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St Mary

St Mary

Steeple with Tyneham

Dorset

Redundant parish church, C13 origins with a C14 porch (re-sited to current position).

Architectural Features

The south wall of the nave has a mid-C19 window of two lights in a square head in the C14 style

labels, and the north wall has a blocked C17 doorway with a chamfered lintel.

a C17 square-headed, three-light window with late-C20 glass in the west wall and in the east wall is a medieval window which has two uncusped, pointed-arched lights within a plain stone surround.

Above the doorway, is a recessed stone panel containing a carving of the Bond shield-of-arms within a chamfered surround.

The wooden pulpit incorporates some C17 fabric, and there are plain, fixed wooden pews.

The chancel gates, communion rail, patterned floor tiles and common rafter roof all date from the later C19.

Set into the east wall of the north transept is a piscina of around 1300 and above this is the remains of a small stone cross that has a much-worn inscription in incised black-lettering, possibly 'IHS orate pro nobis'.

The stone font is hexagonal with a carved wooden cover.

The wooden boarded barrel roof has decorative carved bosses, some with shields, and the cornice has motifs of flowers and fleur-de-lys.

Wall-mounted memorials include a black marble tablet with moulded freestone architrave, side scrolls and pediment of 1769

a much-restored monument of 1641 to John Williams and his wife Jane in the form of a classically-framed tablet with a panel of achievements and cartouches of arms

and three C19 canopied monuments of Caen stone to members of the Bond family.

In the chancel is a marble First World War memorial plaque.

The stained glass includes the chancel east window of 1924 by artist Martin Travers, and works, also of the early C20, by the firm of Powell & Sons (Whitefriars) Ltd. The names of the villagers displaced during the Second World War are recorded on late-C20 coloured tiles on the walls of the nave and north and south transepts.