Church of St Mary

Details

BUXHALL BRETTENHAM ROAD TM 05 NW

2/23 Church of St. Mary 9.12.55

- I

Parish church, mainly mid C14 in several phases; alterations of 1875 and 1923. Nave, chancel, west tower and south porch; the vestry rebuilt in 1875. Flint rubble, mainly plastered apart from the tower, with freestone dressings. Embattled parapets of red brick with terracotta copings to the nave, and of flint rubble and ashlar elsewhere; parapet gables. Graded riven Lakeland slates to nave roof, Welsh slates to chancel. All the C14 work is of good quality with much moulded stone; the chancel is earliest - of c.1330. Tall 2- light side windows. The east window is of 5 lights with good mouchette tracery. Above the east buttresses are square pinnacles with blank tracery and crocketed gables; each corner has a grotesque carved on the base. Well- moulded north chancel doorway; the vestry doorway is similar. A double piscina has fine crocketed gables and pinnacles and blind tracery; it is linked to a wide dropped-cill sedilia with squinch arches and fragments of a segmental-pointed and traceried arch above it. On the seat is a repositioned C14 tomb slab with cross-shaft. Pointed and shafted chancel arch. Large nave of c.1360 with tall 2-light windows, an ogee-headed piscina and moulded north and south doorways. Outside the south door is an ogee-headed stoup. South porch of late C14 is shafted and hood-moulded, and above is a niche for the image of the Virgin Mary, ogee-headed pinnacled and buttressed. Large late C14 west tower with 3-light west window and grotesque gargoyles. The plinth and buttresses have chequer patterning in flushwork. The ringing chamber floor is original, supported on massive arch braces and corbels carved with grotesques. A rood loft stairway with 2 doorways in the north wall. The chancel roof was rebuilt 1656 as carved with the initials J.H., F.G. and T.C; 5 bays with arch-braced tiebeams and pierced drop-finials at the centre of each. The nave roof was rebuilt 1923 in 6 bays with plain alternating hammerbeam and queenpost trusses; one beam bears the date 1652. Some good stained glass in the chancel windows believed to date from 1410; other glass in the south nave windows. Octagonal mid C14 font; each face of the bowl is gabled and pinnacled and at each corner a buttress rises from a human head. The rim is embattled. Two C19 benches in the chancel have reused poppyhead ends and the fronts have C14 blind tracery. Late C17 altar rails. In the chancel are 3 marble floor slabs, one dated 1692, another 1584. Painted arms of George I.

Listing NGR: TM0030557653

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

279798

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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