NOTTINGHAM CHURCES - 1853

The church of St. Mary, situated on the north side of the High pavement, occupies the summit of an eminence which rises seventy feet above the level of the meadows. This venerable edifice, at once the principal ornament of the town and the most interesting relic of antiquity if contains, is supposed to have been built sometime in the fifteenth century, although certain fragments discovered whilst examining the foundation indisputably prove that very soon after the bristling battlements of William PEVEREL had risen on the neighbouring hill, this large and handsome church was built upon the site of a more ancient, though perhaps less magnificent, structure.

Thus at the advent of the Norman power this good old town became guarded with the twin genii of secular and spiritual might, appropriately placed on the two great hills, beyond which the borough did not then extend.

After the Conquest the town and the market place were divided between the native and the foreign inhabitants; and separate courts of law were founded. It is reasonable to conjecture, therefore, that the mixed population did not share the same place of worship; for even in comparatively enlightened times, unhappily, differences are seldom nursed into strength with so much solicitude as in matters of religion. The church of St. Mary, or course, would fall to the English, from the division of the town; and hence it is thought the churches of St. Peter and St. Nicholas were built by and for the Normans.

St. Mary's, with its lands, tithes, and appurtenances, was one of the gifts bestowed by PEVEREL upon the priory of Lenton. At this period the vicarage was twenty marks value; afterwards it ws £10 5s. in the king's book. Dr. DEERING believes that "the oldest part of the building bespeaks it of Saxon original," but the only proof he adduces is a very apocryphal story to the effect that a workman employed in repairing the west end of the church discovered a date on one of the antique timbers, which, "though he could not precisely remember it," made the church then eleven hundred years old.

The church is cruciform, consisting of a nave with aisles, seven bays long, two transepts, a central tower, and a chancel of four bays. Built in the collegiate style it is truly a fine specimen of Gothic architecture. The foundations are not deep laid on the rock, but rest upon a composition. Its exterior length is 215 feet, its breadth at the transepts 100 feet, in the nave it is 108 by 23 feet, and in the chancel 75 by 35 feet; the aisles 20 feet each; total width, 72 feet; the transepts, 100 feet by 35; the space between the centre of the two piers of the tower, 32 feet; height to the crown of the arches of the tower, 45 feet; height to the ridge of the roof, 52 feet; the vestry, 25 feet by 22; the porch, 15 feet square; the height of the tower to the top of the pinnacles, 126 feet.

One of its remarkable features is the small amount of masonry employed in its erection. Each bay in both the nave and aisles has two large four-light windows; in the side walls of the transepts there are two tiers; and the ends are almost entirely filled with glass. The west end is built after a similar design. The chancel, which is of a much plainer character, was probably intended only for a temporary place of worship whilst the rest of the church was building. It has a very good east window of nine lights. The tower is of two stories, the lower one lighted by a four-light window on every face, and the upper with four windows, the two middle ones only of each group being pierced.

 The worthy LELAND, who visited the church in 1540, says it was then "excellente newe, and unyforme yn worke, and so manie faire windowes yn itt, yt noe artificer can imagine to set more."

The fair windows of the old chronicler were not then, as now, a naked expanse of white glass; they glowed with a thousand radiant colors. Paintings adorned the now sombre walls: floor, roof, pier, screen, and stall were all liberally decorated. St. Mary's in those days was served by a guild or fraternity of six priests; and there were also three chantries. The priest's house on the High pavement bore the name of Trinity house long after its ancient occupants had passed away. It occupied the site where Mrs. SAVILLE's stables subsequently stood. Close to the south-west corner of the churchyard stood the Chantry house, which was granted by Edward VI., for the repair of Nottingham bridges.

