The church of ST. MARY, Lower Slaughter

For details of Church services, parish news and events please click here

St Marys is a building of stone with a Cotswold stone roof, comprising chancel, nave, north aisle, organ chamber, and vestry, and a western tower with spire, was almost completely rebuilt in 1867 by the lord of the manor, Charles Shapland Whitmore, (fn. 201) in the Early English and Decorated styles. It contains, however, an early 13th-century arcade of four bays and a piscina of the same period. 

The arches of the arcade are of two chamfered orders supported on plain round columns with octagonal scalloped cushion capitals; the easternmost bay may be a 19th-century copy. The piscina has a semi-octagonal projecting basin, scalloped inside. The arcade suggests that the rebuilding was roughly to the plan of the earlier church, and c. 1700 the church had a north aisle and a western tower with a saddleback roof. By 1851 there was a gallery.

 

The church contains monuments, from the late 17th century, to members of the Whitmore family buried in the north aisle. 

Of the six bells, one is thought to be by Robert Hendley of Gloucester, two are by Edward Neale of Burford, 1683, and three were made in 1866. The plate includes a chalice and paten cover of 1576. Baptisms, marriages, and burials at Lower Slaughter were entered in the registers of Bourton-on-the-Water until 1813.