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Summary - not yet available

Monument Type(s):

• CHURCH (12th century to Modern - 1101 AD to 2050 AD)

Protected Status:

• Listed Building (I) 48937: St Marys Church

Full description

R1. Parish Church of St Mary stands in the S part of an irregularly shaped churchyard whose boundary follows the 50 ft contour. The present churchyard incorporates on the E & N the sites of houses which were removed in 1859. The church consists of chancel with crypt, nave with aisles, N & S porches, W tower and SW vestry. The walls are of field stones, flint rubble, with limestone dressings, some Barnack, some of which are reused; except for the lower part of the nave piers, the interior is of clunch. The roofs are covered with lead and the porches are tiled.
C12, the earliest parts of the fabric are the lower two stages of the tower which are C12; the scale of this survival points to a church of considerable size.
C14, in the C14 a S aisle was built or partly built: only the W section of the present aisle survives of this date.
C15, a new nave and chancel were eventually started in the mid C15.The tower was heightened by three additional stages and strengthened by buttresses; the SW vestry, probably a treasury originally, is integral with these alterations to the tower. The arms in the chancel of John Higham, vicar 1439 - 1467, indicate a general date for the building of the church, and constructional features suggest that the progress of building was sporadic; an inscription over the chancel arch states specifically that the E wall and the roof of the nave were completed in 1464. The stylistic affinities between the window tracery at Burwell and in the side-chapels of King's College Chapel lend support to the traditional attribution of the work to Reginald Ely. Also at Burwell is a C15 vaulted undercroft beneath the high altar and reached by a stair on the N of the chancel, this may have been accommodation for a hermitic priest allowed to celebrate at the high altar.
C18, the spirelet is dated 1799.
C19, considerable restorations were undertaken in the C19, a major one in 1862 & another to the chancel in 1877.
Furniture and fittings: these include fragments of a C13 coffin lid (in the churchyard), a Medieval dial scratched on a buttress, a C15 font, a C15 door (to the SW vestry) and, in the N aisle, a C15 painting of St Christopher, largely obliterated. In the chancel is a sedile. Several C15 piscinas and other recesses are described in R1. The lower part of the rood screen is C15 but the screen was heavily restored in 1877. Panelling against the side walls of the chancel incorporates C15 work, as do the modern stalls. A palimpsest brass described and ill in R1, the obverse of which shows the figure of a priest, of the mid C16, under a slightly earlier canopy, may be to John Lawrence de Wardeboys, last Abbot of Ramsey. In the W tower is a brass indent for the lower part of a figure with inscription plate and children, perhaps C16, and a floor slab of William Pamplin records a late C16 benefaction. Plate includes a C16 cup, ill R1. In the N aisle are C17 monuments to Thomas Gerard and his wife Alice Elliot and to William Russell and an infant daughter, both ill R1. Also ill R1 is a C17 tomb chest with effigy in Greenwich armour, of Lee Cotton. For an architectural description of the church, together with a fuller description of fittings, see R1.
R5. There is contradictory and inconclusive evidence for a late Saxon minster at Burwell.
R6. This leaflet provides detailed descriptions of the various sections on the Church of St. Mary at Burwell. Black and white photographs are included and a brief history is discussed. In the appendix the details of the church register are noted, church plate is accounted for, bequests are discussed and a list of Vicars is provided.

Sources and further reading

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