisle has single pointed windows with tracery and hoods topped with head stops on either side of the porch. A circular window high at the east end of the south aisle features tracery based on a five-pointed star, and a small trefoil light sits high in the west gable-end. The porch is projecting with an open trefoil-headed timber arch at its entrance and slab seats along the inside walls.

The church roof features slightly stepped gable-end coping with triangular kneelers. Cross saddles sit on the vestry, chancel, and nave, with a cross finial on the chancel and formerly also on the nave.

Interior: The chancel is entered through a pointed arch with ballflower decoration. The four-bay nave arcade has circular piers, each with four engaged columns topped with foliate capitals. A tall pointed double-chamfered 15th-century arch to the west tower is now blocked by a 19th-century wooden screen. A plank door in a pointed flat-chamfered surround with a hood and foliate stops connects the chancel to the vestry. The nave and south aisle have plain tile floors, while the chancel has similar flooring with some decorative encaustic tiles below the sanctuary. The sanctuary features decorative encaustic tiling.

The nave roof is a 19th-century arch-braced hammer-beam roof with stone corbels decorated with naturalistic foliate carving. The chancel roof is also arch-braced, with engaged projecting colonette supports carved with angels or foliate decoration.

Fittings include a small circular late Tudor lead font, probably originally of larger diameter, decorated with raised acanthus, star, sun and lozenge motifs, set on a 19th-century sandstone base with foliate decoration and fitted with a circular wooden 19th-century lid with upstanding wrought iron decoration. An early wooden chest with three locks and a later lid stands west of the font. An octagonal stone pulpit features circular roundels outlined with crocketed decoration and panels finely carved with floral or leaf ornament.

Monuments include a memorial to Sir Matthew Wood, Baronet and Member of Parliament, of Hatherley House (later Hatherley Court Hotel), who died in 1843, and his wife Dame Maria, set back in trefoil-headed niches to the right of the altar, with a freestanding marble column on the left between the memorial and the adjacent window. A hatchment hangs at the west end of the nave, with two hatchments in the tower from Sir Matthew Wood's funeral. Four monuments were removed to the tower during the 19th-century rebuilding.

The tower monuments include: at top left, a monument to Elizabeth Bathurst Gibbs, died 1763, of white marble on a cream background with a triangular pediment containing a heraldic shield and urn at the apex; at top right, a late 17th-century limestone monument to Hester Evans, wife of Henry Brett of Hatherley and other members of the Brett family, decorated with heraldic cherubs' heads and an oval plaque at the bottom; at lower left, a marble monument to Louisa Woodbridge Turner, died 1821, with an urn in relief against a grey background; and at lower right, a monument to Thomas Loveday, died 1804, comprising a small white oval plaque on a black background.

The church contains 19th-century stained glass: a window in memory of members of the Maddy family in the chancel and two stained glass windows in the nave.