An Ancient Church Looks to Secure its Future

A visitor passing through an average small, sleepy village in Lincolnshire usually would be safe in assuming that it is virtually indistinguishable from the county's numerous other small, sleepy villages. If the visitor passed through Stow with this assumption, however, he or she would be wrong and would risk missing St. Mary's Church, an exceptionally significant treasure.

Considered to be one of England's oldest parish churches, St. Mary's origins lie in the seventh century, when it was in the ancient diocese of Lindsey, part of the small Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the same name. Some historians believe that Stow was the location of the cathedral for this diocese at that time. The church did, however, serve as the minster, or mother church, for the Lincolnshire diocese of the Bishop of Dorchester from the late-tenth to late-eleventh century, until Lincoln became the seat of the first bishop of Lincoln, whose diocese included Stow.

Nothing remains from the earliest church on the site. It is recorded that Danes burned whatever was there in 870. The earliest surviving elements of the church date to the late Anglo-Saxon period. The late-Saxon arches in the crossing are said to be the tallest surviving pre-Conquest arches in England. In the middle of the eleventh century Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife, Lady Godiva, endowed and enriched the church. In the fifteenth century, the Saxon tower was partly demolished and a new one built, though the Saxon arches in the crossing were kept, enclosed by the new Gothic structure.

John Loughborough Pearson, the famous Victorian architect, restored the church in the 1860s, including rebuilding the Norman vaulting in the choir and restoring the roof to its original pitch, which had been altered in the fifteenth century.

The roof is the source of the most pressing problems for the church today, and was the primary reason for the inclusion of St. Mary's on the 2006 World Monuments Watch. While some internal elements require conservation, the building is in need of weatherproofing before anything on the inside can be addressed. Water infiltration was clearly visible at several locations when I was there, including a corner right near medieval wooden pews. A grant from WMF addressed some of these issues, but more funds are needed to complete the work and ensure the future of this exceptional parish church.