Priory Church of St Mary

Priory Church of St Mary

This is a priory church with masonry dating mainly from the Norman and Perpendicular periods. The building comprises a nave, a wide north aisle, west and north porches, a crossing tower, and a northeast vestry wing. It is built of stone rubble with small-scale ashlar dressings, ashlar porches and buttresses, and slate roofs with moulded apex stones. The main approach is from the northwest.

The west elevation shows the stepped but nearly equal-width separately gabled west fronts of the nave and north aisle, both with 19th-century four-light Perpendicular-style windows and diagonal buttresses to the corners. The north aisle is shorter, and in the angle between the two units stands one of two late medieval porches. This porch has a quatrefoil parapet and a moulded pointed arch decorated with crockets and flanked by small crocketed turrets, with a moulded cornice, gargoyles to the sides, angled corner buttresses with offsets, and stepped coping. Inside the porch is a two-bay lierne vault and an inner doorway with a pointed moulded arch set in a square frame with cusped spandrels. A niche with a holy water stoup sits to one side, with a crocketed niche and figure above; stone benches and slender half-round attached columns occupy each corner.

The north elevation features three similar Perpendicular-style windows to the nave, a projecting continuous plinth course, and stepped buttresses. A similar north porch has a moulded pointed arched doorway with crockets and a parapet with deep cross-moulded panels and a central heraldic panel over the doorway apex, with a carved head above. Gargoyles flank the sides, and the stepped buttresses create a more uneven profile than at the west.

The tower forms the east end of the church, with the steep gabled rooflines of the former transepts and chancel clearly visible. It has four storeys with an embattled and corbelled parapet and a round stair turret at the northwest corner; the storeys are separated by string-courses. The ringing chamber has near-round-arched paired louvred lights; the tower chamber below has a single Norman plain two-ordered arch; single round-arched lights appear within the former priory roof-space. The former east Norman arch to the crossing was infilled with three stepped lancets to form the current east window. A single-storey vestry was added at the northeast. The south elevation onto The Priory is not easily accessible. The nave has three windows similar to those on the north, a flat pilaster buttress, and a long southwest lancet.

The interior has unrendered stone rubble walls and ashlar piers. The boarded 19th-century ribbed roofs have embattled wallplates on a corble table; gilded bosses ornament the north aisle, and carved angels sit above the chancel screen. The north arcade has circular piers with moulded bases and moulded caps and two orders of chamfered pointed arches; the east freestanding pier has four slender attached shafts. Across the chancel and aisle runs a Perpendicular screen comprising 19 bays in all, with deep traceried openings, slender mullions, ribbed coving, and a rood beam with four bands of decoration, formerly supporting the rood loft. The screen has open cusped tracery below the middle rail to the nave, unlike the more usual wainscot; the arched doorways are two bays wide. It rests on a later panelled dark wood base. The nave screen was coloured by Halliday around 1900 and has an inscription to the middle rail; the north aisle screen is dark-stained with no crest or middle rail. A 15th-century brass attached to the chancel screen commemorates Adam of Usk, who died in 1430 and was a chronicler of the town and benefactor of the Priory. A panelled pulpit, the remains of a three-decker with turned balusters to the stairs, stands at the southeast nave, with a medieval parish chest adjacent. A fine mid-19th-century brass lectern is present, along with plain pews. The font, dated to the 12th century, stands at the northwest and is deep and square with chamfered angles on a stem with four attached shafts. The chancel is the former east bay of the nave. Adjacent to the northeast pier is the lower section of the circular staircase tower. In the nave is a Norman upper window into the former crossing. This is now the east end with a sanctuary division, one step up, just below the clustered east piers. These consist of originally triple half-round columns with scallop capitals and plain stepped imposts which support two orders of arches with small-scale zigzag band and roll moulding to the east arch; blockings have reduced the triples to pairs except at the unaltered east. A plain painted cross-rib vault spans the space. An aumbry sits in the angle at the southeast. An arched door to the vestry opens in the north sanctuary wall. Laudian altar rails with turned balusters are present. At the east end of the north aisle, behind the screen, stands a fine organ with polychrome pipes, some suspended horizontally like trumpets, with a timber case featuring pierced quatrefoils and other enrichments and an inscription from the Benedicite.

Stained glass is present at several locations: the west nave has an Ascension by Joseph Bell from 1886 commemorating the abolition of the town corporation; the chancel south has scenes of St Mary Magdalene also by Bell from 1889; the east chancel contains Christ, Virgin and St John, attributed to Percy Bacon from 1913; and the south nave has the Good Samaritan by RJ Newbery from 1925. At the southwest is a black painted wooden board with gold design recording the seating of 1726. A fine group of 18th- to early 19th-century black and grey marble monuments in Neo-Classical style is arranged on the west wall, some signed by Tyley of Bristol. The most notable is the central Prothero monument, which depicts a weeping willow and a falling column on a chest tomb with an oval plaque bearing added inscriptions. A 17th-century gravestone to Walter Jones also stands on the west wall of the north aisle.