Church Of St Mary

Church of St. Mary, Burton Latimer

A Grade I parish church with origins in the 12th century, enlarged in the 13th century with tower addition, further modified in the 15th century, and substantially restored and rebuilt between 1864 and 1868 by Slater and Carpenter. The porch was restored in 1882 when an organ chamber and vestry were constructed, and an octagonal "chapter house" was added in the 20th century.

The church is built of coursed limestone rubble with ironstone banding and ashlar dressings. It comprises an aisled nave, chancel, west tower with spire, and north porch. The principal roofs are of steeply-pitched 19th-century graduated stone slate to the chancel; other roofs are concealed behind parapets and are likely lead. The steeply-pitched roofs to the nave and aisles are Perpendicular in style, though restored, with cambered tie-beams, carved bosses, and in the north aisle, arch-braces carried on corbels. The chancel roof is 19th-century work.

The west tower is distinguished by setback buttresses at its north-west angle and a castellated stair-turret at the south-west angle. A moulded set-off beneath its triple arcade is blind to north and south and at a lower level to the west, containing a single central lancet; beneath this are paired 2-light Decorated bell-openings to each side, with tracery apparently added later. The tower displays a castellated parapet with grotesque spout-heads and is crowned by a recessed octagonal spire with 2 tiers of lucarnes on the cardinal faces and a finial cap.

The nave features a 19th-century castellated parapet on moulded eaves, with ironstone used to the north. Six 2-light Perpendicular clerestory windows sit beneath 3-centred hoods. The aisles have plain parapets; the north and south aisles each contain three 3-light Perpendicular windows with 4-centred heads, linked by cill bands. The north aisle has a buttress at its east end. The south aisle has a plinth, 4 buttresses, and a richly-moulded round-headed doorway with a low-level relieving arch raised by a buttress to its right.

The chancel has buttresses, plinth, cill-bands, 19th-century moulded eaves, and coped gables with cross finial. The chancel windows consist of 3 attenuated late 13th-century windows to north and south, each of 2 trefoiled lights with pointed trefoils and cusped circles in the heads, complemented by a 19th-century 5-light "Decorated" east window designed to correspond. To the north is a projecting 19th-century organ chamber of ironstone with limestone dressings, and to the south a matching vestry, now both linked to the 20th-century octagonal "chapter house".

The north porch is gabled with a plinth, string course, diagonal buttresses, and a parapet with gargoyles at the angles. Above the moulded pointed-arched doorway is a niche now containing a statue of the Virgin and Child, presented in 1928. The inner north doorway is chamfered with a simple hood and heavily studded double doors dated 1510, inscribed with the names "Ihon Campyon and Ihean bys wyf".

Interior

The 6.5-bay nave arcade reveals three main building phases. From the 12th century are the three western piers of the south aisle, circular in plan with ironstone bands and scalloped capitals carrying abaci, supporting round arches progressively more richly moulded eastward: the westernmost with plain arches and abacus, then roll-moulded, and then a zig-zag arch on abaci with incised carving on the north face. The third complete arch from the west in the north arcade is also round and roll-moulded, carried on a square pier with nook-shafts, suggesting a 12th-century transeptal chapel. In the early 13th century, a north arcade was created with pointed, simple-stepped arches on a circular pier and a square pier with 4 attached demi-shafts, all having stiff-leaf capitals. Later in the 13th century, the tower was built encroaching on the westernmost bay of the nave, which was then extended by 3 bays to the east, with double-chamfered arches on quatrefoil piers. The lofty tower arch is triple-chamfered with responds in the form of clustered shafts with ironstone banding; the chancel arch is double-chamfered and plainer.

The church contains wall-paintings of two periods: a fragment of a 14th-century cycle of St. Catherine on the north aisle wall, and late 16th-century figures representing the tribes of Israel in scrolled cartouches within the spandrels of the nave arcade. There is 19th-century stained glass and a traceried Perpendicular screen, restored. A plain octagonal Perpendicular font stands in the nave, with an earlier font retrieved in this century from the Rectory garden now in the porch.

Among the monuments are a brass to Margaret Bacon, died 1626, and a baby, set in a tall stone frame surmounted by three obelisks in the south aisle. Fragments of two other brasses remain: one to the Boyvill family, with nine daughters and a shield surviving at the east end of the nave, and in the chancel a shield probably part of a monument to Edmund Bacon, died 1626.