St Mary's Church,

Fetcham Fetcham is a suburban village in the Mole Valley district, in Surrey, England west of the town of Leatherhead, on the other side of the River Mole and has a mill pond, springs and an associated nature reserve. The housing, as with adjacent Gr ...

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

, England is a

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

church (community) but also refers to its building which dates to the 11th century, that of the

Norman Conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Normans, Norman, French people, French, Flemish people, Flemish, and Bretons, Breton troops, all led by the Du ...

and as such is the settlement's oldest building. It is set off the residential road of its address, The Ridgeway, behind a small park, in the suburban part of the largely 20th century railway settlement adjoining the M25 London Orbital Motorway which has retained farmed

rural In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry are typically desc ...

outskirts. The closest secular building is Grade II* listed Fetcham Park House, which is in the same architectural category and the church has an adjoining church hall.

Structure and fittings

Built during

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

and early

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 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...

periods, the structure has been conjectured by the

Victoria County History The Victoria History of the Counties of England, commonly known as the Victoria County History (VCH), is an English history project which began in 1899 with the aim of creating an encyclopaedic history of each of the historic counties of Englan ...

's architectural analysis to have been a redevelopment of an Anglo-Saxon church: Traces of its long past exist in many parts of its structure. These include the south-west

quoin Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th-century encyclopedia, ...

of the nave, and a single splay window high on the south wall with traces of

Roman brick Roman brick is a type of brick used in ancient Roman architecture and spread by the Romans to the lands they conquered, or a modern adaptation inspired by the ancient prototypes. Both types are characteristically longer and flatter than standard ...

, as well as arches which fit with the architecture prevailing before the

of 1066. In the 19th century a considerable amount of restoration and improvement in the church was carried out by Rev. Sir Edward Moon rector from 1854 to 1904. Moon inherited his

baronetcy A baronet ( or ; abbreviated Bart or Bt) or the female equivalent, a baronetess (, , or ; abbreviation Btss), is the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. The title of baronet is mentioned as early as the 14th ...

in 1871 on the death of his father Sir Francis Moon, 1st Baronet, who was commemorated in much of the restoration work in the church. The work included the addition of some mid-Victorian stained glass windows. In 1857 a 13th century wall painting was uncovered at the East end of the North aisle. The original painting no longer exists although a full size copy is available for viewing through Guilford Library service and a photo of it is included in the reference. The church gained Grade II*

listed status In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

in 1951.

Services

On Sundays there are Communion Services at 08.00 (Book of Common Prayer) and 09.30 (Common Worship). At 11.15 there is Informal Worship, with the Gener8 All Age worship taking place on the first Sunday in the month. On Sunday evenings there is Choral Evensong (second Sunday), RESTORE Cafe Church (third Sunday) and REFLECT reflective service (fourth Sunday). There is also a midweek communion service on Thursday at 10.00am and a parish prayer meeting at 09.30 on Saturday. Activ8 for under 12's and Creche for under 3's takes place on Sunday at 9.30 and 11.15am (except when there is Gener8 All Age worship at 11.15) .Official website
/ref>

Monuments

The church has wall monuments to Anthony Rous and Henry Vincent (a praying bust with an open book, in a cartouche with Corinthian small columns), both died 1631; in the left side of the porch is a large lettered tablet dated 1717 recording details of a charitable trust as administered among its mainstay of poor relief for centuries by the

, until the advent of

local government in the United Kingdom Local government in the United Kingdom has origins which pre-date the United Kingdom itself, as each of the four countries of the United Kingdom has its own separate system. For an overview, see Administrative geography of the United Kingdom. For d ...

Gallery

File:St Mary's Church, St Mary's Close, Fetcham (July 2013) (Lychgate) (2).JPG, Lychgate File:Fetcham, St Mary's Church, chancel.jpg, Chancel File:Fetcham, St Mary's Church, Norman pillars and Saxon window.jpg, Norman pillars and Saxon window File:Fetcham, St Mary's Church, East window, detail.jpg, East window

References

External links