St Mary's Church is the

Church of England parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...

in the town of

Marlborough, Wiltshire Marlborough ( , ) is a market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the England, English Counties of England, county of Wiltshire on the A4 road (England), Old Bath Road, the old main road from London to Bath, Somerset, Bath. Th ...

, England. The church stands at the east end of the town's High Street. Founded in the 12th century, it was partly rebuilt after a fire of 1653, and extended in 1874. It is a

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

building.

History

Two churches were mentioned at Marlborough in 1091, and in 1223 the bishop of Salisbury took both St Mary's and St Peter's under his jurisdiction. St Mary's was the church for the eastern part of the borough, while St Peter's, at the other end of the High Street, served the western part.

Building

The present church is built of ashlar and rubble, with ashlar dressings; the tower is ashlar. In the west wall of a tower is a repositioned 12th-century doorway or arch, and inside the church are fragments of 11th-century stonework including parts of

corbels In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the st ...

. The tower was added in the 15th century, and in that century and the early 16th the aisles were rebuilt and extended. The town suffered a large fire in 1653 which destroyed the roof and the interior of the church, and damaged the

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

arcades. Subsequently the north arcade was merged with the nave – a Norman

respond A respond is a half-pier or half-pillar that is bonded into a wall and designed to carry the springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishi ...

survives at the west end – and the south arcade was rebuilt as five rounded arches, described by Pevsner as "eminently interesting". Galleries were added to the nave in 1707 and the chancel was rebuilt in 1873-4 to designs by

G.E. Street George Edmund Street (20 June 1824 – 18 December 1881), also known as G. E. Street, was an English architect, born at Woodford, London, Woodford in Essex. Stylistically, Street was a leading practitioner of the Gothic Revival architecture, Vi ...

. The south chapel was restored as a memorial after the First World War. Further restoration was undertaken in 1955–7. Of the eight bells in the tower, one is from 1653 and two are from the 18th century. The seventh and eighth bells were cast in 1969 from the discarded peal of St Peter's church. The building was designated as

in 1949.

Parish

The benefices of the two Marlborough parishes were united in 1924, and the parishes were united in 1952 to form the parish of Saint Mary the Virgin with Saint Peter and Saint Paul. St Peter's church was declared redundant in 1974 and later became a community centre and events venue. Today the parish is served by the Marlborough Anglican Team, which also covers St George's, Manton (to the west of Marlborough) and St John the Baptist, Mildenhall (east).

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Marlborough, Saint Mary Church of England church buildings in Wiltshire Grade I listed churches in Wiltshire

Saint Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of ...