St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury

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Coordinates: 52°42′31″N 2°45′05″W / 52.7087°N 2.7513°W / 52.7087; -2.7513
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St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury
Style
Norman, Gothic
Specifications
MaterialsSandstone

St Mary's Church is a

Anglican church in St Mary's Place, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building,[1] and is under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, the Trust designated St Mary's as its first Conservation Church in 2015.[2] It is the largest church in Shrewsbury.[3] Clifton-Taylor includes the church in his list of 'best' English parish churches.[4]

Collegiate Church

St Mary's originated as a

bequest was made to the church, further improvements took place, including the construction of a clerestory
on the nave and chancel, which replaced the tower at the crossing and the chancel vault. At this time the transept roofs were reduced in height, a large east window was inserted, and larger windows were added to the aisles. It is possible that the spire was added to the west tower at this time.

Deans of St Mary's College, Shrewsbury

  • Richard c. 1180s
  • Robert of Shrewsbury c. 1186–7 – c. 1200
  • William Lestrange
  • Henry de Loundres 1203–1226
  • Walter of Kirkham 1226
  • Stephen de Lucy 1229
  • William de Houton 1232 – c. 1250
  • William of London 1262
  • Simon of Wycombe 1262–1272
  • John le Faukener 1272
  • William of Dover until 1282
  • Nicholas of Arras 1282 – c. 1286
  • John de Witham ca. 1291–1300
  • John of Kenley 1300 – c. 1305
  • Peter de Shendon 1305–1321
  • Robert of Hampton 1321–1327
  • Nicholas of Ludlow 1327–1341
  • Thomas de Baddeby 1341–1381
  • Richard Bromley 1381 – c. 1402
  • Thomas Standon 1402
  • Hugh Holbache 1407 – c. 1416
  • Thomas Rodbourne 1418–1424
  • John Shipton 1424–1444
  • John Burdett 1444–1449
  • John Launcell 1449
  • John Crecy 1457–1471
  • John Blackwin 1471–1472
  • John Whitmore 1472
  • Robert Reyfield 1498
  • Adam Grafton c. 1509 – 1513
  • Edward Higgins 1513
  • Richard Twyford until 1523
  • William Vaughan 1523–1540
  • Thomas Lloyd 1540
  • William Cureton c. 1548 – 1549

Parish Church

The church escaped any significant damage during the suppression of the college in 1548, or during the Civil War.[6]

The first major restoration was carried out by

Paley and Austin added a vestry to the north of the chancel.[7] Work was performed on the chancel in 1889–92 by A. E. Lloyd Oswell. The top fell from the spire in 1894, causing much damage to the clerestory, and this was repaired by John Oldrid Scott
.

The tower underwent a restoration in 1924–26 by the firm of Lloyd Oswell and Iredale.[6] The church was declared redundant in 1987, and vested in the Churches Conservation Trust.[8][9]

Ministers, ordinaries (officials) of the
Royal Peculiar
, and vicars of St Mary's, Shrewsbury

  • Robert Wylton, minister and ordinary, 1576
  • Edward Bulkeley, minister and ordinary, 1578
  • John Tomkys, minister and ordinary, 1582
  • Thomas Laughton, minister and ordinary, 1592
  • William Bright, minister and ordinary, 1597
  • Samuel Browne, 1618
  • James Betton, minister and ordinary, 1632
  • Presbyterian minister and ordinary, 1646, ejected during the Interregnum 1650 for refusing the Engagement
    .

From 1651 - 1662 no Priest.

