Church Of St Mary The Virgin

Church of St Mary the Virgin

This is an Anglican parish church of the 14th and 15th centuries, built primarily in ham stone with ashlar work and some rubble. The church has Welsh slate roofs with stone ridges between coped gables, and a lead sheet roof to the south aisle.

The building comprises a six-unit plan: a 2-bay chancel, a 4-bay nave, north and south aisles, a north porch, and a west tower.

The chancel dates probably to the 15th century and features a plinth and angled corner buttresses. The east window is a 3-light pointed-arched design with Perpendicular tracery set in a shallow moulded recess. On the north and south sides are two 2-light late 15th-century flat-arched windows with cinquefoil cusped lights and incised spandrels, without labels. Between the north windows is a narrow pointed-arched doorway.

The north transept belongs to the early 14th century and has angled corner buttresses. A pointed-arched doorway on the east side is now blocked. The north gable contains a 3-light window with Geometric tracery, and a thin lancet appears on the west return.

The south transept is also early 14th century, with paired corner buttresses. It has a single lancet in the east wall and a fine Geometric-traceried 3-light south window. The west wall is plain but features corbel carving to the kneeler stone.

The south aisle dates to the 15th century and has a plinth, a string course with gargoyles, and battlemented parapets. Two 3-light 15th-century traceried windows sit in hollowed pointed-arched recesses, with a blocked pointed-arched doorway between them. The west wall has no window.

The north aisle is narrower, occurring under a continuation of the main roof and probably dating to the 15th century. It has a plinth and two windows: the east is 2-light and the west is 3-light, both matching those of the south aisle. The north porch features a moulded pointed outer arch with a matching inner arch, bench seats, and a 19th-century roof.

The tower is four-staged and dates to the 15th century. It has a double plinth and angled corner buttresses rising to full height. To the north-west corner is a taller octagonal-plan stair turret. String courses and a battlemented parapet complete the exterior. The west face displays a 4-centre-arched doorway in a rectangular hollowed recess with foliated spandrels and a square-stop label above. Above this is a west window of 4-light sub-arcuated 15th-century tracery, set in a hollow arched recess with a square-stop label protruding into the second stage. To the south side, the third stage has a 3-light window, and the fourth stage has similar 3-light windows on all faces, each with ornamental pierced stone baffles.

The interior is not accessible, but rere-arches to the transept windows have been reported, with that of the north transept featuring side shafts to the jambs. The arcades consist of 4-column shafts with hollows, thin piers, and wide arches, with no clerestorey.

Fittings include a 14th-century piscina with shelf in the north transept and a richly decorated statue niche in the east wall. Other fittings are presumed to be 19th century.

The monuments include two defaced effigies on the floor of the south transept: a civilian of circa 1350 and a knight in armour of circa 1375. The tomb of Sir George Speke, who died in 1583, was likely made some 25 years earlier. It is executed in flamboyant Perpendicular rather than Renaissance style, with a tomb chest bearing shields and polygonal side shafts with twisted chimney-like finials. A similar finial crowns the 4-centred arch, which is panelled with pendants and features pierced tracery side panels and a decorated shield to the rear. There is also a monument to John Hanning, died 1807, by J. Richards of Exeter, which includes a kneeling woman figure by an urn.

The east window was made by Kempe in 1896.