Church of St Mary Donyatt, England

Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

DONYATT CP CHURCH STREET (North side) ST31SW 4/40 Church of St Mary 4.2.58

GV II*

Anglican parish church. C15 rebuild of earlier church. Ham stone with some grey lies, cut and squared with ashlar dressings; sheet lead roofs behind battlemented parapets. Four-cell plan of 2-bay chancel,4-bay nave,5-bay north and south aisles, with south porch and west tower. Chancel has double plinth, string course with gargoyles, moulded battlemented parapets, angled corner buttresses, east window 4-light, early pattern sub-arcuated with cusped transome set in hollowed recess without label; single 3-light windows with transomes to match on north and south sides, the tracery possibly a little later. North aisle apparently a later C15 addition, with plinths, string stepped up for eastern bay, and plain parapet with simple coping, angled corner butresses and one buttress between bays 3/4; east window possibly C16, wide 4-light under 4-centred arch, traceried, set in hollowed recess; side windows 3-light to match but with 2-centre arches; blocked moulded pointed arched doorway to bay 4; west window matches those to north, and cuts into tower stair turret. South aisle matches chancel with angled corner and bay buttresses; east window matches that of north aisle, as do three of the south side windows; the most westerly on the south side has different C15 tracery but the Nest window matches the 3 on the side. South porch apparently contemporary with aisle, flat roofed behind battlemented parapet, no buttresses; moulded pointed outer and inner arches, bench seats, ceiling a C19 restoration, The nave appears only as the clerestorey under battlemented parapets, with 3-light flat-arched windows with 4-centre-arched lights, in hollow-chamfered reveals. Tower in 3 stages; double plinth, string courses, the top with gargoyles; battlemented parapet with panelled bases for pinnacles to corners and centres, the latter set diagonally; full-height offset pairs of corner buttresses; north-eastern stair turret slightly taller than tower, square at base, broaching into octagonal plan during second stage, and crowned with weathervane, having thin slit windows: west door in moulded pointed archway with label continued from upper plinth mould; above a 4-light sub-arcuated traceried window; stage 2 has a small cinquefoil-cusped window in rectangular recess on west face; north face plain stages 1 and 2, south face has clockface and 2-light window stage 2; to all sides stage 3 are 2-light C15 traceried and transomed windows with pierced stone baffles, Inside, the fittings mostly C19, but restoration discreet, Chancel has moulded rib and boarded ceiling with leaf bosses incorporating some early fragments; arches into side chapels have circular shafts with hollows, the capitals having a stiff leaf decoration. Nave and aisle roofs almost totally C19, but the arcades C15; the chancel arch to full width and almost full height of ceiling, with foliated capitals which also occur on first jambs of nave arcade; tall panelled tower arch, Fittings include credence table of c1700; fine early C17 panelled octagonal timber pulpit with pairs quasi-Ionic pilasters at each angle set on a stone base probably of C19; low font, octagonal with quatrefoil panels each face, on simple base, C15 style but may be C19; some of the nave pews incorporate C15/C16 bench ends from the nearby manor chapel, now demolished; screen to tower arch incorporates some C15 work, but parts clumsily reversed; holy water stoup on jamb jamb of east arcade bay, north aisle, and another outside west door; C18 clarinet preserved in south aisle. Memorial tablet to Revd. Charles Campbell, Rector, died 1746. First recorded rector 1255. (Pevsner N, Buildings of England, South and West Somerset, 1985).