St Mary's Church, Cowley, Gloucestershire, Church History

Gloucestershire Places of Worship

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Above Photograph(s)
Copyright of Alf Beard

St Mary's Church, Cowley

St Mary's Church,
Cowley Village,
Cowley, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

This Church has (or had) a graveyard.
Note: any church within an urban environment may have had its graveyard closed after the Burial Act of 1853. Any new church built after that is unlikely to have had a graveyard at all.

Church History

This Place of Worship was founded about 1200, and we understand it is still open.

St Mary's Church is a Grade II Listed Building - see the British Listed Buildings website for details. Their account records that the building dates from c.1200, but was restored in 1872 by Albert Hartshorne.
Kelly's Directory of 1923 describes the church of "St Mary the Blessed Virgin" as "an edifice of stone in the Early English style, consisting of chancel, nave, south porch and an embattled western tower containing 6 bells". In the chancel, within an arch in the north wall, is a tomb with a recumbent effigy of a male figure with a lion couchant at his feet; the inscription is entirely lost. On the north side of the chancel arch are spiral stairs, formerly leading to the rood loft. The interior walls of the chancel exhibit paintings, executed when the church was restored in 1872.
Stockwell and part of Birdlip were hamlets in the parish. The living had been held since 1892 by the Revd. John Hardinge Leigh Giffard Th.A.K.C.L. Cowley Manor was (in 1923) the property of Sir Ernest B. Horlick bart. lord of the manor and (then) owner of nearly the whole parish. It was described as "delightfully situated on the slope of a hill; the mansion is of stone and the pleasure grounds are beautifully laid out; a trout stream runs through the park and grounds, which also contain a series of lakes". It is now (2013) Cowley Manor Hotel.
There may be more information available by by selecting one or more of the accompanying images on the right.

Denomination

Now or formerly Church of England.

If more than one congregation has worshipped here, or its congregation has united with others, in most cases this will record its original dedication.

Maps

This Church is located at OS grid reference SO9651514647. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

St Mary's Church, Cowley shown on a Google Map.
Places of Worship in Cowley shown on a Google Map.
Streetmap.co.uk (arrow on map shows the Place of Worship's location) (verified 2018-10-15)
Bing (Ordnance Survey option) (verified 2018-10-13)
Bing Maps ('Bird's Eye' View) (verified 2018-10-15)
Ordnance Survey "getamap" (NB some of the 'Change Map' options may require a subscription) (verified 2018-10-15)
OpenStreetMap (Maps © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA) (verified 2018-10-15)
A Vision of Britain Through Time - useful for Boundary Changes (verified 2018-10-15)
www.magic.gov.uk (Modern Maps with various overlays) (verified 2018-10-15)

Resources

I have found many websites of use whilst compiling the information for this database. Here are some which deserve mention as being of special interest for Cowley, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

Learn more about Buildings of special or historical interest on the British Listed Buildings (null) (verified 2018-09-19)

The above links were selected and reviewed at the time I prepared the information, but please be aware their content may vary, or disappear entirely. These factors are outside my control.

Information last updated on 20 Apr 2013 at 08:24.

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Photo	Place or OS GridRef	Dedication (optional)	Street (optional)	How Many	Denomination

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You can specify either a Place, or OS Grid Reference to search for. When you specify a Place, only entries for that place will be returned, with Places of Worship listed in alphabetical order. If you specify a Grid Reference, Places of Worship in the immediate vicinity will be listed, in order of distance from the Grid Reference supplied. The default is to list 10, but you can specify How Many you want to see, up to a maximum of 100.

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Further Information

This site provides historical information about churches, other places of worship and cemeteries. It has no affiliation with the churches or congregations themselves, nor is it intended to provide a means to find places of worship in the present day.

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This Report was created 15 Nov 2024 - 16:55:46 GMT from information held in the Gloucestershire section of the Places of Worship Database. This was last updated on 13 Oct 2021 at 14:13.

URL of this page: https://churchdb.gukutils.org.uk/GLS163.php

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