St Mary's Church is in the village of Rydal in the

Lake District The Lake District, also known as ''the Lakes'' or ''Lakeland'', is a mountainous region and National parks of the United Kingdom, national park in Cumbria, North West England. It is famous for its landscape, including its lakes, coast, and mou ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...

, England. It is an active

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the Church (building), church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in com ...

in the deanery of Windermere, the archdeaconry of Westmorland and Furness, and the

diocese of Carlisle In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associate ...

. The church, built in the Gothic revival style, is situated off the

A591 road The A591 is a major road in Cumbria, which lies almost entirely within the Lake District national park. A 2009 poll by satellite navigation firm Garmin named the stretch of the road between Windermere and Keswick as the most popular road in B ...

between

Ambleside Ambleside is a town in the civil parish of Lakes and the Westmorland and Furness district of Cumbria, England. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Westmorland and located in the Lake District National Park, the town sits at the ...

and Grasmere and is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, ...

as a designated Grade II*

listed building 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 ...

History

The church was built by Lady le Fleming of

Rydal Hall Rydal Hall is a large detached house on the outskirts of the village of Rydal, Cumbria, in the English Lake District. It has an early nineteenth-century front facade, but includes some earlier fabric. The hall is Grade II* listed on the Nation ...

, at a cost of £1,500. The foundation stone was laid in 1823 with the chapel opened in 1824, and consecrated in 1825. The architect was George Webster. Poet

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poetry, Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism, Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Balla ...

helped to choose the site, which was originally an orchard.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rydal, St Mary Diocese of Carlisle Church of England church buildings in Cumbria Grade II* listed churches in Cumbria

History

See also

References