Church of St Mary

Church of St Mary

A Gothic Revival church of rock-faced stone with Bath stone dressings, comprising an aisled nave with lower chancel, south porch and south-east tower and spire. The roof is slate, behind coped gables on moulded kneelers. Quoins, sill bands and corbel table are in Bath stone.

The four-bay nave is buttressed and features plate-traceried windows with slender hood moulds throughout. The aisles have 2-light windows, while the clerestorey has 3-light windows between shallow full-height buttresses. The nave itself has a higher 3-light window to the west with head stops, and the aisles have similar 2-light western windows.

The south porch is positioned in the bay left of centre and has a 2-centred arch with head stops, double wooden gates leading to a triple-chamfered south doorway with double boarded doors and strap hinges.

The three-stage tower has angle buttresses in the lower two stages with gabled caps. The ringing chamber in the middle stage has two narrow lights under a round plate-tracery light in its west and south faces, with hood mould and head stops. The bell stage is richer, with 2-light openings featuring ringed colonettes, leaf capitals and pointed lights under a continuous hood. An impost band with disc frieze runs beneath the cornice, which has blind arcading. The broach spire is of ashlar with lucarnes in the cardinal directions. A polygonal north-east turret is square at its base, where a boarded door sits under a shouldered lintel. At the top of the turret, at the second stage, are paired narrow round-headed lights in each facet beneath a pyramidal stone roof.

The chancel has angle buttresses and a 3-light plate-tracery east window with head stops. Below the apex is an empty canopied niche on a corbelled grotesque. Stone steps on the north side of the chancel lead to a basement boiler room. The north vestry has a pyramidal slate roof on a moulded cornice and a tall stack above the east wall, its upper portion in ashlar. It contains a 2-pointed east window, a 2-light square-headed north window to the right of which is a boarded door under a shouldered lintel, with nook shafts above the level of a sill band.

The interior nave has four-bay arcades in early French Gothic style with round piers and foliage capitals with square abaci, and a clerestorey sill band. The high 2-centred chancel arch has an inner order on moulded corbels. The nave roof is a crown post structure; the chancel roof comprises closely spaced rafters with scissor braces. A stone screen base with pierced quatrefoils spans the chancel arch. The chancel contains elaborate 13th-century style sedilia with cusped arches on marble shafts and crocketed gables. The chancel south wall has a tall arch to the organ recess at the base of the tower.

A late Gothic style reredos of 1927 by Mowbray & Co occupies the chancel east end, featuring four canopied niches with figures of St David, the Virgin and Child, Mary Magdalene and St Illtyd, flanked by simpler wooden panelling with brattishing.

The polygonal font has marble shafts around the stem and an alabaster bowl. A stone pulpit stands on four squat clustered shafts, each facet having blind arches with diaper infill in low relief. Pews are plain with moulded ends. Choir stalls have open arcaded fronts and moulded ends. A simple brass plaque in the chancel north wall, dated 1914-18, commemorates those fallen in the First World War, by F Osborne & Co of London to the design of Herbert Wauthier.

The east window, depicting the Ascension, is dated 1877 and attributed to Hardman of Birmingham. In the south aisle at the east end is a window depicting Christ teaching, dated around 1958, adjacent to a 1939-45 war memorial window depicting SS Mary and Illtyd, attributed to Powell of London. The centenary west window, dated 1978 by Celtic Studios of Swansea, depicts the Last Judgement. The north aisle contains a window with a naive interpretation of the Creation, dated 2000 by Janet Hardy.