St Mary the Virgin was built in it’s present form in the 13th century but quite obviously sits on the site of a much earlier Anglo Saxon building. It’s position is no accident. An ancient forest track on the road to Alton meets another at a crossroads here and next to the church runs an old Roman road on route to Silchester. There has therefore quite possibly been a place of worship on the site since Pagan times.
The pretty wooden belfry looks out across miles of Hampshire and Surrey countryside and you do feel as if you are on top of the world.
The tower was reconstructed in 1864-5 by David Brandon, when the church was completely re-roofed and re-furnished. It is a short, square structure surmounted by a wooden bellcote, typical of many Hampshire churches. The bellcote was added to an earlier tower in 1660, and is recorded in a watercolour view of the church from the south west painted by Richard Ubsdell in the 1840s, and now on view in the Portsmouth City Museum and Art Gallery.
In the south wall of the nave is a 14th century effigy believed to be of Phillipa, wife of Geoffrey Chaucer, whose son was Lord of the Manor from 1418 to 1434 and also the Ranger of Woolmer and Alice Holt Forests. This was found under the floor during the restoration of the church in 1865.
Gallery