After the advent of the republicans to power the revenues were seized, the nine priests replaced by one vicar, the painted windows broken, and the decorated walls defaced by the zealous puritans. Even the monuments of the dead were rudely desecrated. Axes and hammers were the weapons plied by the levelling roundheads, and before them almost every carved work and painting vanished. After the Reformation pews and ponderous galleries, with huge and sprawling staircases, had been erected; the latter blocked up the eastern end of the nave, as well as both transepts. The greater part of the nave, divided from the rest of the building by a glass screen, was made a sort of vestibule, and styled an antechurch - in which, in later times, idle persons assembled to see the soldiers come from service. In 1726 the western front was cased with stone, and its Gothic character destroyed, it being transformed into an unseemly palladian front. A beautiful doorway was removed; the gable cross made way for an urn and the pinnacles for pyramids. A piece of carpenter's work, of a semi-Corinthian character, blocked up a portion of the east window, and the tracery of the clerestory windows was cut away. In this state it remained until 1839, when Archdeacon WILKINS, then vicar, originated a subscription for the purpose of restoring the edifice, which amounted altogether to £2,000. The galleries were taken down, and the nave appropriated to the laity. The altar was brought forward to the arch of the chancel, which, being divided from the rest of the building by a stone screen, was disused. A stone gallery was erected against the western wall of the nave, in which the organ was placed. By these alterations 566 additional sittings were said to have been obtained, and the church made capable of accommodating about 2,000. In 1761 the south wall of the nave was new faced, since which time many other parts of the walls and buttresses of the south transept have been renewed. Much of the stone used in its frequent repairs is a very soft and perishable freestone, so that many of the modern parts present an air of antiquity.

On the 11^th of December, 1842, a rumour became rife that the tower was unsafe, which was confirmed by the publication of a notice that the church would be shut up, and the services performed in the County hall and in St. Mary's girls' school room. It appeared on examination that the masonry of the four tower piers was not insufficiently banded, had split in all directions; and the tower was rent with frightful fissures. The pier foundations were searched, and it was discovered that graves had been made close to them, and even in one instance two feet of the tower quoin cut away to make room for a family vault.

Some capitals of the old Saxon or early Norman church and many encaustic tiles were found in the course of the these investigations. Mr. ROBINSON made drawings of two of the capitals, and Mr. COTTINGHAM, of London, the architect, took casts of the tiles, after which they were either broken up or reburied.

The foundations, having been strengthened, a vestry meeting was called on the 12^th of January, 1843, when a rate of 1s. 6d. on land, and 1s. on houses was proposed by one of the churchwardens; a very irregular scene took place, and after a three days' poll the rate was defeated by a majority of 784.

On the 23^rd of April the nave was opened for worship, but on the 13^th of October it was once more closed in consequence of a somewhat singular occurrence. An umbrella was accidentally thrown down, and some persons in the church, fancying that the tower was falling down, immediately made a precipitous retreat. The congregation was instantly struck with a panic; a tremendous rush to the doors was the result; in vain did Dr. WILKINS and the Rev. J. T. WHITE, one of the curates, manfully maintain their ground and exhort the people to stay; and in the startling and humiliating scene several persons were thrown down and severely hurt.

An afternoon service was now performed at Sneinton church. In January, 1844, the evening service was removed from St. Mary's school room to St. Nicholas's church. On the 7^th of April the Rev. J.W. BROOKS, the new vicar, "read himself in" at the parish church, the safety of which had been certified by four eminent architects of the town.

The services at the school as well as at St. Nicholas's were, however, continued for those who still doubted the safety of the structure. On the 20^th of May, at a meeting in the Exchange, a subscription was originated to restore the building - a suggestion to demolish the edifice having been thrown overboard; and after having been wholly or partially closed for five years and a half, the church was, on the 18^th of May, 1848, re-opened for public worship. The west front was correctly restored after the original design as preserved in the engraving in THOROTON's Nottinghamshire.

The nave roof was restored with oak; the corbel angels, which had been ruthlessly cut away, to admit a flat plaster ceiling, were restored; the clerestory windows were filled with tracery; the two western pillars were rebuilt, as also were the four main pillars of the tower, which were rendered stronger than they originally were.

The entire cost of these repairs was considerably above £9,000, exclusively of the chancel, which was restored at the cost of the patron, Earl MANVERS, under the direction of Mr. H. M. WOOD, who erected a roof of an entirely new pattern. The oak stalls were removed and sold for £10 to a gentleman, who subsequently restored and presented them to St. Stephen's, Sneinton.

