A look at the history of St Mary’s Church, Beverley, with Dr Emma Wells

St Mary’s Church, Beverley in East Yorkshire, is very much the town’s church—shaped not by bishops or monasteries, but by the people who lived, traded, and worshipped around it. Founded c.1120 as a chapel dependent on Beverley Minster, St Mary’s served the growing community at the north end of the medieval town. From the outset, it was built and sustained by local wealth, particularly that of merchants and trade guilds, and its remarkable scale reflects Beverley’s importance as one of England’s largest towns in the Middle Ages.

Although St Mary’s had modest Norman beginnings, its fabric today tells a far more complex story. The church developed gradually, with major rebuilding campaigns between the 13th and 15th centuries. The chancel and transept chapels date from around 1280, while above St Michael’s Chapel lie the extraordinary Priest’s Rooms, created in the early 14th century.

The most dramatic transformation came in the late 14th century, when the nave clerestory was added. Begun c.1380, these soaring windows almost doubled the height of the church and flooded the interior with light. This rebuilding, in the Decorated and Perpendicular Gothic styles, gave St Mary’s its sense of spaciousness and elegance, praised centuries later by John Betjeman for the ‘perfection of its proportions’.

Disaster struck in 1520 when the tower collapsed, destroying much of the western nave. The rebuilding that followed was swift and ambitious, completed within four years. Much of what appears medieval on the west end is therefore a Tudor achievement, commemorated by carvings of local benefactors and by the great font dated 1531.

St Mary’s interior is as rich in detail. Its 625 carved ceiling bosses are among the finest in England, while the twenty-eight 15th-century misericords depict everything from angels and Green Men to animals and legendary scenes. Particularly famous is the carved pilgrim rabbit near the sacristy door, sometimes linked to Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit.

Restored sensitively in the 19th century by architects such as A.W.N. Pugin and Sir George Gilbert Scott, St Mary’s remains a living church.

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