page_title: St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury
section_title: Arcades and furnishings
hierarchical_section_title: St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury / Architecture / Interior / Arcades and furnishings
caption_attribution_description: English: The choir, organ and pulpit of St Mary's Church in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.
context_page_description: St Mary's Church is a redundant Anglican church in St Mary's Place, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and is under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, the Trust designated St Mary's as its first Conservation Church in 2015. It is the largest church in Shrewsbury. Clifton-Taylor includes the church in his list of 'best' English parish churches.
context_section_description: In the opinion of the architectural historians John Newman and Nikolaus Pevsner, the nave arcades are "the finest piece of architecture in the church", each consisting of four wide bays, with semicircular arches. The oak ceiling of the nave has 15th-century carvings depicting birds, animals and angels. The Trinity Chapel contains a triple sedilia. The stone mensa of the medieval high altar was excavated in 1870 and placed below the present altar, which shares the same dimensions. The riddel posts and English Altar were erected during the remodeling of the sanctuary by Sir Charles Archibald Nicholson in 1931. The Altar frontals were worked and embroidered by Beatrix Mary Pennyman, wife of the vicar, during the First World War. The octagonal font is Perpendicular, and is carved with arcading and (now headless) angels, The pulpit dates from 1853, it is polygonal, in stone, and designed by S. Poultney Smith. The floor of the church is tiled. The organ case dates from 1729 and was designed by John Harris and John Byfield. The canopied clergy stall of 1897 was designed by C. E. Kempe; it was formerly in the chapel of Shrewsbury School. In 1729 Harris and Byfield built a new three-manual organ to replace an earlier organ. This was rebuilt and enlarged in 1847 by Gray and Davison. The present four-manual organ dates from 1912. There is a ring of ten bells, eight of which were cast in 1775 by Pack and Chapman at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and the other two in by 1911 by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough.
  St Mary's bells are inscribed thus; 
  " We were all fixed here by voluntary subscription, in the year 1775."
  " Happiness to all worthy contributors."
  " Success to the Worshipful Company of Drapers."
  " Unanimity and welfare to all the inhabitants of Salop."
  " Peace and Felicity to this Church and Nation."
  " Prosperity to St. Mary's Parish."
  " E. Blakeway, M.A., Minister, J. Watkins, J. Warren, E. Elsmere, H. Kent, Churchwardens."
  " May all whom I summon to their grave, enjoy everlasting bliss."
  To each inscription is added, " Pack & Chapman, London, Fecit 1775." An old bell from Battlefield, cast by Abraham Rudhall of Gloucester, was hung in a turret at the south-west angle of the chancel as a sanctus bell in 1871. The two treble bells have again been re-cast, and now bear the following inscriptions:-
  " W. G. Pennyman, Vicar. Edw. Burd , Wm. Alltree, A. E. Lloyd Oswell, H. Steward, Churchwardens."
  " Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be."
caption: The choir, organ, pulpit and stained glass windows
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