In removing these stalls a piece of stone sculpture was found underneath of beautiful workmanship. It was supposed to have been an entablature under a sarcophagus. It evidently represents the pope seated on his throne, assisted by two cardinals, inaugurating a bishop; which bishop, it is conjectured by some archaeologists, was probably interred in the church and was perhaps its founder. It is now recessed in the north wall of the chancel, within the communion rails.

The remains of a piscina and of sedilia, which had been hidden by a piece of joiner's work behind the altar, were built up. The stone gallery, originally built in the west front, was removed to the third bay; a glazed deal screen was carried up to the bottom of the clerestory window. Behind the altar is an elaborately carved piece of oak panelling, consisting of an arcade of five arches, in which are placed the creed, the Lord's prayer, the ten commandments and various texts, painted in black Roman letters. The altar is of oak, panelled and and magnificently ornamented.

This church possessed an organ before the civil war; but the advent of the puritans to power caused the destruction of the instrument, regarding which a tradition is told, that one of the churchwardens secured and sold the pipes, the empty case alone being left in the building. The church remained destitute of an organ till 1704, when the parishioners subscribed for one. This instrument, which was set up at the west end of the middle aisle, was repaired in 1742 by SWABRICK of Warwick. In the second year of Queen Anne's reign a new set of pipes was purchased by voluntary subscription, and the renovated organ removed to a gallery erected in the centre of the nave, supported by Tuscan columns, over which was a painting of David playing on the harp. In 1776-7 this organ was sold, and a new one, with two fronts, built by the famous John SNETZLER of London, bought at a cost of £630. This fine instrument was enlarged at a cost of £260 , by A. BUCKINGHAM, of London, and formerly stood upon the new orchestra at the west end of the nave, which supplied accommodation for the singers and the children of the Blue-coat school, who were taught psalmody and chanting. The organ, once more removed, now stands on the floor in the north transept.

The tower, consisting of two stages above the church roof, was crowned with a battlement and eight small pinnacles, one of which was blown down about ten years ago. At the last restoration, however, these were replaced by eight new ones of more proportionate dimensions. The tower is the most elevated point in the town, and its summit commands a splendid prospect. In the steeple is a peal of ten bells, all cast betwixt the years 1595 and 1765. One of the treble bells, broken during the last repairs, was recast at the close of 1852, by TAYLOR and Son of Loughborough. The tenor weighs 34 cwt. The ninth bell was cast by OLDFIELD of Nottingham, who cast the Great Tom of Lincoln in 1595. One of the bells has this couplet engraven beneath the churchwardens' names:

In September, 1811, the floor immediately under the bells in St. Mary's was let down several feet, and a new one erected directly underneath. This was done for the purpose of having the old ringing left, which stood in the centre of the church and which was offensive to the eye, taken down. The old loft rested upon supporters, which projected from the four centre columns supporting the tower. In the reign of Queen Anne the bells hung in the upper story of the tower, and it was feared that their swinging might injure the fabric, consequently they were let down a story, and, the next floor being then too high for the ringers, the additional loft was erected.

Some have assigned the erection of the south porch to the Anglo-Saxons on account of its elaborate workmanship; tradition, however, asserts that this once beautiful specimen of ancient art belonged originally to the Priory of Lenton, and was brought hence after the suppression of that institution.

DEERING mentions the existence in his day of a dim painting over the vestry door in the chancel, representing a giant, which was thought to be St. Christopher. More recently a figure of St. Andrew might have been traced in the north window of the chancel.

In 1707 a clock was added to the church, made by John ROWE of Epperstone: it was placed in the upper part of the large window of the south transept, where it remained a hundred years. In 1807 the old clock was removed, and a new one, by Thomas HARDY of Nottingham, placed in the tower. This clock has quarter-jacks, and two dials placed east and west in the tower, but no chimes. In 1808 a handsome time-piece was placed in front of the gallery. At the alterations of the church it was removed to the vestry, where it has since remained. There is a large Gothic front, which is probably as old as the church.

