St Mary, Elmley Castle

St Mary’s is a Grade I parish church at the south end of Elmley Castle, Worcestershire, in the Diocese of Worcester, below the site of the Beauchamp castle on Bredon Hill.

Overview

Historic England lists a church of the eleventh to seventeenth centuries. Herringbone masonry in the chancel walls suggests pre-1100 origins; Pevsner thought the south arcade masonry might be Saxon. The listing dates a thirteenth-century tower base, a mid-fourteenth-century south aisle and first north transept, and a fifteenth-century north aisle and upper tower. The north transept was heightened in the sixteenth century. The chancel was restored in 1862; in 1878 internal plaster was stripped, the nave roof replaced and the north wall rebuilt. Fabric is mostly stone rubble, with snecked masonry to the south aisle, ashlar to the upper tower, tiled roofs and a lead south-aisle roof.

Outstanding fittings include a two-phase font with a twelfth- or thirteenth-century stem carved with serpentine beasts and a Perpendicular bowl, and a near-complete set of late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century benches. The north transept holds alabaster Savage effigies and a wall monument to the first Earl of Coventry (d. 1699), signed by William Standon, which Pevsner ranked among the best of their dates in the county.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1116640
• British Listed Buildings: Church of St Mary, Elmley Castle