St Mary's Church

MATERIALS: Local freestone and rubble sandstone, tile roofs.

EXTERIOR: The three-stage tower has early C13 lower stage with clasping buttresses

C15 upper stages with rustic-looking embattled parapet with pinnacles.

The unbuttressed chancel has a restored 3-light C14 east window with reticulated tracery, and a 3-light late Perpendicular window and blocked doorway in the north wall.

The finely-detailed and well-preserved probably late C14 cradle roof of the nave has small bosses of grotesque heads and foliage, and moulded braces with carved feet.

The chancel has a cambered tie-beam roof with moulded ribs, probably of C15 date, and its 2-tier wall plate is carved with intersecting arches.

The C13 5-bay south arcade has round piers, moulded capitals and stepped round-headed arches with single chamfer.

The eastern respond is carved with heads and volutes.

Walls are unplastered, revealing a blocked round-headed doorway and a window in the nave north wall, and blocked round-headed windows either side of the east window, all of which are C12.

The floors are plain tiles, with parquet floors below pews.

The octagonal font of 1887 has a floriated cross on one facet.

The timber pulpit with large fielded panels is C20, as is the carved timber reredos of 1910.

There are several C18 and C19 wall monuments, including to Gerrard Skrymsher , which has Tuscan pilasters and broken pediment, and to James Skrymsher , which has pilasters and achievement.

The three north windows have mid-C20 glass by Morris & Co, one dated 1949.

HISTORY: Evidence of blocked windows and doorway visible inside the church reveal a C12 core to the nave

chancel, which also had a west tower by the C13.

The aisle was added in the C13, with the round arches used elsewhere in the district at that period (e.g. Adbaston).

Fenestration of nave and chancel is late Perpendicular of C15-C16, as are the upper stages of the tower and the nave and chancel roofs.

SOURCES: Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Staffordshire, 145 REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: St Mary's Church, High Offley, is designated Grade I for the following principal reasons: * The church is outstanding for its retention of several phases of medieval fabric, including the tower, C13 arcade, and late-medieval roofs * The nave roof is an outstanding and well-preserved work of late-medieval carpentry