St Mary, Canons Ashby
St Mary, Canons Ashby
St Mary at Canons Ashby is a Grade I fragment of an Augustinian priory church, now a peculiar owned by the National Trust with Canons Ashby House — not a Churches Conservation Trust church.
- Location
- Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire
- Country
- England
- County
- Northamptonshire
- City / town
- Canons Ashby
- Address
- Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire, NN11 3SD
- Postcode
- NN11 3SD
- Built
- Augustinian priory church founded 1147–51; surviving west bays 13th century; north-west tower mid-14th century; east and south walls post-Dissolution and early 18th century
- Denomination
- National Trust
- Dedication
- Mary
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Early English west front; Decorated tower; Perpendicular west window
- Materials
- Ironstone ashlar with limestone dressings, lead roofs
- Grid reference
- SP 577 505
- Opening hours
- The church is open during the day time.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas. Accessible toilets nearby
Overview
Historic England and the National Trust record the surviving west end of a priory church founded 1147–51 for Augustinian canons and dissolved in 1536: two bays of the nave and north aisle and a mid-fourteenth-century north-west tower, in ironstone ashlar with limestone dressings and lead roofs. The west front has a richly shafted portal and blank arcading of about 1230–40; a large Perpendicular west window sits above. The nave was originally about 96 feet long with a long aisleless chancel; the east wall and south wall are post-Dissolution and early eighteenth-century. Interior fittings include a wall painting of about 1710 around the east window, Dryden family monuments (two by Rossi), the funeral achievement of Sir Robert Dryden (d. 1708), eleven painted hatchments and a seventeenth-century chamber organ. The church is a peculiar, not under ordinary Church of England jurisdiction. Listed Grade I (NHLE 1187152); the wider monastic landscape is scheduled (NHLE 1015534).