On the north side of the cross aisle was the chapel of All Saints, which belonged to the PLUMPTRE family from the reign on Henry VII., and to which the oratory with a quire adjoining it was appurtenance. On the south side was a chapel dedicated by Thomas WILLOUGHBY to the Virgin Mary. There were in the church the chantries of St. Mary and St. James, and another dedicated to AMYAS, who was mayor of the town in the time of Richard III. In the south part of the cross aisle, in the ancient chapel of "Our Ladye," under a stately marble tomb, repose the bodies of the first and second Earls of Clare, the first of whom died 1637, the other 1665. Near the vestry door is a blue marble gravestone to the memory of the Rev. John WHITLOCK, died 1708; at the south side of the chancel on the wall a marble tablet to the memory of Lady Mary BRABAZON, died 1738, who lies near her father the Earl of Meath, died 1715; and among the names which are mentioned by THOROTON, DEERING, and THROSBY as having been recorded on the numerous commemorative slabs in other parts of the sacred edifice are the following: Rev. John DISNEY, vicar, died 1729-30; John ALTON and Elizabeth BRIGHTMAN, his wife, died respectively 1629 and 1638; Thomas EWDIGATE, son of Sir Richard NEWDIGATE of Ardbury, Warwick, died 1722; Thomas MANLY, 1708; Richard SAMON, nayor and alderman, died 1457; William GREAVES, A. M., alderman and registrar of the archdeaconry; Gowen KNIGHT, fellow of Merton College, Oxford, master of the Free School, died 1691; Thomas SMITH, esquire, died 1727; William FLAMSTEAD, gentleman, steward and town clerk of Nottingham, died 1653; John BEE, M.D., died 1719; Robie SHERWIN, esquire, M.P. for the town, died 1718, and his brother John, mayor of Nottingham, died the same year; Nicholas KINNERSLEY, esquire, and his mother "dear Amye;" Radulph HANSBY, died 1635; Joseph GARDENER, died 1669; John PLUMPTRE, died 1552; Henry, eldest son of John PLUMPTRE, born in 1708, and who, although he only lived about eleven years, had made himself master of the Jewish, Roman, and English history, the heathen mythology and French tongue, while he was considerably advanced in Latin; Henry PLUMPTRE, died 1693; three daughters of Richard MASCIE of Sale in Chester, who was a lineal descendant of MASCIE, Baron of Dunham; Bath WILLIAMS, esquire, lieutenant-colonel of marines, who, in 1799, at the age of 68, was drowned in the Trent. Unfortunately, at the alterations and at the subsequent strengthening of the tower many of these memorial stones were removed, and either mutilated or entirely destroyed.

The families buried here include the following names: WRIGHT, BRADSHAW, ROBERTS, PADLEY, MORRIS, WHITE, WHITTAKER, HOWITT, and HALL. Many of the gravestones were bereft of the brass plates by the soldiers during the civil war. The inscriptions, some of which are now worn away, are preserved by THOROTON and DEERING. Among the tombstones in the churchyard is one marking the resting-place of Jacob VILLIERS, a descendant of the famous favorite of the first Charles, George VILLIERS, Duke of Buckingham.

The inclosing of the churchyard with an iron railing was begun in 1792 and completed in 1807. Four other burial grounds have been consecrated for the use of the parish: one lies at the north and another at the south side of Barker gate, the third on the west side of Carter gate, and the other is known as St. Ann's cemetery and is situated at the north end of Beck street.

The vicarage house stands opposite the south-east corner of the church yard. The original structure was removed in 1653 and a new one built on its site, which in turn gave place in 1844 to the present mansion.

DEERING, in his history, says: "In the church of St. Mary prayers are read twice a day throughout the year, two sermons preached every Lord's day, and on Wednesdays a morning lecture, besides other sermons on particular days." Divine service is now celebrated on Sunday forenoon, afternoon, and evening, while a service is held every Wednesday evening.

