Church of St Mary the Virgin is a Grade II* listed building in the Somerset local planning authority area, England. First listed on 29 March 1963. A Medieval Church.
Church of St Mary the Virgin
- WRENN ID
- keen-wicket-kestrel
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- Somerset
- Constituency
- Bridgwater MP: Sir Ashley Fox (Con)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 29 March 1963
- Type
- Church
- Period
- Medieval
- Address
- Church of St Mary the Virgin, Nether Stowey
- OS grid reference
- ST 196 396
- Coordinates
- 51.15032, -3.14983
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of St Mary the Virgin is a parish church located in Nether Stowey. The church features a 15th-century tower, while the rest of the building was rebuilt in 1851 by architects Richard Carver and Charles Edmund Giles, with the work carried out by W M Shewbrooks of Taunton. The structure is made from coursed and squared red sandstone rubble with freestone dressings, and it has slate and asbestos slate roofs with coped verges topped with cruciform finials. The architectural styles represented are Perpendicular and Decorated.
The church includes a nave with a south porch and north and south aisles, as well as a chancel that has a north vestry. The west tower is an embattled three-stage structure featuring diagonal buttresses, corner pinnacles, an embattled stair-turret, prominent gargoyles, and two-light bell-chamber windows. Inside, there is a four-bay nave with arcading and a two-bay chancel, both featuring two-light windows. The south aisle has a parapet and the east and west windows are three-light.
The interior is plastered, with an arch-braced roof in the nave and north aisle, a lean-to roof in the south aisle, and a plastered wagon roof in the chancel. Notable features include a restored octagonal font from the 15th century and two brackets in the chancel that display bishops' mitres, commemorating two vicars who became bishops, likely from the late 18th century. There is also a royal coat of arms dating to around 1710. The church contains four 18th-century tablets, one in the north aisle with a pediment, and six 19th-century tablets, including one near the south doorway dedicated to Thomas Poole from 1837. The church features much 19th-century stained glass, particularly the east window depicting the Ascension from 1886 by Ward and Hughes and the north aisle window showing the Good Samaritan from 1893. A tablet commemorating the rebuild is located adjacent to the tower arch.
Local climate
Church of St Mary the Virgin receives an average of 870 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 63% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 73% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 24 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 75% of listed buildings. Of these, 9 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
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