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

Parish Church. Largely late C13 to early C14, but with parts of the fabric considerably earlier. Granite and sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings. West tower and spire, nave with clerestory and 2 aisles, chancel. The tower is coursed granite rubble with white ashlar dressings. 3 stages, with angle buttresses, and perpendicular west doorway with tall 2 light window above. Clock and square latticed stonework opening to 2nd stage. Paired traceried lights to bell chamber above. Quatrefoil lozenge frieze and corbel table. Embattle parapet. Tall and very slender needle spire recessed above, in white stone. Crockets on all the angles and 3 tiers of lucarnes, the lowest a triple light opening with a triangular head and geometric tracery. All have crocketted gables. South aisle is coursed sandstone rubble, with a Y-traceried west window, almost round arched, with corbel heads. Its south wall is rendered and buttressed, some of the buttresses clearly relatively recent additions. South door in low pitched porch. Decorated early C14 tracery to the 3 windows, uncusped 3 light ogees, with stone corbel heads: some tracery renewed. Stone plinth and eaves cornice. Perpendicular clerestory is coursed granite rubble and the 3 light windows have hood moulds and a concave chamfer or splay. Impression of earlier steeply pitched chancery roof in its east wall. Chancel is the earliest part of the fabric: coursed granite rubble or cobble, with 2 decorated traceried lights with corbel heads in south wall. Its east wall is rendered over rubble, and there is a fragment of sill course cut by the east window which is 3 lancets. In the north wall, one decorated window and one small round arched opening, late Saxon or early Norman, with the arched head cut from a single stone. Its sill is part of a band which is continuous across the north wall, and which would have linked with the fragment on the east wall, suggesting that the east wall was partially rebuilt when its window was inserted and that the main fabric of the chancel is late Saxon or early Norman. North east angle of nave has big rough quoins in its lower section. Buttressed north aisle with hoodmoulds with corbel heads to its 3 windows which have quatrefoil above 3 trefoiled lights. North doorway has a moulded ogee archway on triple chamfered piers.
Inside, a nave arcade of 4 bays, round piers and double chamfered arches: circular capitals to south, some nail head decoration to north: north east respond cut away partially. West bay filled by low modern wood partitions. Blocked in triple chamfered arch to tower, and above it the impression of the earlier steeply pitched nave roof. Nave roof is perpendicular: moulded tie beams have ornately carved and picturesque central bosses: beasts etc. Smaller foliate bosses by purlins. Aisle roofs are a rougher construction. Wide early C14 double chamfered chancel arch. Doorway to former rood to north. Perpendicular wood chancel screen with traceried openwork upper panels above a vine frieze and lower panels with foliate tracery pattern, 3 each side of a central finely worked archway. Chancel walls are exposed rubble, Piscina to south, aumbrey to north. Both south windows are contained in full height recesses. Deep single splay to the earlier north window. Low pitched perpendicular timber roof with moulded tie beams.
Plain front, probably C13: a heavy round basin on a round stem. Stained glass in chancel, the east window of 1918 in the style of Burne Jones, two others in the chancel of the 1920?s. Wall memorial tablet below north east arcade respond: 1586, carved inscription and a rampant lion. Brass memorial to Margaret Bury, d 1633.