St Mary the Virgin, Gillingham, Dorset

About

St Mary's Church is the parish church for the town of Gillingham in the Blackmore Vale in the north of Dorset. The church is in the Diocese of Salisbury in the Church of England, and part of the Anglican Communion.

There is believed to have been a Christian presence in the area since Anglo-Saxon days, evidence being a stone with a complicated interlaced pattern, now in the museum, which is believed to be the remains of a 9th-century cross – either a preaching cross or a grave marker. But most of the current building, particularly the nave, dates from an early Victorian rebuild. The chancel (choir and sanctuary) however, is older; the five great pointed windows with their trefoil heads, which stand on the south side of the chancel, show that it was built in the Decorated Gothic style popular in the 14th century. On the north wall of the chancel, only two feet above the floor, can be seen the archway of an Easter Sepulchre.

Some bench ends, a screen at the east end of the north aisle, and the font, are in the Perpendicular Gothic style of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Chapel of the Good Shepherd was given by Mr and Mrs Carlton Cross in memory of their son who was killed in France...