The Church of St Mary and St Giles

The Church of St Mary and St. Giles
www.mkanglocatholic.org.uk

The Church of St Mary and St Giles, Stony Stratford was originally built as the chapel of ease for the west side of town. Another church, since demolished, served the east side. Throughout the middle ages Stony was divided into two by Watling Street, one half lying in Calverton parish on the west side, the other half in the parish of Wolverton on the east side. The great fire in 1742 seems to have badly damaged both churches, sparing only their towers. That is all that survives of the church of St Marys Magdalen on the east side. It was decided not to rebuild that church, and have one church for the whole town - now St Mary and St Giles. The fifteenth century tower of the church with its tall battlemounted parapet is still the most prominent landmark of the town.

Photograph copyright
Chris Weaving,
Tel 07074 564131

The body of the church was rebuilt in 1776-7 to the designs of the brilliant Warwick architect Francis Hiorne. He chose to rebuild in the Gothic style, perhaps to harmonise with the existing tower. He worked in his own, highly original version of the style. The chapel and vestry on the north side of the east end, were added in 1892 to the designs of local architect Edward Swinfen Harris. The interior is rather bare since fire damage in 1964 and subsequent re-ordering. The extremely slender piers which divide the church into nave and aisles, with their clustered shafts, are Francis Hiorne's, and very like those of his Tetbury church in Gloucestershire. The timber vaulting is also probably substantially eighteenth century. Alas, no box pews or any other fittings survive of the original interior.

There is a good stained glass window by Kempe in the tower vestibule and a complete set of windows in the lower tier of windows in the body of the church, dating from the late 1880s and the 1890s, by Nathaniel Westlake, very comparable to some of his work in the great east window of Holy Trinity, Wolverton.