Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a 12th-century church with additions and alterations from the 14th century, and again in the 19th century. It is constructed of Magnesian limestone ashlar with a stone slate roof and wooden porch. The church comprises a west tower, a two-bay nave with a south aisle, a chancel, and an apse.

The tower has two stages with slit openings to the lower stage. It features 2-light belfry windows with Reticulated tracery, a band with gargoyles, battlements, and pinnacles. A 19th-century south porch contains a Norman doorway of four orders, featuring medallions, chevron moulding, beakhead, and a plain roll moulding. The doorway has colonnettes to the outer three arches with interlace and scallop capitals. The south aisle has a plinth, straight-headed 3-light windows with Reticulated tracery under hoodmoulds, and a pointed window to the west. A similar 5-light window is present to the east. Battlements and stone slate coping top the nave. The north side has a chamfered plinth, an entrance under a shouldered arch, a sill band throughout, a central round-headed window with restored nookshafts and hoodmould, a corbel table, and a continuous sill band. The chancel south side contains a priest’s doorway dated 1883, a blocked lancet window, a round-headed window with nookshafts and hoodmould, and features a corbel table and ashlar coping to each gable. The five-bay apse has pilaster buttresses with a variety of windows, including square-headed and round-headed designs with nookshafts, scallop capitals, chevron moulding, beakheads, and various mouldings under hood mouldings.

Inside, the tall round tower arch has single nookshafts with scallop capitals. The nave arcade has hexagonal piers and double-chamfered arches ending in headstops. A recessed niche houses an early 14th-century effigy of a cross-legged civilian holding his heart. A piscina with an ogee arch is positioned in the south aisle. The tall chancel arch has three shafts with scalloped volute capitals and chevron moulding. Arches to the apse are supported on shafts with scallop capitals and volutes, along with a transverse arch and ribs on shafts with scallop capitals. Features include sedilia and a font with a cup-shaped bowl dated 1663 on an earlier base. Fragments of 14th-century glass are found in the south aisle’s east window. Wall monuments include one to Elizabeth Wright (died 1783), signed J Fisher Sculpt/York, and several cartouches to the Thornton family, one dated circa 1650, and one to William Harrison dated circa 1720. A 14th-century grave slab with an incised cross sits in the south aisle. The church is notable for retaining its 12th-century apse.