Church of St Mary the Virgin

Details

RUFFORD CHURCH ROAD SD 41 NE 7/6 Church of St. Mary the Virgin 11.10.1968

GV II Parish Church, 1869 by Dawson and Davies (Pevsner). Red brick with bands and dressings of sandstone and blue brick, slate roof with red ridge tiles. Nave with north and south aisles, north-west steeple, chancel with north chapel and south vestry. Gothic style. Buttressed west front with prominent steeple to left of gable; gable wall mostly filled by three 2-centred arched windows of 2, 3 and 2 lights, in a stepped group, each with a plate-traceried multifoil in the head, banded head and linked hoodmoulds; below the middle window a gabled porch with 2-centred arched inner and outer doorways, the outer heavily decorated, with shafts rising into deep impost bands of stiff-leaf carving, and a moulded sandstone head with banded extrados, apex stone inscribed 'M', and stone gable coping. Steeple has arched doorway at ground floor, chamfered stone weathering at the level of the eaves, with a clock face under a hood on the west side, set-back belfry stage with large plate-traceried belfry windows, the arched heads springing from stiff-leaf carved impost bands, and rising into gablets on each side of a steep pyramidal spire of stone. South side of 5-bay nave has buttressed lean-to aisle, in the 1st bay a 2-centred arched doorway with banded head and stone hoodmould, in the other bays small arched windows alternately single and coupled, with banded heads, and 5 trefoil clerestory windows; vestry projects, and has a chimney rising through the eaves at the junction of nave and chancel. Chancel has plate-traceried 3-light east window with a multifoil in the head; chapel has similar 2-light window. Interior: 5-bay arcades of squat sandstone columns with very large Romanesque-style capitals carved with differing forms of stiff-leaf foliation enlivened by naturalistic figures, (e.g. pheasants, a sower, a squirrel); 2-centred arches with flat soffits and moulded extradoses; arch-braced scissor-beam roof; 2 tier brass chandelier (dated 1763); marbled reredos, pulpit, and font; various monuments, mostly from previous chapel and church on this site, including: a small brass of a knight, Sir Robert Hesketh (d.1541) (on north wall of chapel); a large monumental slab of alabaster portraying Thomas Hesketh of Rufford (d.1463) and Margaret his wife, with their children and Hesketh coat of arms at their feet, and lettering round the margin including names; a large table monument with effigy of Sir Thomas George Fermor Hesketh (d.1872) by Matthew Noble; at east end of south aisle a wall monument to Lady Sophia Hesketh (d.1817), by Flaxman, copiously lettered, and on north wall a tablet to Sir Thomas Hesketh (d.1778), with a verse by the poet Cowper. History: replaced Hesketh Chapel recorded in 1346 and rebuilt in 1746. References: VCH Lancs VI; Pevsner; Rev.W.G. Procter, "The Manor of Rufford and the Ancient Family of the Heskeths" Hist.Soc.Lancs. and Cheshire, 23, 1907, pp.91-118.

Listing NGR: SD4641715695

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

357708

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Farrer, W, Brownbill, J, The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster, (1906)
Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: North Lancashire, (1969)
Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire in Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Vol. 23, (1907), 91-118

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