Notable Curates

Architecture

Exterior

The plan of the church consists of a four-

embattled pierced parapet, and crocketted pinnacles. There is a stair turret in the northeast corner. The spire is octagonal, and recessed behind the parapet. It carries three tiers of lucarnes.[1][6] The spire is said to be the third tallest in England.[2][6]

The windows in the north and south sides of the aisles and clerestory are Perpendicular. In the west wall of the south aisle is a round-headed lancet window, and in the west end of the north aisle is a pointed-headed window. The south porch is built in Grinshill stone. It is in two storeys, the lower storey being built in the 12th century, and the upper storey added in the 14th century. The upper storey has a two-light transomed window. The outer doorway has a round arch and three orders of shafts; the inner doorway also has a round arch, but with one order. There are small windows in the side walls of the porch. The south transept has a small Norman doorway and three lancet windows on the south side, and single lancet windows in the west side. The Trinity Chapel has four large three-light windows on the south, and a seven-light window on the east side. The east window of the chancel has eight lights. Above the north vestry are three stepped lancet windows. To the east of the north transept is a "complex corner" with a variety of windows. The north transept itself has 12th-century pilaster buttresses, a small north doorway, and lancet windows. The north aisle has Perpendicular windows and a porch. Within the porch is another Norman doorway, with one order of shafts.[11]

Interior

Arcades and furnishings

The nave
The choir, organ, pulpit and stained glass windows

In the opinion of the architectural historians John Newman and

canopied clergy stall of 1897 was designed by C. E. Kempe; it was formerly in the chapel of Shrewsbury School.[13] In 1729 John Harris and John Byfield designed and built a new three-manual organ to replace an earlier organ.[14] This was rebuilt and enlarged in 1847 by Gray and Davison.[15] The present four-manual organ dates from 1912.[16]

Bells

There is a ring of ten bells, eight of which were cast in 1775 by Pack and Chapman at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and the other two in by 1911 by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough.[17]

St Mary's bells are inscribed thus; "We were all fixed here by voluntary subscription, in the year 1775." "Happiness to all worthy contributors." "Success to the Worshipful Company of Drapers." "Unanimity and welfare to all the inhabitants of Salop." "Peace and Felicity to this Church and Nation." "Prosperity to St. Mary's Parish." "E. Blakeway, M.A., Minister, J. Watkins, J. Warren, E. Elsmere, H. Kent, Churchwardens." "May all whom I summon to their grave, enjoy everlasting bliss."

To each inscription is added, "Pack & Chapman, London, Fecit 1775". An old bell from Battlefield, cast by Abraham Rudhall of Gloucester, was hung in a turret at the south-west angle of the chancel as a sanctus bell in 1871. The two treble bells have again been re-cast, and now bear the following inscriptions:- "W. G. Pennyman, Vicar. Edw. Burd [1], Wm. Alltree, A. E. Lloyd Oswell, H. Steward, Churchwardens." "Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be."

Stained glass

The stained glass behind the altar and choir

The stained glass is of various styles dating from the 14th to the 19th centuries, and was brought to St Mary's from elsewhere, much of it from Europe, in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is said that "no other church in the country has a collection to equal it".

Dissolution of the Monasteries, and then to St Mary's in 1792. Although it was much restored in 1858 by David and Charles Evans, much of the original glass remains. This glass is dated between 1327 and 1353. Glass in the north windows of the chancel and the central part of the south aisle were made for the Cistercian Altenberg Abbey between 1505 and 1532. They depict scenes from the life of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, and were bought for St Mary's by Rev W. G. Rowland, the vicar in 1845, at a cost of £425 (£40,000 in 2014).[18] Also in the south aisle are two windows from the church of St Aspern, Cologne. Windows elsewhere consist of part of a collection of 15th-century stained glass bought in 1801 by Sir Brooke Boothby at a cost of £200 (£10,000 in 2014).[18] Some of this came from Trier, and the remainder from the Cistercian nunnery of Herchen. In the south chapel is glass from the church of Saint-Jacques in Liège. Elsewhere there is glass dating from the 16th century of Dutch and Flemish origin. Much of the 19th-century glass is by David and Charles Evans.[19] In March 2007 some of the glass was loaned to the Schnütgen Museum in Cologne for their exhibition of 16th-century German stained glass.[8]

