St Mary and All Saints' Church, Kidderminster

St Mary and All Saints' Church is the historic civic and parish church of Kidderminster, the carpet-making town in Worcestershire. A large and dignified medieval church, designated a Major Parish Church and a Grade I listed building, it stands on a foundation that reaches back to the Domesday Book — and it is famous above all for its association with one of the most celebrated clergymen in English history, the Puritan divine Richard Baxter.

A church existed at Kidderminster at the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, and a consecration recorded in 1315 probably refers to the chancel, but the present building dates mostly from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The church's great moment came in the seventeenth century. In 1641, on the eve of the Civil War, an arrangement was made to fund a preacher at Kidderminster, and Richard Baxter was invited to deliver a sermon and unanimously elected as minister. Baxter went on to become one of the most influential and admired pastors and writers of his age — author of The Saints' Everlasting Rest and The Reformed Pastor — and his transformative ministry at Kidderminster, where he is said to have turned a careless town into a model of godly life, made him a legend. His statue stands in the town, and his name is forever linked with St Mary's.

The church was much altered and restored over the centuries. A reordering in 1847 opened up new entrances beneath and beside the tower and removed the western galleries; an organ chamber was added in 1874; and the tower was refaced between 1893 and 1895 by the architect J. A. Chatwin. In 1921–22 the great twentieth-century architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott added the Whittall Chapel, and he also designed the organ case. Further reorderings followed later in the century.

The church is rich in furnishings. Its organ, first installed in 1848 to accompany a new choir performing full cathedral services, has been rebuilt several times into a fine three-manual instrument. The tower holds an impressive ring of bells — by 1774 there were eight, and after the great gale of 1881 damaged the tower, the bells were rehung and a carillon presented by the local Freemasons was added, playing both secular and sacred tunes through the day. Today the tower contains a ring of twelve bells, cast by John Taylor of Loughborough and dedicated in 2004. A tower clock, renewed several times over the years, completes the ensemble.

A Grade I listed Major Parish Church, St Mary and All Saints' is the civic church of Kidderminster, where the town marks its great occasions, and it heads a team of churches across the area. From its Domesday origins and its great medieval rebuilding, through the celebrated ministry of Richard Baxter and the additions of Giles Gilbert Scott, to its ring of twelve bells, St Mary and All Saints' Church remains the historic heart of Kidderminster — a noble parish church carrying the long story of the town, and the memory of one of England's greatest preachers, into the present day.