Listed Building: CHURCH OF ST MARY (412520)

POOLE SZ0291 LONGFLEET ROAD, Longfleet 958-1/14/241 (South side) Church of St Mary II Church. 1830-33. By Edward Blore. Chancel added 1863 by GE Street. W end with S porch, tower and spire added 1883 by GR Crickmay & Son of Weymouth. Chancel lengthened and vestries added 1893, probably by same architects. Nave rebuilt 1914-15 with aisles and transepts by Herbert Kendell of Poole. N transept converted to parish room and other alterations made late C20. Coursed squared, rock-faced Purbeck stone with Bath stone dressings and plain-tile roofs. PLAN: chancel with vestries to N, N & S transepts, aisled nave, SW porch and NW tower with spire. First and Second Pointed styles. EXTERIOR: chancel has 3 bays and 3-light E window with Geometrical tracery including large and small trefoils to head and cinquefoiled head to central light, and 2-light windows to S, that to centre with quatrefoil in vesica piscis to head, those either side with cusped Y-tracery, quatrefoil to head and trefoils above outer lights; all have hoodmoulds. Range of vestries to N side of chancel with twin gabled roofs chamfered doorway to right, small paired and single cusped 1-light windows with hoodmoulding continued as string course. Transepts have similar arrangement of 2-light window either side of central offset buttress to gable end walls, with cusped Y-tracery and hoodmoulds, and lancet windows to sides with hoodmoulds and label stops. S transept has in addition a chamfered side doorway with hoodmould and label stops, and octagonal stone stack for basement boiler room. Nave has clerestorey with 3 bays of 3-light windows with cusped intersecting tracery. Aisles have paired lancet windows. S aisle has porch to westernmost bay which has doorway, now blocked, with 2 orders of shafts, double keel-moulded head, tympanum with blank circle and lintel moulding and hoodmould; flanking buttresses to front and group of 3 small cusped 1-light windows to S side with a single hoodmould continued as string course. Nave has 3-light W window with Geometrical tracery of large cinquefoiled circle to head, quatrefoiled circles above outer lights and hoodmould continued as string course. A group of 4 cusped 1-light windows below lighting baptistery with single hoodmould continued as string course and offset buttress to right side of front. NW tower to left of W end of nave is approx 35m high with spire and has 4 stages, offset angle buttresses, string courses and high chamfered plinth. Porch doorway to N side has 3 orders of shafts, triple keel-moulded head, tympanum with blank quatrefoil and hoodmould with carved head of King to left label and bishop to right label stop. Diagonally positioned stair turret doorway between NW angle buttresses has Caernarvon-arched head and stone gablet with carved dragon kneelers to coping and trefoil to apex. 3 stepped lancet windows to W side lighting stair with string course forming continuous stepped hoodmould. Groups of 3 cusped 1-light windows to W side of next stage. Clock faces to W and N sides of 3rd stage framed by gabled hoodmoulds continued as string courses. Pairs of tall bell-chamber windows to top stage with trefoil-headed lights, quatrefoils to heads and double hoodmoulds with label stops. Corbel table and moulded cornice to top of tower and octagonal pinnacles to angles to base of broaches which have smaller diagonal pinnacles to top of broaches at same level of spires single tier of lucarnes to cardinal directions. Church has chamfered plinths, string courses at cill level of windows and stone-coped gables with kneelers, offset buttresses flanking E end and between bays. INTERIOR: nave has 3-bay arcades with double-chamfered arches dying into square chamfered piers. Boarded waggon roof resting on wall shafts. Chancel has 2-seat sedilia with moulded trefoiled heads resting on central shaft with foliage capital. Carved wood reredos to High Altar of 1894. Pulpit of carved wood with figures of Saints and Prophets. STAINED GLASS: a variety of stained-glass windows including 4 small windows to baptistery at W end showing 4 Evangelists erected 1893 by Cakebread and Robey, fine W window above of 1920 by Clayton and Bell depicting Christ in Judgement, a First World War memorial and a window in S transept described by Canon Basil Clarke as "a comic window (by, we imagine, Bacon) in the S transept of a soldier waking up to find himself in Heaven" and a good E window. Other stained-glass windows in transepts. In spite of a surprisingly complicated development, the church is an effective composition, whose major accent, the NW tower and spire, is one of Poole's most important landmarks. (Buildings of England: Pevsner N & Newman J: Dorset: London: 1972-: 319; Clarke, Canon B: Mss Notes: 1957-1959; Salisbury Diocesan Gazette: 1893-: 212; Post Office Directory: Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset: 1875-; Kelly's Directory: Dorset: 1911-1920). Listing NGR: SZ0210191452

Record last edited

Mar 31 2011 3:52AM