Church of St. Mary

Church of St. Mary

This is a substantial parish church built of differing types of local sandstone: Old Red for the tower and chancel, and grey and pink Buckholt stone for the remainder, with Bath limestone dressings. The stone is coursed and squared throughout, with Welsh slate roofs. The church comprises a nave, side aisles, and chancel, with a west tower positioned against the north aisle.

The church's unusual rectilinear plan results from architect George Gilbert Street being required to reuse the foundations and north and south walls of an earlier church designed by Samuel Smith as an economy measure. The body of the church is laid out in six bays with equal nave and aisles, while the chancel projects one additional bay from the nave.

The tower is built in three stages. The west corners carry diagonal buttresses that rise nearly the full height, while the east corners have large square buttresses extending to the bell stage. These buttresses appear to be Smith of Warwick's work, as they feature in pre-Street representations of the church but do not appear in the 1684 drawing. The ground stage contains only a small west door. The second stage has small pointed windows on all faces except the east. A band runs below the bell stage, which carries a clock face. The bell openings have cusped trefoil heads. The tower is topped with a parapet containing a string course and corner pinnacles, from which rises an octagonal needle spire with trefoil-headed openings facing the four cardinal directions. The spire is crowned with a weathercock finial; the original Wilkinson finial was removed by Street.

The south aisle features a gabled porch with a 2-light window of equal lancets above it. The south side is articulated in six equal bays, each with a 2-light window matching the porch. A cill string and corbel table run along this elevation. Buttresses with offsets articulate the bays, with corner buttresses at each end. The fifth bay contains a door; the sixth bay is constructed in Old Red sandstone. The east end has a 3-light window lighting the south aisle and a circular window to the north aisle. The north aisle gable carries a chimney finial. The north wall comprises five bays similar to the south wall, but the eastern bay is blind and has a lean-to vestry and boiler room built against it. The chancel projects one bay with 2-light windows on both walls. The east gable features a window with five stepped lights and a quatrefoil above it, and is finished with a coped gable and apex cross.

Internally, the church contains a six-bay Early English style nave with steeply pointed arcade and circular columns. Each column has slim Purbeck marble shafts on each face. The east bay serves as the chancel, with the sanctuary beyond. The west nave wall is blind but retains a semi-circular Norman respond with its base exposed, revealing a change in floor level. This is the only visible survivor of the first church that predates the surviving tower and tower arch of the 14th century. The roof is constructed as a king post design with arch-braced collars.

A five-bay chancel screen has been relocated to the west end of the nave at bay one, though the aisle screens remain in their original positions. The font appears to be constructed from disparate medieval pieces. The church contains a full set of furnishings from Street's period, including some fine carving and metalwork. Parclose screens were added by William Douglas Caroe in 1928. Four panels of fine tiles dating to around 1450 are set into the baptistery walls. The church retains late 16th and 17th-century plate.

Eight windows contain glass by the Victorian glazier James Powell Kempe. One window from 1938 is by Canon Bernard Frederick Lockwood Clarke, who was once curate at St. Mary's and later became an important historian of church architecture. The church contains several notable memorials: one to Philip Fisher (1702-76), who is thought to have designed the Shire Hall; one to Lord Llangattock (died 1911) with a portrait bust by William Goscombe John; and one to Joseph Price (died 1796), an early work by the sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott.

The original 14th-century bells were recast in 1706 by the bell-founder Abraham Rudhall and were rehung in 1982 by the Whitechapel Foundry.