St Mary's Church, Ilmington

St Mary's Church is the parish church of Ilmington, a village under the north end of the Cotswold hills about 3.5 miles north-west of Shipston-on-Stour. Its nave and the lower part of its tower are of the mid twelfth century, and its twentieth-century oak pews, by Robert Thompson, the Mouseman of Kilburn, hide eleven carved mice. It is listed Grade I and open every day.

History

St Mary's has been a place of worship since Norman times, built of limestone which, the parish says, was quarried from the surrounding hills. The listing records work of the mid twelfth century, then alterations in the late twelfth, early thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and restorations in 1846, 1911 and 1936.

Norman and medieval

The nave of three bays and the lower two stages of the west tower are mid twelfth century. The tower has broad flat buttresses and round-headed lancet windows, and round-headed arches open into the chancel and the tower. The chancel was rebuilt in the early thirteenth century, the north transept is of that century, enlarged in the fifteenth, and the clerestory was added late in the fourteenth. In the fifteenth century the tower gained its top stage, with a castellated parapet and gargoyles, and the church its roofs. The south porch is early sixteenth century. The south transept was almost wholly rebuilt in the nineteenth century.

The Mouseman's pews

In the twentieth century the church was furnished with oak pews by the workshop of Robert Thompson of Kilburn in North Yorkshire, whose trademark was a small carved mouse. There are eleven of them in St Mary's, and the parish invites visitors to find them all.

What to see

Start in the south porch. Above the doorway are the remains of a twelfth-century arch with zigzag moulding, broken through by a fifteenth-century niche. Then inside:

• The mice: eleven of them carved into the pews and other oak furnishings by Thompson of Kilburn; a crib sheet helps you find them
• The chancel's priest's doorway, with stiff-leaf capitals and carved heads at the ends of its hood mould, the thirteenth-century niche arcades and the fifteenth-century sedilia
• A fifteenth-century effigy of a priest and a good sixteenth-century chest, both in the tower
• In the north transept, a stone tablet to Richard Palmer, who died in 1582, and his wife Frances, and brasses to the Brent family of 1595 to 1666 between carved Brent wyverns
• Grave slabs to Joan Canning of 1685 and Thomas Canning of 1716
• The Apple Map, an embroidered map of the village's old orchards made by the community

Outside, look up at the painted sundial on the tower's south face and the clock of 1868, and west of the tower for the base of a medieval cross, listed in its own right. A ring of six bells rings out on high days and holy days.

Visiting

St Mary's is open every day from 9am, entry is free and the parish lists it as dog friendly; a leaflet on its history is at the back of the church. The Sunday service is usually at 11am, with Holy Communion on the first and third Sundays followed by coffee and cake, and Evensong at 6pm on the fourth Sunday, A Church Near You lists; times are on the notice board in the porch. The parish does not publish access details; phone the church contact on A Church Near You if you need to know about steps. Children enjoy the mouse hunt at any time of year.

Getting there

The church is in the middle of Ilmington, by Peggy's Lane and Church Path. Walkers report free parking in the village. Stagecoach buses 51 and 51A, between Stratford-upon-Avon, Shipston-on-Stour and Moreton-in-Marsh station, call four or five times a day each way, Monday to Saturday, with none on Sunday.

On foot, the Ilmington, Ebrington Hill and Hidcote walk starts and finishes beside the church, climbing across the fields to Hidcote and coming back along the ridge over Ebrington Hill, 5.9 miles (9.5km) round.

Nearby

Up on the hill, Hidcote, the National Trust's Arts and Crafts garden, and Kiftsgate Court Gardens face each other across the lane, and the Ebrington Arms is in Ebrington, on the far side of the hill. Beyond Hidcote, St Lawrence's at Mickleton is the church at the foot of the scarp, and the Kiftsgate Stone was the meeting place of the hundred of Kiftsgate. South-east, St Edmund's in Shipston and St Martin's at Barcheston are the churches of the Stour valley.