Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary, Ulverston

Parish church of 16th-century date, incorporating a re-used 12th-century south doorway. The building was restored and enlarged in 1804, then extensively restored and partly rebuilt between 1864 and 1866 by Paley. The chancel was extended in 1903-4 by Austin and Paley, who also re-furnished the east end of the south aisle in 1923 as the War Memorial Chapel. The church is constructed of sandstone and limestone rubble with red sandstone dressings and slate roofs.

The plan comprises a west tower, nave with clerestorey, south aisle and south porch, a north aisle under a pitched roof, and a chancel.

The tower is of three stages with angle buttresses and an embattled parapet. The west window is pointed with three lights and Perpendicular tracery. Below is a doorway with a hollow chamfer and segmental arch. The bell openings are each of three lights with flat heads, mullions, slate louvres, and hoodmoulds. On the south side of the middle stage wall is an inscribed tablet with hoodmould.

The north aisle comprises seven bays separated by buttresses and has pointed windows with Perpendicular tracery, mostly of two lights except for the western window in the north wall and the east window, both of three lights, and the west window of five lights. On the south side, the clerestorey windows are mullioned, of three lights with flat heads and hoodmoulds. The south aisle windows are pointed and of two lights, with four windows to the left of the priest's door and two to the right. The porch at the west end is gabled with a cross finial. It has a moulded four-centred outer doorway with hoodmould and angel stops. The inner doorway appears to be re-set and features a round arch of three orders (including chevron and cable ornament) with chamfered imposts. The east chancel window is of five lights, and a south buttress is inscribed 'MDCCCCIII' (1503).

Internally, the pointed tower arch is chamfered in two orders dying into the responds. The seven-bay arcades date from 1804 and are plastered with pointed chamfered arches springing from octagonal columns with moulded caps. The open timber roof features braced collar trusses alternating with king-post trusses which have queen struts and corbelled wall posts. The chancel extension is of sandstone ashlar with double sedilia and a piscina, and a boarded barrel roof. Two bays of the main arcades are within the chancel, which is raised above nave level and divided from it by a low sandstone wall pierced by quatrefoils.

The fittings include choir stalls of carved oak, and oak screens with carved tracery (probably by Austin and Paley) dividing the chancel from the south chapel and from the north vestry and organ chamber. A similar screen divides the organ chamber from the north aisle. The organ was rebuilt in the later 20th century, but the organ case (facing the north vestry) has six timber Corinthian columns supporting an entablature.

The church contains numerous memorials, including a tomb chest in the north aisle (formerly in the south chapel) with a carved effigy of William Sandys of Conishead Priory (died 1559). At the west end of the south aisle is a canopied mural monument to Miles Dodding (died 1629) with a small recumbent figure and Latin inscription. At the east end of the south aisle are memorial brasses to an earlier Miles Dodding (died 1606) and his wife set in a tablet of polished limestone in Elizabethan style, which appears to be early 19th-century work.