St Mary, Lytchett Matravers

St Mary the Virgin is a Grade I parish church on Colehill Road, north-west of Lytchett Matravers village, Dorset, in the Diocese of Salisbury.

Overview

Historic England records a two-stage thirteenth-century tower, a fourteenth-century chancel, and a nave, four-bay north aisle and south porch rebuilt about 1500, with restoration and a vestry of about 1875. Walls are ironstone rubble; nave and aisle roofs are tiled, chancel, vestry and porch slated, all with coped gables. The tower has a partly battlemented parapet, corner pinnacles, clasping buttresses and small belfry lancets. The south nave wall has three three-light windows with round-headed lights and solid panelled tracery. The chancel retains a two-light fourteenth-century window and a reset thirteenth-century two-light window.

The Royal Commission, cited by Dorset Heritage Explorer, dates the first church of chancel, nave and west tower to about 1200, a mid-fourteenth-century north aisle (rebuilt about 1500 with reused arcade material), chancel enlargement about 1400, and benefaction by Margaret Clement around 1500. Inside, the nave has an unplastered wagon roof of about 1500. A thirteenth-century tower arch carries the painted Royal Arms of George IV. There is a canopied tomb recess at the west end of the nave, fragments of late medieval glass in the aisle west window, a fifteenth-century brass and piscina in the chancel, a fifteenth-century octagonal font with traceried panels, and a barrel organ at the west end of the nave.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1171322
• Parish history