The Church of St Mary the Virgin in

Norton Sub Hamdon Norton-sub-Hamdon is a village and civil parish in the South Somerset district of the English county of Somerset, situated five miles west of Yeovil. The village has a population of 743. The village of Chiselborough is to the south, and the ...

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lor ...

, England, has 13th-century origins but was rebuilt around 1510. It has been designated as a Grade I

listed building 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 I ...

. Restoration was undertaken by

Henry Wilson Henry Wilson (born Jeremiah Jones Colbath; February 16, 1812 – November 22, 1875) was an American politician who was the 18th vice president of the United States from 1873 until his death in 1875 and a senator from Massachusetts from 1855 ...

in 1894 and again in 1904. The five-stage tower, dating from around 1485, which rises was damaged by lightning and fire on 29 July 1894, but restored within a year preserving the original design. It has a double plinth, offset corner

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (s ...

es, dividing strings, battlemented

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). ...

with pairs of corner

pinnacle A pinnacle is an architectural element originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire. It was mainly ...

s extended from buttresses, and central paired pinnacles corbelled off

gargoyle In architecture, and specifically Gothic architecture, a gargoyle () is a carved or formed grotesque with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing it from running down masonry wa ...

s. The dovecote in the churchyard dates from the 17th century, and was associated with a manor house which was demolished around 1850. Former leader of the Liberal Democrats and

High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina The High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, together with the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, were created in 1995 immediately after the signing of the Dayton Agreement which ended the 1992–1995 Bos ...

Paddy Ashdown is buried in the church's cemetery.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Norton Sub Hamdon Religious buildings and structures completed in 1510 16th-century Church of England church buildings

1510 establishments in England

See also

References