Church of St Mary, Market Lavington

The Church of St Mary, sometimes known as St Mary of the Assumption, is the Anglican parish church of Market Lavington, a village in Wiltshire, in the Diocese of Salisbury. A church of the thirteenth century, or perhaps even earlier, it is a Grade I listed building of considerable historic and architectural interest — a large and venerable medieval church standing at the heart of the village, whose long story is interwoven with some of the great families and religious houses of the Middle Ages.

Traces of Norman work in the fabric suggest that there may have been a twelfth-century church on the site, or even an earlier one. The history of the living begins in earnest in the early thirteenth century, when the division of the local manor between the de la Mare and Rochelle families led to long disputes over the advowson — the right to appoint the rector. In 1220 Peter de la Mare put forward his claim, but when he presented his brother the bishop refused to accept him, on the grounds that he was illiterate. The advowson passed through marriage and inheritance over the following century, and in 1354 the second William Montagu, Earl of Salisbury, granted it to William of Edington, Bishop of Winchester, who transferred it to the college of Bonhommes he had founded at Edington Priory. The patronage remained with Edington until the Dissolution, after which, in 1546, it was granted to Christ Church, Oxford.

In 1343–44 Peter de la Mare, lord of the manor later known as Lavington Baynton, endowed a chantry chapel in the church, where a priest was to celebrate divine service every day — originally dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and later to St Catherine and St Margaret. Chaplains served the chantry until it was dissolved after 1544, and architectural evidence suggests it may have occupied the eastern end of the north aisle.

The building itself grew over the medieval centuries. The chancel, probably the oldest part, dates from around 1300, and the east and west windows from the late thirteenth century, showing that the nave had reached its present length by then. Much of the rest of the nave, with its south porch, the chancel and the north vestry are of various fourteenth-century dates, while the west tower — though perhaps begun earlier — has mostly fifteenth-century decorative features, the most notable being the panelled niche on its west front that frames both the doorway and the window. The church is built of squared stone and sarsen rubble, with aisles, clerestory and a south porch.

The church was restored in 1864 under the direction of the prominent architect Ewan Christian, who rebuilt the nave roof and parts of the aisle walls and renewed the chancel; an organ chamber and choir vestry were added to the south in 1910, when the east wall was rebuilt. Inside, the three-bay arcades are of unequal width, and a fourteenth-century stair survives that once led to a rood loft, though neither screen nor loft remains. The church preserves many monuments, especially to the Sainsbury family — among them one to Thomas Sainsbury, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1786. The tower, which held four bells and a sanctus bell in 1553, now has a ring of six, all recast in 1876, and the parish registers survive complete from 1673.

Worship has continued here through the centuries: in 1676 the parish was said to have 476 worshippers, and the religious census of 1851 recorded congregations of 300 in the morning and 250 in the evening. The neighbouring community of Easterton became a separate parish with its own church in 1874, before the two were reunited in 1962.

From its possibly Norman beginnings, through its medieval building and its connections with the de la Mares, the Earls of Salisbury and Edington Priory, to its Victorian restoration and its Sainsbury monuments, the Church of St Mary, Market Lavington, remains a fine and historic parish church — a building that gathers the long history of its Wiltshire village within its ancient walls, and continues to serve the community in the Diocese of Salisbury today.