CHURCH OF ST MARY

CHURCH OF ST MARY, LONDON ROAD

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1272880
Date first listed:: 10-Sep-1954
List Entry Name:: CHURCH OF ST MARY
Statutory Address:: CHURCH OF ST MARY, LONDON ROAD

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Date:: 2001-05-30
Reference:: IOE01/04285/14
Rights:: © Mr Brian Phillips. Source: Historic England Archive

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1272880
Date first listed:: 10-Sep-1954
List Entry Name:: CHURCH OF ST MARY
Statutory Address 1:: CHURCH OF ST MARY, LONDON ROAD

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: CHURCH OF ST MARY, LONDON ROAD

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Kent
District:: Sevenoaks (District Authority)
Parish:: Riverhead
National Grid Reference:: TQ 51483 56117

Details

RIVERHEAD

771/25/969 LONDON ROAD 10-SEP-54 (East side) CHURCH OF ST MARY

II

Church, 1831 by Decimus Burton in Early English style. Extended by Sir Arthur William Blomfield in 1882.

MATERIALS: Galleted stone rubble with ashlar buttresses; slate roof largely concealed by parapets.

PLAN: W tower, wide nave, chancel with transeptal NE chapel and SE vestry, SE porch.

EXTERIOR: 3-stage W tower with diagonal buttresses, an embattled parapet, large pinnacles and a tall copper-covered spire. Moulded C13 style W doorway, clock face in stone recess, large lancet windows to belfry. The nave has large lancet windows, buttresses with set-offs and a plain parapet above a moulded cornice. The W walls of the nave also have large lancet windows and a plain parapet. The E part of the church by Blomfield is remarkably sympathetic to Burton's nave in both materials and form with pilaster buttresses, plain parapets and windows in the Early English style.

INTERIOR: Very wide nave with a shallow plaster rib vault. Internal triple W arch to W end gallery, decorated with shafts with leafy capitals and continuous hoodmould. Blind traceried gallery frontal, the central section projecting on miniature vaults. Internally the architecture of the Blomfield E end is High Victorian although the decoration is surprisingly late in date. Full-height traceried openings to N and S sides of the chancel which has an encaustic tiled floor. The E end triple lancet is decorated with carved spandrels and marble shafts which extend down to divide the cusped stone panels of the reredos. Panels enriched with scenes in mosaic. The central panel is 1894 by Salviati, the rest of the sanctuary decoration is 1910-1917 by Powell's. Late C19 timber drum pulpit with blind traceried panels and a pierced parapet. Font with a circular bowl with large-scale stiff-leaf carving and blind ogee arches on a stem with corner shafts. C19 square-headed nave benches with recessed panels and choir stalls with poppyhead finials. East window, 1905, by Kempe.

HISTORY: St Mary's, prominently sited high above a square at the junction of busy roads with a long flight of steps up to the west tower, was built in 1831 to the designs of Decimus Burton with the chancel and chapels added in 1882 to the designs of Sir Arthur Blomfield. The church originally served as a Chapel-of-Ease to St Nicholas Church, Sevenoaks but by 1864 Riverhead was made an ecclesiastical parish in its own right. SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: St Mary's warrants listing in Grade II for its special architectural interest as an 1831 church by Decimus Burton in the Late Georgian 'lancet' style, executed in characteristic local materials. The later phase by Blomfield shows how Victorian church design developed, while the early C20 fixtures in the chancel are of good quality too.

SOURCES: Pevsner, West Kent and the Weald, 1980 edn., 469. Parish Guide: St Mary's, Riverhead and St John's, Dunton Green, n.d. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Burton, Decimus (1800-1881), Architect: Dana Arnold. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Blomfield, Sir Arthur William (1829-1899), Architect: Paul Waterhouse, rev. John Elliott.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:: 446984
Legacy System:: LBS

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.