Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary

This church at West Lutton was built in 1874–75 to the design of G E Street for Sir Tatton Sykes. It is constructed of sandstone ashlar on a chamfered plinth with tile roofs.

The church comprises a west belfry, 2½-bay aisled nave with south porch, chancel and vestry. The belfry is tile-hung with timbered bell-openings and supports a broach spire with weathercock. The pointed west window has 4 lights with geometric tracery beneath a leaf-stopped coved hoodmould. The belfry features balustraded bell-openings on all sides.

The gabled porch stands on a double-chamfered, roll-moulded plinth and has a pointed-arched opening of 3 orders dying into the sides. Above this is a bracketed niche containing a sculpted Virgin and Child beneath a rib-vaulted, crocketed canopy. The west return features a traceried round window. The interior of the porch is cross-vaulted in stone with ribs springing from slender columns with moulded capitals. Similar columns support a pointed arch moulded with fleurons over the cusped south doorway.

The south aisle contains paired and tripled trefoil-headed windows either side of a central buttress, with a second buttress further west. A pointed 2-light cinquefoil window with leaf-stopped hoodmould appears at the aisle's east end. The north aisle has 2 groups of trefoil-headed windows and a central buttress. The chancel south wall contains a wide pointed window of 3 stepped lancets with traceried head, and a rounded triangular window enclosing 3 trefoils to the east; both have leaf-stopped hoodmoulds.

The gabled vestry projects from the chancel north side and has a 2-light cinquefoil window in its gable end, with a pointed doorway in its west return containing a square-headed door beneath a recessed shaped lintel. The chancel north side has a pointed 2-light window and chimney stack rising at the rear of the vestry. A circular traceried east window is recessed in a moulded pointed arch between angle buttresses. A moulded sill band encircles the church and forms a hoodmould over the porch arch. Buttresses are gableted with chamfered, roll-moulded bases. Gables are coped with gable crosses to the porch, nave and chancel.

The interior features north and south arcades of pointed arches on cylindrical columns with moulded capitals and continuous hoodmoulds. Nave windows are deeply splayed in broach-stopped, chamfered openings with semicircular heads. The pointed chancel arch has 3 orders—the outer chamfered and the inner 2 roll-moulded—supported on slender round columns with moulded capitals.

The vaulted chancel spans 2 bays of pointed arches on slender rounded columns with moulded capitals. The arches are of 2 orders: the inner roll-moulded with fillets, the outer chamfered with nailhead moulding. On the south side, sedilia, aumbry and piscina are grouped beneath cusped pointed arches on detached columns with a continuous gabled hoodmould. Pairs of similar blind arches flank the altar.

The richly painted and carved timber altar features a painted triptych reredos depicting The Crucifixion with a pendant Deposition, created by Burlison and Grylls. There is a stone pulpit and an octagonal font with carved, traceried sides. The metalwork includes an iron and brass chancel screen; lamp brackets in the aisles and chancel, some with brass oil lamps; and wrought-iron door furniture and hinges. Stained glass by Burlison and Grylls is notable throughout the church, particularly the west "Tree of Jesse" window.

The nave roof comprises 2 arched-braced king-strut trusses with moulded struts and tie-beams, plus a third corbelled queen-post truss at the west end with cusped and pierced spandrels. Aisle roofs are pent. The roof is patterned with attached painted metal suns and stars.

The vestry contains a reset order of a Norman arch with lobed mouldings and central corbel head over the outside doorway. Its tunnel-vaulted roof is decorated similarly to the nave.