Monuments

Robert Cadman plaque on the tower

These include an inscription on a plaque on the tower to the memory of

Suffragist, is also commemorated on the memorial; she was killed at Monastir in 1917, while nursing Serbian refugees. She was the sister of both Field Marshal Sir John French and the Irish Nationalist Charlotte Despard.[26]

Churchyard

Thomas Anderson, a soldier in the Dragoons was executed, as a deserter and Jacobite sympathizer, near the Butchers' Arbour on Kingsland, Shrewsbury on 11 December 1752. He was the last English martyr for the Stuart cause. The Revd Benjamin Wingfield, in the face of official hostility, allowed Anderson to be buried in St Mary's Churchyard and read the burial service over the grave. The grave is situated in the south-western quarter of the churchyard.[27]

Dr Samuel Butler, headmaster of Shrewsbury School and later Bishop of Lichfield, is buried in the churchyard where his Latin-inscribed tombstone is still visible.

The churchyard contains the plain sandstone war memorial cross to Shrewsbury townsmen who died in the two World Wars, erected 1920 after World War I by the "National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers (Shrewsbury branch)" (predecessor of the British Legion). On corner posts of the stone kerbs are listed battles or campaigns from World War I in which the men died.[28]

See also

Photographs of St Mary's including many of the fine windows

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to St Mary the Virgin, Shrewsbury.

Citations

  1. ^ a b Historic England, "Church of St Mary, Shrewsbury (1344964)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 23 April 2012
  2. ^ a b c d Church of St Mary the Virgin, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Churches Conservation Trust, retrieved 29 March 2011
  3. ^ a b Newman & Pevsner 2006, p. 526
  4. ^ Clifton-Taylor 1974, p. 253
  5. ^ Denton. English Royal Free Chapels p. 122. retrieved 16 April 2014
  6. ^ a b c d e Newman & Pevsner 2006, p. 528.
  7. ^ Newman & Pevsner 2006, p. 529.
  8. ^ a b St. Mary's Church, Shrewsbury, St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, archived from the original on 19 October 2010, retrieved 9 October 2010
  9. ^ Diocese of Lichfield: All Schemes (PDF), Church Commissioners/Statistics, Church of England, 2011, pp. 4–5, retrieved 11 April 2011
  10. ^ Newman & Pevsner 2006, p. 527
  11. ^ Newman & Pevsner 2006, pp. 528–529
  12. ^ Newman & Pevsner 2006, p. 530.
  13. ^ a b Newman & Pevsner 2006, p. 531
  14. National Pipe Organ Register, British Institute of Organ Studies
    , retrieved 1 July 2020
  15. National Pipe Organ Register, British Institute of Organ Studies
    , retrieved 1 July 2020
  16. National Pipe Organ Register, British Institute of Organ Studies
    , retrieved 1 July 2020
  17. ^ Shrewsbury S Mary V, Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers, retrieved 9 October 2010
  18. ^ a b UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
  19. ^ Newman & Pevsner 2006, pp. 530–531
  20. ISBN 978-1-909644-11-3
    .
  21. ISBN 978-0-903802-00-0
    .
  22. ^ Shropshire War Memorials, Sites of Remembrance, p.25.
  23. ^ Newman & Pevsner 2006, pp. 532–533.
  24. ^ According to Peter Francis, evidence for him living in Shrewsbury has not been found. It gives post-nominal initials of DSO and MC, neither of which he received, in addition to his VC.
  25. ^ Shropshire War Memorials, Sites of Remembrance. pp. 185–187.
  26. ^ Shropshire War Memorial, Sites of Remembrance, pp.117,185.
  27. ^ Thomas Phillips, James Bowen, Charles Hulbert,(1837) The History and Antiquities of Shrewsbury: From Its First Foundation to the Present Time, Comprising a Recital of Occurrences and Remarkable Events, for Above Twelve Hundred Years, Volume 1.p. 256
  28. ^ Shropshire War Memorials, Sites of Remembrance. p. 187.

Sources

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