St Mary of the Purification, Blidworth

St Mary of the Purification is the Grade II* parish church of Blidworth, on Main Street in the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. The unusual dedication refers to the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, the feast of the Purification of Mary.

Overview

Historic England describes a parish church of the fifteenth century whose west nave and south aisle were rebuilt in 1739 and whose east south aisle and chancel were re-erected in 1839, in ashlar with lead roofs. The restored fifteenth-century west tower stands on a deep chamfered two-stage plinth, embattled, with a pinnacle at each angle. The north wall is embattled and has four seventeenth-century round-arched windows alternating with five small fourteenth-century carved heads. The south side has matching round-arched windows, a gabled porch and a vestry porch.

The interior has a five-bay 1739 nave arcade of Tuscan columns with chamfered arches and keystones, an eighteenth-century panelled west gallery, and wall panelling below sill level. Fittings include a fifteenth-century octagonal ashlar font, an early nineteenth-century pulpit transferred from Southwell Minster about 1900, a seventeenth-century chest, and a reredos using seventeenth-century carved panels also from Southwell. Among the monuments is an alabaster memorial of 1608 to T. Leake, a Sherwood Forest ranger, decorated with a horn, skull, arrows and a deer's head.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1045529
• British Listed Buildings: Church of St Mary of the Purification