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St Mary

St Mary

Ilminster

Somerset

C15, refurbished 1825 by William Burgess

Architectural Features

The vestry, attached to the east of the chancel, below the east window, has a central door under a hoodmould with carved shields in the spandrels

gargoyles to the corners and above the door.

The chancel has blue lias limestone walls and buttresses and Ham Hill stone plinth, parapet and dressings: 3-bays, with 3-light windows to the sides and a 5-light to the east gable end, and gargoyles to the corners, though that to the south-west has fallen.

The north transept, the Wadham Chantry Chapel, is late C15 and more ornate, with large windows articulated by elaborately-decorated buttresses: 3-bays

Tudor-arched 3-light windows to the sides with transoms

the gable has a pointed string course, gargoyles, and a moulded cornice to the shouldered parapet.

West front, dated 1824, has a shallow gable with a pointed string course ending as gargoyles below a pointed shouldered parapet to the gable end, in the apex of which is a gabled niche

the central C20 door in a moulded arch is below a 5-light stained-glass window with cusped ogee arches to each light and tracery above

sloping string courses terminate as gargoyles, below the castellated parapet.

the east window has 5 lights with geometric tracery and C19 stained glass, above an elaborate c1910 reredos of Caen stone flanked by doors to the vestry

the 3 bays are articulated by engaged columns on which stand wooden figures supporting the carved main rafters, between which are moulded trusses with fretted infill

this is in the south-east corner dated 1553, pedimented, with 3 large circles at the angles containing coats-of-arms, above a large panel with the Walrond crest flanked by realistically carved skulls

The nave arcade, altered in 1825, has 3 widely-set Tudor-style arches supported by the original piers with round capitals to engaged colonnettes.

corbels, supporting C19 trusses, rest on colonnettes with C15 head-stops to the bases between the arches.

4 canopied niches contain carved wooden statues.

The roof is similar to, but more richly carved than, that of the chancel.

those of Sir William Wadham and his mother, dated 1452

Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham 1609 and 1618.

The former is an altar-tomb, with a slab of Purbeck marble approx 3m long, bearing fine brasses of canopies, figures and inscriptions, on a plinth surrounded by crocketed ogee-headed niches for weepers

Above a slab of black marble bearing brasses and inscriptions is a kind of reredos bearing an escutcheon of their arms and a laudatory Latin inscription.

The pulpit is part of a larger Jacobean one

C19 brass lecturn

there are 2 oak chests, probably C16 or C17 with strap hinges, at the east end of the nave.

Mid/late C19 stained glass.