Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a building of significant group value, dating back to the 14th century, with additions and alterations made in the 15th and 16th centuries, and a restoration in 1857 by G Fowler Jones. The church is constructed of rubble with ashlar dressings, and has a Westmorland slate roof. It comprises a late 16th-century west tower, a three-bay nave with aisles, a south porch, a north chapel, and a three-bay chancel with an organ chamber and vestry to the north.

The west tower has three stages, with diagonal buttresses to the west and a stair turret in the south-east corner featuring light vents. The ground-floor west window has three trefoil-headed lights set within a semicircular head with tracery in the spandrels, a label with head stops, and double-chamfered jambs. Light vents are visible in the north, west and south of the ringing chamber. A clock is situated to the west. The belfry openings have crossed cinquefoil-headed lights with continuous decorated lintels, hood-moulds, and ashlar battlements displaying coats of arms.

The 19th-century south porch has a gabled shape and a doorway of two chamfered orders; the inner doorway is from the 14th century, featuring a pointed arch, chamfered label with large smiling heads on stops. Aisle windows are 19th-century, consisting of two-light openings with cinquefoil heads under segmental arches. The flat-headed east window of the chancel is 3-light with reticulated tracery. Clerestory windows are 19th-century paired lights. The 15th-century chancel has a 17th-century chamfered, quoined, flat-headed priest's door flanked by flat-headed three-light cinquefoiled windows. The 19th-century east window is a three-light design with reticulated tracery. The vestry has a hollow-chamfered, flat-headed single-light east window. Exterior features include 19th-century kneelers, coping, and gable crosses.

The interior features an early 14th-century three-bay south arcade with double-chamfered pointed arches on circular columns, with heads carved on the responds. A 19th-century north arcade provides four bays, matching the south arcade's design. A double-chamfered chancel arch, also from the 19th century, is present. The tall, double-chamfered tower arch has an inner arch supported by angular responds, and a ribbed vault covers the ringing chamber. The 15th-century north vestry contains four chamfered ribs forming half of a pointed arch, and a hollow-chamfered doorway with a basket arch leading to the chancel. An early 14th-century trefoiled piscina is located in the south aisle. The sanctuary contains encaustic wall tiles by Eden Nesfield, dating to 1877, and similar tiling can be found in the Carpenter chapel, which includes bas relief plasterwork of 1905 depicting agricultural and maritime scenes. Embedded in the south wall's west end are parts of four medieval tomb slabs with elaborate crosses. Beside the pulpit is a fragment of an Anglo-Danish cross-shaft with rope moulding, and a 16th-century parish chest is situated at the west end of the nave. Monuments include a large black marble tablet on the south wall, erected after 1743 to commemorate the death of Henry Jenkins in 1670; a tablet on the north wall of the sanctuary honoring Rev John Noble, the first headmaster of Scorton Grammar School, who died in 1767, with a frieze of books and a bust flanked by distraught cherubs; a tablet on the north aisle wall commemorating John Wastell of Scorton, Master in Chancery, who died in 1659, and his family; and several monuments dedicated to the Crowe family of Kiplin, including one for Robert Crowe, who died in 1818, created by Taylor of York.