Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary, Ambleside

An Anglican church built between 1850 and 1854 in the Early Gothic Decorated style, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. It was constructed as a replacement for the smaller former parish church of St Anne.

Materials and Plan

The church is built of slatestone with sandstone dressings and slate roofs. It follows a rectangular plan with a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, a north-east chapel, north-east vestry, south-east tower and north and south porches.

Exterior

The chancel features diagonal buttresses and a five-light east window with tracery and a central buttress beneath. Adjacent to it stands a single-storey canted vestry with pairs of trefoil-headed windows, a coped parapet and an octagonal pyramid roof topped with a ball finial. The north-east chapel is tall, roofed on a west-east axis, with buttresses between which are pairs of two-light windows and pairs of small, round-headed vestry windows beneath. The north and south aisles are buttressed between which are pairs and triplets of trefoil-headed lancets. Trefoil clerestory windows sit high in the nave walls above. The porches have wrought iron gates, squat clasping buttresses and pointed-arched door surrounds beneath pitched roofs. The west end displays a central four-light window flanked by buttresses, with aisles containing three-light windows and diagonal buttresses.

The most prominent feature is the impressive four-stage south-east tower with a projecting south-east stair turret. The tower has diagonal buttresses terminating in gables, a blocked large four-light south window with Decorated-style tracery including a star motif, trefoil-headed lancets, and two-light belfry windows with Decorated-style tracery. A tall spire with three tiers of lucarnes projects upwards from the tower and is topped with a weather vane. The church roof displays seven gables surmounted by crosses, all of different designs.

Interior

The double-chamfered chancel arch rests on responds with clustered shafts. The east window contains stained glass depicting the Four Evangelists and St Paul by John Scott & Son. The chancel roof is a keeled wagon with horizontal boards behind, divided into panels by moulded ribs.

The reredos was a gift from Margaret Freeman in memory of her family. Designed by Paley & Austin of Lancaster and executed by Bridgeman of Lichfield, it was dedicated in 1895. It is crafted in alabaster and mosaic with a centrally-placed white marble cross and features figures of four Celtic saints—Oswald, Aiden, Columba and Kentigern—in crocketted ogee niches. The chancel has marble and tile flooring, a low stone chancel screen with a pierced quatrefoil frieze, and wrought iron and oak sanctuary rails of 1897. Unusually elaborate choir stalls of 1899 by Bridgeman feature round finials with flamboyant tracery, blind traceried panels and carved figures, while the frontals are decorated with carved figures under ogee arches. The choir vestry, accessed from the chancel, has an octagonal timber roof.

The stone pulpit is polygonal with ogee-arched sunk panels and sunk panels with shafts, all on a stone base. A brass lectern in the form of an eagle stands at the front of the nave.

The north-east Lady Chapel, also known as the Wordsworth Chapel, has a two-bay arcade from the chancel and a double-chamfered arch from the north aisle. It features an asymmetrical collar scissor-braced roof. The organ chamber in the base of the tower has a double-chamfered arch from the south aisle and contains an organ of 1898 by the Hope-Jones Organ Company of London.

The nave contains five arcades to the aisles with alternating octagonal and round piers with moulded capitals and double-chamfered arches. The nave is floored with black and red encaustic tiles with an ornamental iron heating grill running down the centre. Nave benches have square-headed ends with roll moulding and recessed panels, with hinged flap seats attached to the ends. North and south entrances from the porches are similar, though the main north entrance has part-glazed panelled timber doors while the south entrance has fully-panelled timber doors. The nave has a substantial arched-braced hammerbeam roof on moulded corbels with ashlar pieces and diagonal boarding behind.

Stained glass windows are by Wailes, Warrington and Holiday. The west window is of four lights with stained glass by William Warrington. Beneath the window is a wall painting of 1944 by Gordon Ransom of the Royal College of Art, depicting the historic Ambleside Rush-Bearing Ceremony.

The font is 19th century with a square stone bowl decorated with crosses in quatrefoils on an octagonal stem with corner shafts bearing naturalistic foliage capitals. It has a carved oak font cover of 1950.

At the west end of the south aisle stands a Gothic Revival monument to Henry Lutwidge, who died in 1861, by J Chapman of Frome. It is a chest decorated with quatrefoils under a cusped ogee arch and flanked by buttresses with pinnacles, with a memorial brass in the shape of an anchor of hope. Numerous other wall monuments are distributed throughout the church's interior, along with the bowl of a pillar piscina on a later stem and base in the nave.

The eight bells installed in the tower in 1901 were cast by Taylor of Littleborough. A clock of 1901 by Potts of Leeds is housed within a glass and timber case in the tower.

Alterations and Later History

A north-east choir vestry was added in 1889 to the designs of Paley & Austin of Lancaster and was built by Newtons of Ambleside. The wrought iron and oak sanctuary rails were inserted in 1897. The elaborate choir stalls were installed in 1899. The wall painting beneath the west window illustrating the annual historic Ambleside Rush-Bearing Ceremony was undertaken in 1944 by Gordon Ransom of the Royal College of Art while the college was evacuated to Ambleside during World War II. In 1969 a vestry was created beneath the north-east chapel.