The value of the living was formerly £699 a year, but it is now reduced to about £400, owing to the marriage, burial, and other fees received by the ministers of St. Paul's and Trinity district churches, and by the interments at the general cemetery. The patronage is vested in Earl MANVERS. A terrar, published in 1748, contains an account of the glebe lands, while the parish register commences in 1567.

We append a list of the vicars of St. Mary's from 1290 to the present time:

1290, Johannes de ELY;

1304, Robertus de DALBY;

1313, Henricus de parva HALY;

1317, Johannes de LUDHAM;

1322, Joh. Ff. Witti. CORYN;

1347, Johannes de LAUNDE;

1347, Robert de WAKEBRIDGE;

1348, Richard de RADCLYFFE;

1349, Roger de NYDDINGWORTH;

1349, Richard de SWANNYNGTON;

1351, Thomas PASCAYL;

1357, Johannes LORIMER; Johannes de HOVEDEN;

1364, Joh. De STAPLEFORD;

1371, Willielmus de SANDYACRE; Robertus de RETFORD;

1401, Richardus CHILWELL;

1409, Willielmus ODE;

1447, Willielmus WRIGHT;

1461, Johannes HURT;

1476, Thomas TURNER;

1498, Johannes GREVE;

1499, Simon YATES;

1504, Richard TRAVENOR;

1534, Richard MATTHEW;

1535, Richard WYLDE;

1554, Oliverus HAWOOD;

1568, Johannes LOWTHE;

1572, Williemus UNDERUE;

1578, Robertus ALDRIDGE;

1616, Oliverius WYTHERINGTON;

1616, Johannes TOLSON;

1617, Radulfus HANSBY;

1635, Edmundus LAYCOCK;

1651, J. WHITLOCK;

1662, Georgeius MASTERSON;

1686, Samuel CROBROW, S.T.P.;

1690, Benjamin CARNFIELD, A.M.;

1694, Tymothy CARROL, A.M.;

1698, Edwardus CLARKE, A.M.;

1708, Samuel BERDMORE, A.M.;

1723, Johannes DISNEY, A.M.;

1730, Thomas BERDMORE, A.M.;

1743, Scroop BERDMORE, S.T.P.;

1770, Nathan HAINES, D.D.;

1806 John BRISTOW, D.D.;

1810, George HUTCHINSON, A.M.;

1817, George WATKINS, D.D.;

1844, J.W. BROOKS, A.M.;

Edmund LAYCOCK was vicar until 1642, but he had no regular successor till 1651, when J. WHITLOCK was presented by the Marquis of Dorchester - William REYNOLDS, the friend and faithful companion of Mr. WHITLOCK, being appointed lecturer. The vicarage house was built during the incumbency of Mr. WHITLOCK, and was specially fitted to accommodate the families of himself and his friend. In 1693 the vicarage was vacant.

The following societies exist in connexion with the church: auxiliary church missionary society and lying-in charity.

The following schools, the statistics of which are quoted from the report of 1851, are connected with St. Mary's church: girls' daily and infant schools in Barker gate, attended by 426 scholars; a girls' Sunday school, taught by 45 teachers, and attended by upwards of 300 scholars; St. Mark's daily school for boys, Sandy lane, 1 teacher, 165 scholars; Sunday school on the same premises, commenced as a ragged school, 14 teachers, 221 scholars; Malin hill boys' Sunday school, 11 teachers, 101 scholars; St. Matthew's Sunday school for boys and girls in Derby road, 11 teachers, 48 male and 40 female scholars; adult school for females, average attendance, 140; evening writing school for girls belonging to the Barker gate Sunday school, average attendance, 100. The number of children in the several schools in 1851 was 1239; of superintendants and teachers, 84. The adult school for females was founded in 1844, and up till the close of 1851 it had been attended by 1857 scholars. The government inspector observes that the supply of books and maps for the daily schools is very defective, that the mistresses are inadequately remunerated, while additional teachers are required. There is a clothing fund in connexion with the girls' day and Sunday schools. The total income of the schools for 1851 amounted to £236 1s. 6d.

The vicar is assisted in his parish by four curates - the Revs. William B. PATCHELL, James STOCK, W.H. STIRLING. The fourth curacy is at present vacant.

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