Parish Church Of St Mary

Parish Church of St Mary

This is a parish church of medieval origin, dating from the late 12th century through to the early 15th century, substantially rebuilt and restored in 1858-59 by Sir George Gilbert Scott.

The building is constructed of rubble sandstone with freestone dressings, with graded slate roofs except for the leaded roof of the north aisle and the stone-slab roof of the north porch.

The church comprises a nave with a lower chancel, north and south aisles incorporating a chapel at the east end of the south aisle, north and south porches, a west tower, and a north vestry.

The west tower is a Perpendicular structure of three stages, with diagonal buttresses featuring gabled offsets and an embattled parapet. The lower stage contains a four-light west window. The second stage has a small narrow west window and a clock on the north face. The belfry openings are two-light with transoms and louvres. The five-bay nave has a plain parapet and square-headed clerestorey windows incorporating Decorated tracery.

The aisles do not conform to the nave bay structure and both continue across two bays of the chancel. The north aisle is six bays, with a plain parapet and 19th-century square-headed Perpendicular windows in a medieval wall. The first bay, which embraces the tower, serves as a vestry and contains a two-light window and a doorway with continuous moulding, above which a medieval grave slab has been inserted into the wall. The porch is located in the second bay, with remaining bays featuring three-light windows and a blocked 13th-century doorway with continuous chamfer. The 14th-century porch has diagonal buttresses and a continuous moulded doorway with a niche above.

The south aisle has a freestone parapet and a 19th-century porch in the first bay with a shafted entrance featuring foliage capitals. It contains more conventional Decorated windows, beginning with three narrow two-light windows before stepping up to three larger three-light windows with reticulated tracery. At the east end is a smaller square-headed two-light window and a four-light Perpendicular east window. The chancel has Perpendicular windows including a five-light east window and a two-light south window, with diagonal buttresses. The north vestry is two-storey, with a shouldered lintel to a doorway below a two-light Decorated window.

Interior

The north porch features a keeled tunnel vault with curious crossed ribs. The north-aisle doorway has nook shafts. The high tower arch is composed of two orders of chamfer dying into the imposts, dating to 1399.

The first bay of the nave arcades contains late 12th-century work. The responds are semi-circular, with a concave capital on the north and a scalloped capital on the south. The north side has a pointed stepped arch and a round pier with concave capital and square abacus. The south side has a pointed double-chamfered arch, possibly a 13th-century alteration, and a large square pier with nook shafts and bowl capitals, which on the east side are carved with animals. The remainder of the arcades are Scott's work, comprising four higher bays with quatrefoil piers, waterleaf capitals and moulded stepped arches.

The nave has an open keeled wagon roof with main trusses on corbelled shafts. The aisles have lean-to roofs on corbelled brackets. Another row of corbels in the aisle supported galleries, which were added by Scott and removed in 1921. The south aisle contains a blocked doorway with continuous ovolo moulding.

The high chancel arch has an inner order on corbelled shafts and an outer order on keeled shafts with leaf capitals and square abaci. The chancel has a keeled wagon roof on corbels, with moulded and embossed ribs and X-shaped ribs in each panel. The roof is painted above the sanctuary. A sedillum with hood mould featuring head and flower stops appears to be 14th-century. Arches to the north vestry and south chapel are subdivided in a manner typical of Scott's work, each with a central round pier, foliage capitals and a cusped circle in the spandrel.

The south aisle chapel, dedicated to the Green Howards Regiment, is at a lower level accessed by steps. It contains restored 14th-century sedilia with continuous ovolo mouldings and a cusped piscina. The arch from the south aisle has semi-circular responds and foliage capitals. Walls are plastered, and in the chapel is a fragment of an angel from a 15th-century Annunciation wall painting.

The nave and aisles have a tile floor with raised floorboards below the pews and a 20th-century raised floor at the east end. The chapel has a stone floor incorporating marble inlay dated 1875, and the chancel has marble tiles.

Principal Fixtures

The octagonal font is part of the 1399 rebuilding and is a distinguished work of Teesdale marble, with shields around the bowl and an arcaded stem. The well-carved pyramidal cover is 17th-century.

19th-century pews have blind arcaded frontals and shaped ends with quatrefoils. The Gothic wooden pulpit is by Thompson of Kilburn. In the choir stalls, the front row with poppy heads and Gothic detailing is 19th-century. The rear row, which has moulded arm rests below a canopy with an inscription, was made around 1511 and was brought from nearby Easby Abbey. There are 16 misericords, including pigs playing bagpipes (as found at Beverley Minster and Ripon Cathedral), together with heads, animals and foliage.

The reredos dates to 1947 and is a triptych with painted panels by Josef Heu, an Austrian refugee, showing Christ and saints, in a Gothic frame by Thompson of Kilburn. Wood panelling in the tower base is 1928.

The most important memorial is a wall monument in the south wall of the chancel to Timothy Hutton (died 1629) and his wife Elizabeth. The deceased are shown at prayer above a row of eight weepers and four swaddled infants representing their children, each with an inscription and a separate coat of arms. There are several other 18th and 19th-century monuments, and the south chapel has Gothic memorial panels.

There are stained-glass windows of the 1860s, including the east window attributed to O'Connor, and a 2008 semi-abstract window by Alan Davies.

History

The parish church was begun in the late 12th century, evidenced by the arcading in the nave. The church was much enlarged in the 13th century, of which the north-aisle doorway remains. It was the principal parish church of the town, although it stood outside the town walls when they were constructed in the 14th century. The north porch dates to the 14th century, as do the sedilia and piscina in the south chapel. In 1399, the tower was begun by the Earl of Westmorland, and the font is part of this same programme of works. It was evidently a substantial town church, but its pre-19th-century appearance is now difficult to ascertain following the substantial restoration and rebuilding undertaken in 1858-59 by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-78), one of the most successful church architects of the 19th century, responsible for numerous church restorations. He is best known for the Foreign Office in Whitehall (1863-69) and the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station (1869-72).