Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary, Donyatt

Anglican parish church, substantially rebuilt in the 15th century on the site of an earlier church. The building is constructed of ham stone with some grey lias, cut and squared with ashlar dressings, and has sheet lead roofs behind battlemented parapets.

The church follows a four-cell plan comprising a 2-bay chancel, a 4-bay nave, 5-bay north and south aisles, a south porch, and a west tower.

The chancel features a double plinth, a string course with gargoyles, moulded battlemented parapets, and angled corner buttresses. The east window is a 4-light design in an early pattern with sub-arcuated form and cusped transome set in a hollowed recess without label. Single 3-light windows with transomes matching this pattern appear on the north and south sides, though the tracery may be slightly later in date.

The north aisle appears to be a later 15th-century addition. It has plinths with a string that steps up for the eastern bay, and a plain parapet with simple coping. Angled corner buttresses and one buttress between bays 3 and 4 are present. The east window is possibly 16th-century, a wide 4-light under a 4-centred arch with tracery set in a hollowed recess. Side windows are 3-light with 2-centre arches. A blocked moulded pointed arched doorway occurs at bay 4. The west window matches the side windows but cuts into the tower stair turret.

The south aisle matches the chancel in its details, with angled corner and bay buttresses. The east window matches that of the north aisle, as do three of the south-side windows. The westernmost south-side window has different 15th-century tracery, while the easternmost window matches the three on the flank. The south porch is apparently contemporary with the aisle, with a flat roof behind a battlemented parapet and no buttresses. It features moulded pointed outer and inner arches, bench seats, and a ceiling that is a 19th-century restoration.

The nave is now visible only as a clerestorey beneath battlemented parapets, with 3-light flat-arched windows having 4-centre-arched lights in hollow-chamfered reveals.

The tower rises in three stages. It has a double plinth, string courses, and the upper stage features gargoyles. The battlemented parapet has panelled bases for pinnacles at the corners and centres, the latter set diagonally. Full-height offset pairs of corner buttresses are present. The north-eastern stair turret, which is slightly taller than the main tower, is square at the base and broaches into an octagonal plan during the second stage, crowned with a weathervane and fitted with thin slit windows. The west door is in a moulded pointed archway with a label continued from the upper plinth mould. Above this is a 4-light sub-arcuated traceried window. The second stage has a small cinquefoil-cusped window in a rectangular recess on the west face. The north face is plain at stages 1 and 2, while the south face has a clockface and a 2-light window at stage 2. All sides of stage 3 have 2-light 15th-century traceried and transomed windows with pierced stone baffles.

Inside, the chancel has a moulded rib and boarded ceiling with leaf bosses incorporating some early fragments. The arches into the side chapels have circular shafts with hollows, and the capitals display stiff-leaf decoration. The nave and aisle roofs are almost entirely 19th-century, but the arcades are 15th-century. The chancel arch extends to the full width and almost full height of the ceiling and has foliated capitals, which also appear on the first jambs of the nave arcade. A tall panelled tower arch is present.

The fittings are mostly 19th-century, but the restoration was discreet. They include a credence table of around 1700; a fine early 17th-century panelled octagonal timber pulpit with pairs of quasi-Ionic pilasters at each angle set on a stone base probably of 19th-century date; a low octagonal font with quatrefoil panels on each face and a simple base (15th-century in style but possibly 19th-century); some nave pews incorporating 15th and 16th-century bench ends from the nearby manor chapel, now demolished; a screen to the tower arch incorporating some 15th-century work, though parts are clumsily reversed; a holy water stoup on the jamb of the east arcade bay in the north aisle, and another outside the west door; and a preserved 18th-century clarinet in the south aisle. A memorial tablet to Revd. Charles Campbell, Rector, who died in 1746, is present. The first recorded rector dates to 1255.