Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a church dating from 1866, designed by G Fowler Jones. It is constructed of dressed sandstone with limestone dressings, featuring columns of Mansfield stone, and has a slate roof. The church comprises a south-west tower, a 3-bay nave, a north aisle, a south porch, and an apsidal chancel with a vestry. The four-stage tower has lancet windows in the second stage with nailhead openings. The third stage incorporates roundels with scalloped openings, and the belfry features angle shafts with scalloped capitals and round-arched openings with scalloped pierced louvres, all on Mansfield stone shafts. The tower has string courses and a broad, scalloped cornice beneath a pyramidal spire topped with a cock vane. A buttress is present to the west end, and the west window has two round-arched lights on shafts with scalloped capitals.

The gabled south porch has a round arch with nailhead moulding, supported by Mansfield stone shafts with stiff-leaf capitals, and features diagonally-set carved panels in its gable. It contains round-headed double doors with elaborate wrought-iron hinges. Nave and aisle windows are round-arched, with some incorporating nailhead moulding and hoodmoulds, while a sill string with foliated head stops extends into the tower’s second-stage string course. The 3-bay buttressed apse has a south window of two round-arched lights on scalloped corbels and a central shaft with a water-leaf capital.

The interior features an arcade of double-chamfered round arches on cylindrical Mansfield stone columns with scrolled spurs to their bases and elaborate water-leaf capitals. A continuous hoodmould runs along the arcade, featuring mask and grotesque stops. The chancel arch is of three orders, and the apse dado is decorated with polychrome Minton tiles in a chevron pattern. A carved stone reredos stands on marble colonnettes with scrolled waterleaf capitals, and the roof is supported by curved principals. A heavily carved square font sits on a pedestal and base, covered by wrought ironwork. The church also features a pulpit on squat marble columns, and the apse windows are the work of Capronnier of Brussels.