Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a parish church largely dating to the 12th century, with significant alterations in the 13th and 14th centuries. The western tower was rebuilt in the 18th century after its collapse, and subsequently raised and altered in 1882 by Woodyer. Further additions include chancel aisles and a north vestry, dated 1859 on the rainwater heads, with the north chancel aisle incorporating part of the east aisle to the north transept. A late 19th-century south porch and extensive restorations were also undertaken. The church is constructed of flint and chalk with stone dressings, and has tiled roofs.

The west tower features octagonal corner buttresses with 19th-century stone dressings and small, battlemented roof turrets topped with weathervanes. A battlemented parapet rises above an ashlar frieze with alternately blind and louvred, cusped niches. Large three-light windows with plate tracery are present in the belfry, with lancet windows below. A two-light traceried window is located in the west wall. The nave has two bays of restored 14th-century two-light traceried windows. A small, blocked north door is present, featuring a two-centred arch and hood mould, alongside a richly moulded 14th-century south door, restored and set within a gabled timber porch. The west wall of the north transept retains a two-light window with plate tracery, and a reset 12th-century blocked doorway with a roll-moulded arch on shafts with carved capitals. Other transept windows date to the 19th century; the south transept has a large four-light traceried window. The chancel aisles have single lights with traceried heads, and traceried east windows. The chancel features two-light traceried north and south windows, and a restored three-light Perpendicular window to the east. A blocked three-light rectangular window is located below the east window.

Inside, the church displays a triple-chamfered arch to the tower, and 19th-century arched openings to the transepts and chancel. The north transept contains a crown post roof, a blocked doorway at the southwest end, and a segmental arched recess at the north end. It also features a restored 13th-century two-bay east arcade with double-chamfered arches on a large circular pier. Matching arcades are present between the chancel and aisles; the north aisle is now the organ chamber, and the south aisle a chapel. A restored 14th-century ogee piscina and triple sedilia, made of chalk with crockets and carved heads, are also visible. Notable fittings include a 12th-century cylindrical font with floriated crosses in lozenge panels, and 16th-century carved wooden panels incorporated into the altar in the south transept. Monuments include a Perpendicular dresser tomb, restored in the chancel, a fine wall monument to Cope D’Oyley (1633), his wife Martha (1618), and their ten children in the east bay of the north transept, a marble tablet to John Greene (1687) with weeping putti on a broken pediment in the north transept, and a monument in the tower to Raffe Scrope (1572) with a stepped pediment on Ionic columns. Seventeenth and eighteenth-century cartouches are located in the nave, alongside various brasses from the 15th to 17th centuries.