St Mary the Virgin, Layer Marney
St Mary the Virgin, Layer Marney
St Mary the Virgin is a Grade I parish church beside Layer Marney Tower, Essex, in the Diocese of Chelmsford: an early sixteenth-century red-brick rebuild, open daily, with Marney tombs and a wall painting of St Christopher.
- Location
- Layer Marney, Essex
- Country
- England
- County
- Essex
- City / town
- Layer Marney
- Address
- Layer Marney, Essex, CO5 9UR
- Postcode
- CO5 9UR
- Built
- Largely rebuilt early C16 in red brick
- Denomination
- Church of England
- Dedication
- Mary
- Diocese
- Chelmsford
- Parish
- Layer Marney
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Tudor brick Perpendicular
- Materials
- Red brick with flared-header diapering and limestone and brick dressings
- Grid reference
- TL 928 174
- Opening hours
- Church open daily.
- Access
- Accessible toilets nearby. Level access to the main areas
Overview
Historic England lists the church (1223987, Grade I, 7 April 1965). The listing describes a church largely rebuilt in the early sixteenth century in red brick. The west tower has diapering in flared headers, diagonal stone-dressed buttresses, embattled parapets and a polygonal staircase tower. The south aisle, south porch and south chancel porch are embattled; windows have four-centred brick heads. The east window is stone, of five trefoiled ogee transomed lights. The east gable has a crow-stepped parapet. A priest’s chamber at the west end of the north aisle retains a fireplace and octagonal chimney stack.
Interior fittings highlighted in the list include a fifteenth-century rood screen with ogee arches; a fourteenth-century alabaster tomb with an armoured effigy; the 1523 tomb of Henry, Lord Marney, with recumbent effigy; and a large early sixteenth-century painted St Christopher on the north nave wall. Colchester Heritage Explorer notes plastered brick walls with limestone dressings and that a small college or chantry for a warden and two priests was founded here. The church stands immediately beside the contemporary Layer Marney Tower.