Church of St Mary

Church of St Mary

A parish church comprising a nave and chancel with a small west tower and south porch. The structure is built primarily of local axe-dressed conglomerate sandstone, with dressed stone reserved for windows and doors. The north and south windows of the nave and its coped gables are of sandstone, while the windows and coped gable of the chancel are in oolitic limestone. Roofs are of slate with tile ridges covering the nave, chancel and tower. The tower is low with a transverse saddleback roof without parapets. It features single slit belfry lights to north and south and a round chimney.

The east window is in Decorated style, containing two cinquefoil main lights and a quatrefoil top light with a label-mould terminating in carved heads. The chancel has broad trefoil-headed lancet windows to north and south. A low-side-window in the south wall of the chancel is a re-opened mediaeval window with a slight ogee point. The nave windows, three to the north and five to the south, are all broad featureless lancets.

The porch has a plain half-round outer arch. The inner doorway is the special architectural feature: a two-order arch with the inner order plain except for a jamb chamfer with decorative upper stops. The outer order is decorated with two bands of outward-pointing chevrons and nook-shafts with carved caps. There is some misfitting at the crown of the chevron arch. The label-mould is decorated with dogtooth and has a small oval carved head, now slightly left of centre, with carved heads as terminals. The left terminal head is more worn; the right head is larger and may be later. A finger sundial is carved in the abacus of the left cap.

Interior: The chancel and nave lack aisles and are entered by the south porch. The porch floor and nave are laid with quarry tiles, with wood blocks under the pews. The nave roof is a 19th-century structure of nine bays with low collar beam trusses and a boarded soffit to the rafters. Internal walls are plastered except for the west wall, where a rough opening to the tower survives at high level, now walled up. The chancel arch is equilateral-pointed and chamfered on each side. A carved Gothic oak pulpit with a stone plinth and three steps stands at the right.

Two steps lead up to the chancel, which has a quarry tiled floor incorporating some glazed encaustic tiles. The chancel roof is of three bays with high collar beams and arch braces, boarded soffit between the rafters. The altar stands slightly forward from a carved Gothic oak reredos. Round altar rails on brass standards, the altar and rails donated by Miss Talbot in 1891, flank the altar. Carved Gothic choirstalls are present. Beneath the south window is a trefoil-headed recess, possibly a piscina with the bowl missing, or an aumbry.

The stained glass throughout the nave and in the east window is 20th century. The two-light east window, dating to 1948 and created by Celtic Studios, depicts the Annunciation. The re-opened low-side-window is glazed in plain Cathedral glass of yellow tint, while the main side windows of the chancel are in clear glass.

A mediaeval font stands near the south door: a slightly tapering cube on a very short round pillar with a square plinth and a 19th-century lower plinth and step, showing rough tooling marks.

Monuments: A bronze plaque on the north side of the chancel commemorates Rev J P Lewis (Rector 1855–98), under whose tenure most of the church restoration took place, and his wife Rebecca. On the north side of the nave are two tablets: to the left, a white marble tablet to Signalman Gibbs, who died in action in 1918; and to the right, a tablet to Edgar Evans, RN, who died in 1912 on Captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole, carved with a representation of his burial scene in Antarctica and created by Brown of Swansea.