Church Of St Mary The Virgin

Church of St Mary the Virgin

This is a church of 14th and 15th-century date with older origins. It was substantially restored in 1883 by M.H. Holding, when a vestry, organ chamber were added and the chancel was rebuilt. The tower was further restored in 1910. The building is constructed of coursed limestone rubble and coursed squared ironstone with lead roofs.

The church comprises a chancel, north chancel chapel, south vestry and organ chamber, nave with north and south aisles, a south porch, and a west tower.

The chancel contains a 19th-century 5-light east window with curvilinear tracery. The north chancel chapel and south vestry and organ chamber are flanking structures that continue the lines of the aisles. Both have 19th-century 3-light east windows in Decorated style. The chapel features 2-light Decorated windows to the north, while the vestry and organ chamber have similar 19th-century windows to the south and a chamfered priest's door. The nave has a 4-bay clerestory of 2-light windows with 4-centred heads, mostly renewed in the 20th century.

The north aisle contains a 3-light Decorated west window with a sexfoil to the head of the central light and trefoils to the heads of the flanking lights. A double-roll-moulded north door gives entry, with a 2-light Decorated window to its east featuring a sexfoil head and ogee-headed lights. Further east is a 3-light window with ogee-headed lights, quatrefoils and mouchettes to the head. An offset buttress between the aisle and chapel includes a stone-roofed projection to the east and a blocked roll-moulded door to the west, partly in the aisle wall which has been cut back to provide access with a chamfered relieving arch above the recess.

The south aisle has 2- and 3-light windows, all renewed in the 19th century. A 13th-century south door with pairs of shafts, moulded capitals and a many-moulded arch stands in a porch rebuilt in the 19th century.

The 3-stage west tower has a west door with plain jambs and a small lancet window above with a triangular head. A similar window appears to the south at a higher level. The middle stage contains 2-light windows with plate tracery, and the bell chamber has 2-light paired openings. The tower is crowned with a battlemented parapet and corner pinnacles. The rest of the church has plain stone-coped parapets. Hood moulds run above all windows.

Interior

The chancel contains a reredos with 16th-century linenfold panelling, probably re-used, and a piscina with a cusped and chamfered ogee-arched head. A 19th-century two-bay arcade connects to the vestry and organ chamber, and an arch opens to the north chancel chapel. The chancel arch is double-chamfered with polygonal responds.

The nave has 3-bay arcades with octagonal piers, polygonal responds, moulded capitals and double-chamfered arches. A Perpendicular roof spans the nave with moulded principals, ridges and purlins, partly renewed. A piscina with an ogee-arched head exists in the north chapel and at the end of the south aisle. A circular font features intersecting arcading.

The chancel contains 6 stalls of 15th-century date, said to come from St. James Abbey near Northampton. They have carved arm-rests and misericords depicting the Virgin of the Misericord, a lion and a dragon fighting, a seraph astride two figures, three seated female figures, Christ in Majesty, Christ's Entry in Jerusalem, and a small praying figure with another on horseback below. A 15th/early 16th-century screenwork in the vestry remains much repaired. A Jacobean pulpit features 2 tiers of blank arches, and a pulpit door has been re-used in the bottom half of a low-side window.

A 14th-century stained-glass window in the north-west of the chapel includes heraldic arms. Painted glass roundels in the chapel windows display coats of arms, three of which are dated 1632, alongside smaller 17th-century roundels said to have come from the Church of St. Madeleine, Beauvais, given by W.H. Fox Talbot of Lacock Abbey. 19th-century stained glass appears in the east and aisle windows.

Monuments

An oak effigy of a knight, said to be Sir Philip de Gayton (died 1316), lies on a tomb-chest with ogee-headed crocketed panels in an ogee-arched recess between the chancel and chapel, which is itself crocketed with pinnacles and a finial. A stone effigy of a lady, said to be Scholastica, daughter of Philip de Gayton and wife of Godfrey de Meaux (died 1345), occupies a many-moulded tomb recess. A miniature effigy of a girl, reset in the same recess above, represents Mabilla, daughter of Thomas de Murdak and Julianna, daughter of Philip de Gayton; this was found in 1830 in the chancel wall. A stone coffin lid with a foliated cross lies in the chapel.

An early 16th-century chest tomb in a recess on the south side of the chancel has a depressed arch and battlements with a Purbeck marble slab and matrix of brass in the back wall, possibly for Robert Tanfield (died 1504). An alabaster chest tomb bears an incised slab representing Francis Tanfield (died 1558) and his wife Bridget (died 1583) and their 18 children, with the chest decorated with shields in lozenges. This is attributed to the Rolleys of Burton-on-Trent. An incised slab commemorates Lady Jane Harrington (died 1662). Brass plates mounted on the wall record William Houghton (died 1600) with verse and Mary Breton (died 1704). A large 18th-century marble monument to the Lockwood family by Robert Blore features a long inscription framed by columns. Wall monuments to Richard Kent (died 1753) and Richard Kent (died 1780) are both vertical ovals with cartouches of arms and are signed by W. Cox of Northampton.