St Mary De Crypt

Mainly C14, late C15

early C16 incorporating some C12

A timber-framed merchant's house with jettied upper floors, built in 1560, now a pub. Robert Raikes ran the newspaper, the Gloucester Journal, and an associated printing house from this building. He was one of the founders of the Sunday School movement, which aimed to provide at least one day of elementary schooling for children who would have had to work on the other days of the week. Within just four years, a quarter of a million of children across England were attending Sunday Schools. While religion featured heavily in the curriculum, the Sunday Schools were non-denominational, although both Methodists and Anglicans later developed their own equivalents. The state only recognised the need to provide universal elementary education when the Education Act 1870 was passed into law.

© Rudi Winter

C13 structure and features.

EXTERIOR: the west front facing street has a steeply pitched gable-end wall to nave and aisles, a renewed or re-cut central, semicircular arched doorway, C12 but mostly renewed or re-cut in C19, with nook-shafts and moulded arch with billet hoodmould enclosing a tympanum carved with Agnus Dei in bas-relief above a lintel carved with diaper

above the doorway a large, inserted, late C14, six-light window with foiled panel tracery

on each side, lighting the aisles, a late C14 three-light window with similar tracery

On the south side of nave is C14, two-storey, end-gabled porch with diagonal corner buttresses with offsets, arched doorway, and a single-light window above to the upper room

in the gable-end of each transept is a tall, C14, four-light window with foiled panel tracery.

C14 central tower of two stages with slightly projecting, panelled corner buttresses

in the east wall a very tall C15 four-light window with Perpendicular tracery and hoodmould

diagonal buttresses with two offsets at the corners of the chapels and in the east wall of each chapel an early C14 four-light window with reticulated tracery in the south chapel

a C15 window with Perpendicular tracery in the north chapel.

INTERIOR: C13 semicircular west responds to the nave arcades with moulded capitals

water-holding bases, otherwise the arcades, with slender cruciform chamfered piers, rebuilt in late C14

in the chancel late C14 arcades with clerestory added in early C15

the reredos installed 1889 is a triple arcade of carved Caen stone arcade with gablets and crocketed pinnacles enclosing panels of Venetian mosaic with figures of Christ and apostles

in the altar a medieval stone mensa was replaced during restoration of 1844-5

on the wall surfaces vestiges of early C16 wall paintings.

Above the chancel the early C16 timber roof has carved wooden bosses and angels playing musical instruments

in the south chapel a C15 piscina, refitted c1930, with panelling by H Stratton Davis, as a memorial to Robart Raikes

STAINED GLASS: includes the east window and a south window in the south chapel by Rogers of Worcester, c1857: and in the chancel the east window, said to be a copy of the medieval glass in Drayton Beauchamp church, Buckinghamshire.

FITTINGS: include early to mid C16 pulpit carved with renaissance ornament and a sounding board

C17 communion table in south transept, early C18 stone baluster form font, and early C18 civic mace rest.

MONUMENTS: include in the south chapel a recessed wall tomb reputed to be for Richard Manchester, d.1460, with an ogee arch and Perpendicular panels

tomb chest with effigies removed of Sir Thomas and Lady Bell, d.1567, with shields in lozenges and a moulded top

wall monument to Dorothy Snell, d.1746, by Peter Scheemakers, a mourning female figure with a portrait medallion on which leans a weeping putto with overturned cornucopia and torch

in the north chapel a Baroque monument to Daniel Lysons, d.1681, with frontal kneeling figure in a segmental-arched recess framed by barleysugar columns supporting an entablature, with broken segmental pediment enclosing an achievement of arms, by Reeve of Gloucester

on a window sill the sculpted bust from a former monument to Richard Lane, Mayor of Gloucester, d.1667

in the north transept restored brasses to John and Joan Cooke, d.1544, founders of the Crypt Grammar School

in the north aisle brasses of William Henshawe, d.1519, and his two wives, taken from St Michael's Church, Westgate Street, in 1959

late C15 grave-slab with incised cross and inscription to Isabel Pole, wife of a mayor of Gloucester.

The late perpendicular work is particularly fine, and its patronage is attributed to Henry Dene, Prior of Llanthony from 1461 to 1501.