Church of St Mary, Main Street, Barkby (Grade I)

Parish Church. Mainly late C13, with some conservation Victorian restoration work. Mainly ironstone but some use of granite in the C19 work. West tower and spire, nave with 2 aisles and clerestory, chancel. Tall tower of 4 stages, and 2nd is ashlar, and a different type of stone. Slight angle buttresses. West doorway with paired shafts and hood mould. Single light with shafts in second stage, paired traceried many shafted lights with quatrefoils to bell chamber in top stage. Parapet frieze with grotesque masks etc. Tall broach spire (C14) with paired foiled lucarnes and 2 quatrefoil frieze bands. South aisle is a C19 restoration, renewing existing features, and built of granite rubble with limestone sill course and window tracery. The tracery of the 3 principal windows, and the one above the south doorway, represent a fine collection of decorated tracery forms. Frieze with geometric masks at eaves level. South door in coped gabled porch, the archway a continuous moulded shaft, no capitals. Aisle is wide and has a pitched roof with coped gables. Clerestory is ironstone rubble with some white ashlar work, and with 3 light windows. Chancel is earlier in the C13 than the rest of the fabric, and is built of small ironstone rubble. North and south sides are identically arranged, with small shuttered low side window to west, then paired lancets, a small doorway, and a Y traceried window. East window also has Y-tracery, and is rather narrow. Victorian granite vestry to north. Moulded stone eaves cornice, and heightening in brick. Angle buttresses to the south east, with Victorian pinnacle. North aisle is buttressed ironstone rubble or cobble stone. Its east window has five foiled lancets and a segment of circle cutting them, in a squared head with stilted hoodmould. Was this the original design, or has the window been subsequently cut through? There is some evidence that the roof pitch of the aisle may have been changed. Of the north windows, each is of a different and ornate decorated design, the easternmost for instance, has three foiled lancets with 2 quatrefoiled squares above. Sill course forms hoodmould to north doorway. Inside, the church gives the impression of great space; both the aisles and the chancel are rather wide, and the structure is also high. Nave of 4 bays, a late C13 arcade of triple chamfered arches on octagonal piers. Roof is perhaps C15 - tie beams with tracery panels above, low pitched. C18 gallery to west on slim wooden columns and with elegant cantilevered staircase. It contains a gothic organ case of 1899and over it is a narrow musicians gallery. Wide perpendicular chancel arch, forming a shallow curve, with traces of painted decoration on the mouldings. 2 light traceried windows above the chancel arch.
Various C18 and early C19 memorials to members of the Pochin family in the north aisle. One, to Charlotte Pochin, d 1732 is by Rysbrack. Hatchments also in north aisle. Diminutive font, possibly C18. An octagonal basin on an octagonal shaft; very elegantly moulded and proportioned. Old working clock mechanism in south aisle, removed there from the tower.