Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a parish church dating back to around 1200, with significant additions and alterations in the 16th century and a Victorian restoration carried out between 1866 and 1872 by H. Woodyer. The building is constructed of flint and dressed stone, originally rendered, with plain tiled and lead roofs and a shingle-covered belfry.

The church’s original Norman plan includes a tall, parapeted chancel with an apse, a nave, and a west tower. A 19th-century north-east vestry has been added. The chancel features tall, stepped buttresses and the apse has two buttresses at one-third points. Further decorative elements include an offset plinth, a 19th-century zig-zag string course below the windows, and a heavy machicolated parapet. There are four 19th-century round-headed Norman windows with columns and three-order arches to the apse and south chancel, and a visible outline of a larger window in the southwest corner. The north gable of the vestry features a gabled design.

The south nave wall contains a central Norman doorway, largely reconstructed in the 19th century with two orders and a label featuring nook shafts with three shaft-rings. Above this are two tall, square-headed, two-light quatrefoiled windows with hood moulding. The north wall includes a restored hexagonal rood stair turret with small lights and a pointed roof. A plain, round-headed doorway of two orders and a label is positioned centrally, flanked by tall, thin, round-headed lancets. The west tower has a restored 19th-century stair tower, as well as a re-modelled top stage and roof, with a splayed plinth. A two-light plate tracery window is located on the west face, above which are round-headed lancets on each side. The stair tower is topped with a half-hipped roof with a tiled skirt and supporting stone string course. There are three round-headed bell openings on each side and a single light similar in a tall hipped dormer on the pointed roof.

Inside, the chancel is vaulted, with the apse featuring a pointed arch of two orders with keeled rolls and a label supported on slender clusters of shafts with foliage capitals. The chancel vault is quadripartite with finely moulded ribs and square bosses, and the apse ribs rise to the apex of the arch. All windows are 19th-century round-headed with stained glass by J. Hardman, Birmingham. A string course runs continuously at sill level. The round chancel arch is distorted, with keeled rolls and slender responds with keel and waterleaf capitals. Monuments include one from 1595 to Agatha Barlow, featuring an inscribed panel on unfluted Ionic columns supporting a small ogee-curved gable with a date. Other monuments commemorate Anne Odes (1661), Rev. Charles Monckton (1770), and others from the 18th and 19th centuries. The nave features a continuation of the string course at sill level. South windows have 16th-century rear arches, and the south door has been rebuilt with a high, stilted arch, breaking the string course. North windows have widely splayed rear arches with continuous keel rolls inside. A covered-over north door provides access to the rood stairs, with a doorway above leading onto a screen. The tower arch is unmoulded and pointed, with imposts joining with the wall string, above which is a round-headed doorway to the former nave roof space. The roof is arch braced, with wind-braces on either side of the principal rafters to two sets of butt purlins. A Jacobean pulpit stands to the northeast, decorated with arabesque panels and smaller double arches, and includes a painted, carved coat of arms possibly relating to William III. Monuments dedicated to Edmund Elyott & Son (1780) and Mary Simpson (1806) are located under the tower.