GeoGraph - photograph every grid square

Church of St Mary the Virgin, Madresfield

Stands opposite the primary school.
An earlier church of 12th century origin stood a short distance to the north-west of Madresfield Court The old building was taken down in 1852 and a new church erected on its site from designs by E. W. Pugin. This second church is described as 'a parallelogram with two projections on the north side’. Being erected on the surface without foundations, the building cracked and settled, and was taken down in 1866, when the present church was begun on a new site further west. It was designed by Mr. Frederick Preedy in the style of the 14th century, and was consecrated 10 November 1867. The building consists of a chancel 24 ft. 6 in. by 17 ft. 6 in. with north vestry and organ chamber, nave 50 ft. by 24 ft. 6 in., south porch, and north-west tower open to the nave, surmounted by a spire 130 ft. in height. The walls are faced with hammer-dressed Cradley stone, but red and grey ashlar is introduced to give variety of colour, and the roofs are covered with red tiles overhanging at the eaves. Everything that was worth retaining in the church of 1852 was made use of in the new building, including the east and west windows, part of the reredos, the font and the pulpit. The roof of the chancel is the entire roof of E. W. Pugin's church compressed into its present form. In the vestry is the marble basin of an 18th century font built into the wall and used as a piscina. There are mural tablets in the nave to the first and second Earls Beauchamp, and the fifth earl (d. 1866) is buried in the churchyard to the south-east of the chancel. From: 'Parishes: Madresfield', A History of the County of Worcester: volume 4 (1924), pp. 118-122.
See also Link for further information about the parish.