- Church of St Mary, Witham Friary
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Church of St Mary 
Location within SomersetGeneral information Town or city Witham Friary Country England Coordinates 51°10′03″N 2°21′55″W / 51.1676°N 2.3654°W Completed c. 1200 The Church of St Mary in Witham Friary, Somerset, England dates from around 1200 and it has been designated as a Grade I listed building.[1]
The church was originally part of the priory which gave the village its name.[2] The Witham Charterhouse, a Carthusian Priory founded in 1182 by Henry II,[3] which had peripheral settlements including one at Charterhouse and possibly another at Green Ore.[4] It is reputed to be the first Carthusian house in England.[5] One of only nine Carthusian Houses, the priory did not survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries.[6] At the dissolution it was worth £227; the equivalent of £52,000 today (2006).[7]
Although the original building dates from around 1200 it was altered in a transitional style in 1828, and then rebuilt and extended 1875 by William White in "Muscular Gothic" style. It has a three-bay nave and continuous one bay apsidal chancel, built of local limestone rubble, supported on each side by four massive flying buttresses. The plastered interior is entered through a Norman style doorway. Inside the church is a scraped octagonal font dating from around 1450. The Jacobean pulpit contains medieval work and there is a royal arms of 1660 at the west end. The stained glass windows contain fragments of medieval glass, with those in the south being made by Sir Ninian Comper.
See also
- List of Grade I listed buildings in Mendip
- List of towers in Somerset
References
- ^ "Church of St Mary". Images of England. http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/details/default.aspx?id=266932. Retrieved 2007-09-02.
- ^ "Local History - Witham Friary". Somerset Larders.com. http://www.somersetlarders.com/localhistory/historypages.php?page=Witham%20Friary. Retrieved 2007-09-02.
- ^ "Witham Friary Somerset". A Vision of Britain through time. http://vision.edina.ac.uk:8698/place/place_page.jsp;jsessionid=8601E9AFB6B18E3BB3E6CC0004D0147E?p_id=13415. Retrieved 2007-09-02.
- ^ Reid, Robert Douglas (1979). Some buildings of Mendip. The Mendip Society. ISBN 0905459164.
- ^ "Witham-Friary (St Mary)". British History Online. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=51418#s11. Retrieved 2007-09-02.
- ^ "Land adjoining Gramarye, Witham Friary, Somerset." (PDF). Context One Archaeological Services. Archived from the original on 2007-08-20. http://web.archive.org/web/20070820141744/http://www.contextone.co.uk/online_reports/downloads/EVA_WFS_report.pdf. Retrieved 2007-09-02.
- ^ "Purchasing Power of British Pounds from 1264 to 2006". Measuring worth.com. http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ppoweruk/result.php?use%5B%5D=CPI&year_early=1550£71=227&shilling71=&pence71=&amount=227&year_source=1550&year_result=2006. Retrieved 2007-09-02.
Categories:- 13th-century architecture
- Grade I listed churches
- Grade I listed buildings in Somerset
- Church of England churches in Mendip
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