Church Of St Mary The Virgin

Church of St Mary the Virgin

An Anglican parish church of 13th-century origins, substantially rebuilt around 1500–1510, with restoration work by Henry Wilson in 1894 and 1904. The building is constructed in Ham stone ashlar with a stone slate roof, featuring stepped coped gables with cross finials behind parapets.

The church follows a four-cell plan comprising a two-bay chancel, four-bay nave, and five-bay aisles that flank the chancel at the east end, with a west tower and south porch. The roof runs continuously over the nave and aisles.

The chancel has a double plinth, low plain parapet with string and moulded coping, and angled corner buttresses. Its east window is a four-light design with sub-arcuated tracery and a traceried transome set in a hollowed arched recess beneath a square-stop label. Small three-light windows matching this pattern occupy the east bay on each side. The south side features a near-triangular arched moulded doorway with carved spandrels beneath an arched label.

The north aisle has a double plinth of slightly greater height, with string and battlemented parapets, angled corner and bay buttresses, and an east window of three lights matching that nearby in the chancel. All five side windows are four-light designs with sub-arcuated tracery in hollowed arched recesses with labels; the fourth bay window has a higher cill to accommodate a moulded four-centre arched doorway with arched label, now blocked. The west end is largely obscured by the tower.

The south aisle matches the north aisle but includes an added south porch, possibly of later 16th-century or even 18th-century date. The porch has angled corner buttresses and a stone slab roof over an internal rib vault. Its outer pointed arch displays a full internal order beneath a stilted segmental pointed outer order. Above is a sundial dated 1711, while the inner arch follows 16th-century style moulded pointed design.

The tower, damaged by lightning and fire in 1894 and immediately restored, rises through five stages. It has a double plinth, offset corner buttresses, dividing strings, and a battlemented parapet with paired corner pinnacles extended from the buttresses and central paired pinnacles corbelled off gargoyles. The lowest stage contains a moulded pointed arched west doorway in a rectangular recess with carved spandrels and flanking diagonally set pilasters; the doors were restored and coloured in 1981. Above this is a panel of five quatrefoils. The west window occupies stage two and extends halfway into stage three, featuring a four-light design matching the east end. Stages one, two, and three are plain on their sides except for canopied statue niches set on the south side strings. Small rectangular windows in recesses appear on the north and south faces to the head of stage three, cutting into stage four. Upper stage four and stage five carry tall two-light traceried and transomed windows in hollowed recesses with stone frets of distinctly Art Nouveau character. A hexagonal plan full-height stair turret occupies the north-east corner.

The interior shows apparently little alteration beyond stripping of plaster and repairs following partial collapse of the tower. The chancel is virtually continuous with the nave and features an elliptical vault ceiling with moulded ribs to plaster panels, carved bosses, and small angel corbels. The aisles have angled timber panelled roofs. The chancel arch comprises simple attached full-height sideshafts and an arch following the ceiling profile; the panelled tower arch is also nearly full height. The side arcades employ four-shaft and hollow columns of unusually great height, though the arches off the chancel are lower.

The east wall of the chancel contains two canopied niches and a cusped ogee-arched piscina. A late 19th-century three-panel stone reredos stands at the east end, with a 20th-century altar table and rails. The choir stalls date to the late 19th century, as do the low ironwork open chancel screen and traceried stone screens to the aisles. An 1894 Art Nouveau screen crosses the tower, designed by Wilson, who also created the alabaster font in 1904—a circular tub with twist fluting set on a square base with large fish to each corner and a lid with small tabernacle; this piece is considered magnificent but widely inappropriate to the setting. An earlier plain octagonal font stands by the south aisle screen. All pews are 19th-century.

The church contains three memorial brasses in the tower: to Benjamin Collins (died 1662), Henry Burchall (died 1770), and Elizabeth Burchell (died 1805). Stained glass includes early 16th-century fragments in the tracery, an east window by Wailes (1861), a north chancel window by A.K. Nicholson (1922), an east window to the south chapel by Wilson (1904), and an Art Nouveau style design to the west window.