Morden (St. Mary)

St. Mary's Church, Morden, Dorset

St Mary's Church can be found in a prominent position on the side of a hill in the hamlet of East Morden. The external fabric is almost entirely built of Heathstone, a ferruginous sandstone of Palaeogene (Lower Tertiary) age found locally.

Architecturally, Newman and Pevsner describe this church as "a mystery." Church documentation and other authorities (Goodhart-Rendel and the RCHM) had attributed it to Joseph Seller, 1873. Newman and Pevsner, however, say that the "church looks as if Seller, eighty then, still built as he had done thirty or forty year before. The proportions of the three doorways alone and the treatment of the abaci [flat slabs on the top of capitals] are evidence enough of the early C19 style." The "incorrect Dec" tracery in the windows and the general proportions of the church also seemed to rule out 1873 (at least to Newman or Pevsner). At the back of the church, two 1597 monuments to the Erle family are erected each side of the ringing chamber entrance.

Sources:

• John Hutchins, The history and antiquities of the County of Dorset, 3rd ed., edited by William Shipp and James Whitworth Hodson, Westminster: J.B. Nichols and Sons, 1861-1873.
• Arthur Mee, ed., Dorset: Thomas Hardy's country. The King's England. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1939, pp. 161-162.
• John Newman and Nikolaus Pevsner, The buildings of England: Dorset. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972, p. 297.
• Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), An inventory of historical monuments in the County of Dorset, Vol. 2, South-East Dorset. London: HMSO, 1970, pt. 1, pp. 160-161.

Bells:

5, 8-1-2 (420kg) in G.

St. Mary's Church, Morden, Dorset (Photograph courtesy of Terence Alden)

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Maintained by Michael Day, Last updated: 7 January 2013.