page_title: St Mary's Church, Fordingbridge
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: St Mary's Church, Fordingbridge / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Font, Church of St Mary the Virgin, Fordingbridge The octagonal font has a Purbeck marble bowl much damaged by exposure to the weather, with two trefoiled panels on each face. The stem is circular and the base octagonal; it probably dates from the early part of the 14th century.
context_page_description: St Mary's Church, Fordingbridge is a 12th–13th-century church in Hampshire, England. It was restored in the 19th century.
context_section_description: A church is mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1086. It was rebuilt by the Normans around 1150 and would then have been an open space internally. The North Chapel and north and south aisles were added around 1230. Within another 100 years the clerestory had been added, the tower raised (in modern times housing 8 bells plus a Sanctus bell) and the North Chapel extended. The Chapel has a straight tie beam truss roof of chestnut that masquerades as a hammerbeam roof.
  Lands in Fordingbridge and the advowson of the church were granted to King's College, Cambridge in 1447 by Henry VI, after being given to the Crown by Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham.  
  Externally the Church has changed little since the 16th century although originally the exterior flint work would have been plastered like one of its neighbours, St Mary, Breamore. Internally the Church looks much as it did after the 1840 renovation except for the addition of the organ in 1887 and the reredos in 1820.
  The Church once had a "three-decker" pulpit but this has  been removed. In very recent years the Victorian pews were replaced by chairs to facilitate using the space much more flexibly. In 2000 a new window was commissioned in the south aisle to commemorate the millennium. Also two of the bells were sent to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry to be recast and re-tuned.
caption: The font, thought to be early 14th-century
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