Details

The monument includes the standing ruins and buried remains of the 17th century St Mary's Church.The monument stands on a terrace cut into the hillside overlooking Pately Bridge.The church has a nave and two side aisles originally covered by a single roof with a crenellated tower at the western end.The building now stands roofless although the tower still has its floors and ceilings and the nave has a flagged floor.The ruins stand to roof height and the original window openings are all complete.These include a large inserted window at the east end with the remainder of the windows being small and rectangular.There is a south porch to the nave and a west porch to the tower.Within the body of the nave is a small fireplace and attached to the wall next to the porch is an early 18th century memorial stone.The church is Listed Grade II.The tower is dated 1691 and the bulk of the nave has been dated to the 18th
century.MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a two metre boundary around the archaeological features,considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

A parish church is a building,usually of roughly rectangular outline and containing a range of furnishings and fittings appropriate to its use for Christian worship by a secular community,whose members gather in it on Sundays and on the occasion of religious festivals.Children are initiated into the Christian religion at the church's font and the dead are buried in its churchyard.Parish churches were designed for congregational worship and are generally divided into two main parts:the nave,which provides accommodation for the laity,and the chancel,which is the main domain of the priest and contains the principal altar.Either or both parts are sometimes provided with aisles,giving additional accommodation or spaces for additional altars.Most parish churches also possess towers,generally at the west end,but central towers at the crossing of nave and chancel are not uncommon and some churches have a free-standing or irregularly sited tower.Many parish churches also possess transepts at the crossing of chancel and nave,and south or north porches are also common.The main periods of parish church foundation were in the 10th to 11th and 19th centuries.Most medieval churches were rebuilt and modified on a number of occasions and hence the visible fabric of the church will be of several different dates,with in some cases little fabric of the first church being still easily visible.Parish churches are found throughout England.Their distribution reflects the density of population at the time they were founded.In regions of dispersed settlement parishes were often large and churches less numerous.The densest clusters of parish churches were found in thriving medieval towns.A survey of1625 reported the existence of nearly 9000 parish churches in England.New churches built in the 18th,19th and 20th centuries increased numbers to around 18,000 of which 17,000 remain in ecclesiastical use.Parish churches have always been major features of the landscape and a major focus of life for their parishioners.They provide important insights into medieval and later population levels or economic cycles,religious activity,artistic endeavour and technical achievement.A significant number of surviving examples are identified to be nationally important.St Mary's Church survives well and important evidence of religious practices as well as building techniques will be preserved.In addition remains of earlier structures beneath the church will also be preserved.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
EH AM 107 reports,

Source: Historic England