Church of St Mary the Virgin, Aldermaston

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is the Church of England parish church of Aldermaston in Berkshire, a building of the mid-twelfth century that has gathered Norman and Jacobean work, the oldest stained glass in Berkshire, and the grave of a reputed witch into one small village churchyard at the edge of Aldermaston Court's parkland.

The Norman church was built in the mid-1100s, and its original fabric survives in the present nave. The following centuries added layer upon layer: the thirteenth century brought the chancel and the south transept that is now the Forster Chapel; the fourteenth century the steeple, along with alterations to the walls, ogee windows and a scratch dial — a primitive sundial — cut into the south-west buttress; the fifteenth century further work to walls and windows; and the seventeenth century the vestry and the church's unusual heptagonal Jacobean pulpit.

The Forster Chapel is the church's treasury. Added as the south transept in the thirteenth century — and possibly originating as a chantry dedicated to St Nicholas — the lady chapel contains the alabaster effigial monument of Sir George Forster and his wife Elizabeth, made in 1530. When part of the church's roof collapsed it damaged the effigy, though Sir George's face survived unscathed. In the chapel's north window, two roundels portraying the Annunciation and the Coronation of the Virgin date from the thirteenth century and are the oldest glass in Berkshire.

The great Victorian renovation came in 1896, overseen and funded by Charles Keyser — the antiquary of Aldermaston Court — and guided by the architect Edward Doran Webb. Alongside routine repairs to paving and roofing, the work uncovered evidence of an early water drainage system in the sill of a window, which was converted into a piscina; repairs to the nave walls revealed that they were lined with plaster on a wooden framing, which was removed, the walls afterwards decorated with tempera artwork. The stained glass in the chancel is the work of C. E. Kempe. Further repairs to the roof and tower followed in the 1950s, surveyed by Frederick Ernest Briant Ravenscroft of Reading — who was in his seventies when the work began and died before it finished, the completion documents being signed off by his fellow architect George William Judd. The font dates from the mid-nineteenth century, and the lectern is a memorial to the Second World War.

The tower carries a ring of eight bells spanning three centuries of founding. The oldest are the fourth and sixth, cast in 1681 by Henry Knight of Reading; the seventh of 1786 is by W & T Mears of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the third and fifth were cast by Mears in 1860, the second by Warner in 1895, and the treble and tenor five years later. The ringers have been busy: between 1900 and 2005 the church rang 210 peals. A quarter-peal of Plain Bob Doubles marked the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 1977; on 9 July 1979 a peal of Grandsire Triples greeted the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh's visit to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment — Aldermaston's other claim to fame; and on 15 November 1980 a peal of Oxford Bob Triples lasting two hours and forty-seven minutes welcomed the new vicar, Richard Millar.

The organ, in the south chancel, was built in 1880 by Martin & Coate of Oxford, with nine stops and pipes of spotted metal — an alloy of lead and tin — four couplers, a Discus electric blower and a concave-parallel pedal keyboard. A tremulant was added to the swell division in 1938, when the swell-to-great coupler was changed and the console detailed; Foster Waite of Newbury cleaned and renovated the instrument in 1997 without alteration.

The churchyard holds Aldermaston's strangest story. Maria Hale — occasionally written Martha Hale — was born in 1791 and lived in Park Cottage on the edge of the court's parkland. The village whispered that she was a witch who would turn herself into a hare and sit outside the Falcon pub in Tadley to gather gossip; when the gamekeeper shot the hare in the leg, Hale was said to have limped ever after. Other rumours had her cursing villagers' gardens when they refused her flowers, and visiting illness upon her own son when he left home for Windsor, so that he would have to return. The census of 1871 listed her at Mortimer, the division that then included Aldermaston. She died in 1879 and was buried south-west of the church entrance beside a yew tree — her coffin supposedly weighed down with stones and bricks, the gravediggers jumping on the grave to make sure she would never rise. Local legend insists that placing a pin in the church door and running around the church three times will summon her ghost. Also buried in the churchyard are Charles Keyser, the church's great benefactor, Daniel Burr and John Stair.

St Mary's remains an active parish church — it opened to the public for the Heritage Open Days scheme on 11 September 2010, and its recent incumbents include the rector Jane Manley — a quiet Norman survivor at the gates of the atomic age, where the oldest glass in Berkshire glows a few miles from AWE's fences.