This is a shame because it sounds quite interesting inside, which it certainly isn't outside, being essentially a Victorian rebuild.
ST MARY. Remarkably large for its environment. The chancel, five bays long, is C14, the rest is of 1838-9, except for the W tower and the S chapel and vestries, the former by C. E. Ponting, 1908-9, the latter by W. D. Caroe, 1921. The latter, with its ornate facade inside towards the S aisle, is the best piece of the church. Ponting’s tower with its pretty doorway and Somerset tracery in the bell-openings comes second, the rest (by Walker) is indifferent, and the pedimental gables of the transepts are as uninformed as any Georgian Gothic and heavier. The N chancel chapel, though of c.1840, replaces a C14 chapel — cf. the responds of the two-bay arcade with their ballflower capitals, an unusual motif. Ballflower also outside the chancel. The Purbeck pier of the chapel arcade is of course C19.* - FONT. Perp, octagonal, with paterae motifs. - REREDOS. 1925-6. Large relief of the Virgin with the Magi and the Shepherds. Designed by H. P. Burke Downing and made by Nathaniel Hitch, who also worked on Westminster Abbey and Truro Cathedral. - BENCHES. Coarse, Perp, straight-topped ends; also some poppy-heads. - PLATE. Cup, 1574, with Cover; Cup, 1633; Paten on foot, 1663; Flagon, 1681; Paten on foot, 1714;F1agon, 1735. - MONUMENTS. The Rev. John Jesop d. 1625 and Dr Thomas Jesop. Probably not in the original state. Two recumbent effigies, a wall arch above the one, a totally free-standing arch above the other. Four obelisks, of which three are ex situ. - Henry Dirdoe d. 1724. By John Bastard of Blandford. Large, with three putto-heads at the top below a curved pediment. - Frances Dirdoe d. 1733. Standing monument with a large relief panel of three standing figures.** Very good. Whom would it be by ? - Edward Read d. 1779. By Francis Lancashire. Son of Bath. Another large tablet.
* Mr Lloyd disagrees with ‘of course’. He argues that there may well have been a medieval precedent.
** The figures represent Mrs Dirdoe and her sisters: cf. the inscription (G. McHardy).
GILLINGHAM. It is the most northern town in Dorset, two miles from Wiltshire and two from Somerset. It has two fine houses (Thorngrove in a park and Wyke Hall transformed from a Tudor house in our own time), and its old bridge over the River Shreen, close by the peace memorial, comes into a Constable picture.
The town has lost much of its ancient beauty, but it has a name from the history of a thousand years. It is Slaughter’s Gate, the place where Edmund Ironside overtook the fleeing Danes after defeating Canute, and there is a proud memory of a day in 1042 when a Witenagemot was held at Gillingham at which the Confessor was elected King. Sir Walter Raleigh was ranger of the forest here, and our kings had a Gillingham Palace, but Gillingham used the last of its stones to mend the roads. So it used the stones of its old church to build its new one a hundred years ago.
Some things are left from the old church, however. There is the tomb of two Jessop brothers, their marble figures with pointed beards, ruffs, and academic gowns lying with clasped hands side by side. One was the vicar, the other was the town’s physician in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and often their signatures appear in the register attached to licences for parishioners to eat meat in Lent or on Friday “because of infirmitie of bodye.” Near by is a marble monument reaching nearly to the roof and showing beautiful draped figures of three young women. We see Frances Dirdoe, who died at 33 in 1733, standing between her sisters Rebecca and Rachel. She was the youngest of 15 children, and was the last of her family.
Three of the vicars have a claim to remembrance: Henry Deane for ministering here for half of the 19th century; Richard Elys of the 15th century, “learned enough to calculate the eclipses from the Creation”; and John Craig, whose mathematics earned for him the esteem of Sir Isaac Newton. Two traceried windows from the church have been built into the school which faces it. The grammar school, founded in 1516, is now housed on a hill outside the town. We understand that one of its pupils was the famous Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon, historian of the Civil War; and Robert Frampton, the Pimperne boy who became Bishop of Gloucester, was its headmaster. He was a stern Royalist, and in the days when he had 100 boys at this school he is said to have come to blows with a Parliamentary officer. Pepys liked his sermons, saying that one of them was the best he had ever heard, and adding: “The truth is he preaches the most like an apostle that ever I heard man, and it was much the best time that I ever spent in my life at church.”
The town has lost much of its ancient beauty, but it has a name from the history of a thousand years. It is Slaughter’s Gate, the place where Edmund Ironside overtook the fleeing Danes after defeating Canute, and there is a proud memory of a day in 1042 when a Witenagemot was held at Gillingham at which the Confessor was elected King. Sir Walter Raleigh was ranger of the forest here, and our kings had a Gillingham Palace, but Gillingham used the last of its stones to mend the roads. So it used the stones of its old church to build its new one a hundred years ago.
Some things are left from the old church, however. There is the tomb of two Jessop brothers, their marble figures with pointed beards, ruffs, and academic gowns lying with clasped hands side by side. One was the vicar, the other was the town’s physician in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and often their signatures appear in the register attached to licences for parishioners to eat meat in Lent or on Friday “because of infirmitie of bodye.” Near by is a marble monument reaching nearly to the roof and showing beautiful draped figures of three young women. We see Frances Dirdoe, who died at 33 in 1733, standing between her sisters Rebecca and Rachel. She was the youngest of 15 children, and was the last of her family.
Three of the vicars have a claim to remembrance: Henry Deane for ministering here for half of the 19th century; Richard Elys of the 15th century, “learned enough to calculate the eclipses from the Creation”; and John Craig, whose mathematics earned for him the esteem of Sir Isaac Newton. Two traceried windows from the church have been built into the school which faces it. The grammar school, founded in 1516, is now housed on a hill outside the town. We understand that one of its pupils was the famous Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon, historian of the Civil War; and Robert Frampton, the Pimperne boy who became Bishop of Gloucester, was its headmaster. He was a stern Royalist, and in the days when he had 100 boys at this school he is said to have come to blows with a Parliamentary officer. Pepys liked his sermons, saying that one of them was the best he had ever heard, and adding: “The truth is he preaches the most like an apostle that ever I heard man, and it was much the best time that I ever spent in my life at church.”
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