Listed Building: Church of St. Mary (1372364)

Parish church. C12 origin, enlarged and tower added C13, C15 alterations and porch, tower and spire rebuilt and church restored 1864-8 by Slater and Carpenter, porch restored and organ chamber and vestry constructed 1882, "chapter house" added C20. Coursed limestone rubble with some ironstone banding and ashlar dressings and spire. Steeply-pitched C19 graduated stone slate roof to chancel, other roofs concealed by parapets and not visible (though probably of lead). Aisled nave, chancel, west tower and spire, north porch. Tower has setback buttresses at north-west angle and a castellated stair-turret at south-west angle. Doorways to north and south. Plinth. Moulded set-offs beneath triple arcade, blind to north and south and to west at a lower level and containing a single central lancet, and beneath paired 2-light Decorated bell-openings to each side (the tracery apparently an addition). Castellated parapet with grotesque spout-heads. Recessed octagonal spire with 2 tiers of lucarnes on the cardinal faces, capped by finial. Nave has C19 castellated parapet on moulded eaves (of ironstone to north) and 6 2-light Perpendicular clerestory windows beneath 3-centred hoods. Aisles have plain parapets, and 3 3-light Perpendicular windows with 4-centred heads, linked by cill bands. North aisle has a buttress at the east end. South aisle has plinth and 4 buttresses and a richly-moulded round-headed doorway with a low-level relieving arch (raised by a buttress) to the right of it. Chancel has buttresses, plinth and cill-bands, C19 moulded eaves, coped gables and cross finial. 3 attenuated late C13 windows to north and south, of 2 trefoiled lights, with pointed trefoils and cusped circles in the heads, and a C19 5-light "Decorated" east window designed to correspond. Projecting C19 organ chamber of ironstone with limestone dressings to north and a matching vestry to south now linked to the C20 octagonal "chapter house". Gabled north porch has plinth, string course diagonal buttresses, parapet with gargoyles at the angles and a niche (now containing a statue of the Virgin and Child, presented in 1928) above the moulded pointed-arched doorway. The inner north doorway is chamfered, with a simple hood and heavily studded double doors dated 1510 and inscribed with the names of "Ihon Campyon and Ihean bys wyf". Interior: the 6.5 bay nave arcade shows evidence of 3 main buildings phases. From the C12 are the 3 western piers of the south aisle, circular in plan with ironstone bands and scalloped capitals carrying abaci, and round arches, progressively more richly moulded towards the east: the westernmost with plain arches and abacus, then a roll-moulded and then a zig-zag arch on abaci with incised carving on the north face. The third complete arch from the west in the north arcade is also round and roll-moulded, and carried on a square pier with nook-shafts, which suggests a C12 transeptal chapel. In the early C13, a north arcade was created, with pointed, simple-stepped arches on (from west), a circular pier and a square one with 4 attached demi-shafts both with stiff-leaf capitals. Later in the C13, the tower was built encroaching upon the westernmost bay of the nave, which was then extended by 3 bays to the east, with double-chamfered arches on quatrefoil piers. The lofty tower arch is triple-chamfered with responds in the form of clustered shafts with ironstone banding, the chancel arch double-chamfered and plainer. The roofs to nave and aisles are Perpendicular (though restored), with cambered tie-beams, carved bosses and, to the north aisle, arch-braces carried on corbels. The chancel roof is C19. The church contains wall-paintings of 2 periods - fragment of a C14 cycle of St. Catherine on the north aisle wall, and late C16 figures representing the tubes of Israel, in scrolled cartouches, in the spandrels of the nave arcade. C19 stained glass. Traceried Perpendicular screen, restored. Plain octagonal Perpendicular font and, in the porch, an earlier font retrieved this century from the Rectory garden. Brass of Margaret Bacon, d.1626, and baby, in tall stone frame surmounted by 3 obelisks, in south aisle. Fragments of 2 other brasses - one to the Boyvill family (nine daughters and a shield remain). at the east end of the nave, and in the chancel another shield, probably part of a monument to Edmund Bacon, d.1626. (Buildings of England: Northamptonshire, pp.131-2; V.C.H.: Vol.III, pp.183-5; Architectural Notices of the Churches of Archdeaconry of Northampton, 1849).

Record last edited

Apr 5 2022 9:30AM