St Mark, Lord Mayor's Chapel

the Poyntz chapel in 1523

roof of nave is early C16.

EXTERIOR: 6-light Tudor arch E window divided in 3 by king mullions, with a hood and diamond stops

The E window of the Poyntz chapel has an elliptical arch with 3 lights and angel hood stops, and a drip mould below the parapet with large carved gargoyles and central angels, and angle buttresses

Tudor-arched 8-light S chancel window with angel hood stops.

Tudor-arched S doorway with a hood and panelled door

3-bay S aisle chapel with 4-light Tudor-arched windows with angel stops, and buttresses between with attached pinnacles

INTERIOR: a very fine reredos of fretted tabernacle work rebuilt for Bishop Salley c1500: three hemi-octagonal canopied niches, the central one raised, with ogee arches to domed cupolas and flanking buttresses on angel corbels, with image stands and late C19 statues.

Ogee-arched doorways to each side with crocketed hoodmoulds, and panelled doors with carved figures in niches.

Very flat tie-beam roof with gilded bosses and quatrefoil panels, and wall posts to angel corbels.

In the base of the tower is door to stair turret, and 3 well-carved head corbels.

The doorway to the Poyntz chapel has a Tudor arch with hollow mouldings and carved spandrels with a clenched fist (poing), a rebus of the founder

at the E end are 2 richly carved canopies and an altar piece in the same style as the chancel, with slender image-stands with concave sides in the niches

in the N wall are 2 barrel-vaulted chambers with Tudor-arched doorways with intersecting mouldings, and the floor has C16 Spanish tiles, with a few English ones mixed in.

roof has gilded bosses with Tudor roses.

Octagonal stone pulpit with ogee niches and crocket finials to the arches and buttresses.

Stone font at W end of S aisle, an octagonal shaft and flared basin.

MEMORIALS: chancel has a very fine dresser tomb of Bishop Salley, d. 1516, a recumbent effigy of the Bishop on a panelled chest, beneath a richly carved ogee hood with pendant cusps and open work parapet, in the style of the reredos, which was the gift of the Bishop

to N is the dresser tomb to Sir Maurice Berkeley d. 1464, of a knight and his lady on a panelled chest beneath an elaborate ogee hood with angels to the cusps and large finials, with 2 painted shields held by standing lions

Nave has an empty memorial niche in the N nave, a Tudor arch with carved spandrels and trefoil panels beneath

memorial tablet to Thomas Harris d. 1797, by Thomas Paty, an oval slate panel with a marble sarcophagus on animal feet, with finely carved swag and an angel standing against a panel with a relief head

beneath is a brass memorial tablet inscribed to William Searchfield d. 1647

fine dresser tomb to William Birde d. 1590

Elizabethan style, painted panels to the chest, 4 reeded, fluted Ionic columns to a richly carved canopy with friezes of mermen, with a large shell pediment and shield, flanked by terms

dresser tomb to Richard Berkeley d. 1604 to S of door, Classical style, a recumbent figure on a panelled chest, with a Corinthian aedicule with marble shafts, carrying an epitaph.

S aisle has a wall monument to Thomas James d. 1619, a painted stone aedicule on brackets with Corinthian shafts and a broken pediment, containing a kneeling figure within an arch

marble wall monument to Henry Bengough d. 1818 by F Chantry, signed and dated 1828: a full-size seated figure over a plinth

large wall monument to William Hilliard, d. 1735, by Thomas Paty, with a rusticated base with a semicircular-arched doorway beneath 3 pedestals, the side pair with putti and central one bearing a black marble sarcophagus with a bust on top

chest tomb of a merchant c1360, Perpendicular Gothic style with traceried panels, a recumbent man within an ogee arch and elaborate finial, a rare example of a C14 monument with a figure in civilian costume

marble wall monument to John Cookin d. 1627 aged 11, an alabaster aedicule on pendant brackets with Corinthian capitals and a flat hood, containing a kneeling figure of a boy with a book

marble wall tablet to Catherine Vaughan d. 1694, oval with a cartouche above

beneath it a C16 section of painted wall panel, and beneath that, a chest tomb with 5 heraldic quatrefoil panels.

S aisle chapel has a dresser tomb of Maurice de Gaunt d. 1230 and Robert de Gourney d. 1269, 2 knights, the founders of the Hospital of St Mark's

the effigy of de Gaunt is a vigorously lifelike carving

dresser tomb to George Upton d. 1608, Jacobean style, a wide aedicule with Corinthian capitals and a dentil cornice, with a recumbent effigy leaning on one elbow beneath an arch backed by a decorated panel with glass roundels, beneath a rounded moulding with swag

painted stone wall monument to William Swift d. 1622, an aedicule with dentil cornice and round arch containing a kneeling figure in civilian dress, and a cartouche above

a large marble wall memorial to Sir Baynham Throckmorton and wife, 1635, a wide plinth with columns with Corinthian capital bearing a flat canopy, with heraldic shield in panel with broken segmental pediment, over are a recumbent couple, he in armour and she leaning half upright against the wall with a baby, backed by a keyed inscription flanked by pair of headless figures in classical drapes

wall monument to John Aldworth d. 1625 and his son Francis d. 1623, Perpendicular Gothic style, a traceried panelled plinth with octagonal shafts bearing a canopy with quatrefoils, and a parapet of foliage interupted by pinnacles, over 2 kneeling men

above this a wall monument of foliate side panels and a coffered arch, with a kneeling woman inside and an apron with a winged skull.

In the E end is a large wall monument to Dame Mary Baynton d. 1677 and her 2 sons: Baroque style, an expressive tryptych of the 2 men kneeling on pedestals hold drapes from a baldacchino above their mother, kneeling in a niche

STAINED GLASS: good quality and quantity, though not original, much was bought by the Corporation at the sale of Fonthill in 1823: second window in N aisle from Ecouen, 1550

E window 2 French saints, C15

in Poyntz chapel are 3 roundels of C15

S aisle chapel has 24 German and Flemish roundels of C16

HISTORICAL NOTE: the chapel is the only surviving part of the Hospital of St Mark, founded in 1220.

It was granted to the Corporation of Bristol in 1539.

Until its restoration in 1889, carved screens and arcades of a style similar to the reredos extended along the sides of the nave and in front of the entrance.

The Poyntz chantry chapel, uncompleted in 1520 on the death of Sir Robert Poyntz of Iron Acton, is a very fine example of late Perpendicular Gothic.

The magnificent sequence of monuments forms an important element of the interior.