St Mary's Church (St Mary the Virgin), Kingswood, Wotton under Edge, Gloucestershire, Church History

Gloucestershire Places of Worship

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Copyright of Alf Beard

St Mary's Church (St Mary the Virgin), Kingswood, Wotton under Edge

St Mary's Church (St Mary the Virgin),
High Street / The Walk,
Kingswood, Wotton under Edge, 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 after 1139, and we understand it is still open.

Kelly's Directory of 1923 records that St Mary the Virgin's Church was erected in 1723 - "a building of stone in the Early English style, consisting of nave, north transept, organ chamber and vestry, west porch and a western turret containing a clock and 8 bells". It was restored in 1906, at a cost of £1,200, and has sittings for 380 persons. It also mentions the custom of ringing a curfew every night at 8 o'clock.
An early OS Map (OS 1882 1:2,500) labels the church as dedicated to Holy Trinity, though later Maps record it as St Mary's.
The parish registers date from 1598, so it would seem that the building in 1723 replaced an earlier church. This is confirmed in the return for the Religious Census of 1851 (HO 129/333/1/1/1), where the Perpetual Curate, George L. Wiedemann remarks that "the present Church [was] built in 1723 in place of the dilapidated Church previously existing formerly connected with the Abbey of Kingswood. A very ancient Parish - originally a Rectory now a Perpetual Curacy as the Tithes were charged with a Money Payment in the reign of Charles II." The Abbey's origins can be traced back to a grant by William de Berkeley to the monastery at Tintern, Monmouthshire, in 1139.
Kingswood was formerly a detached parish of Wiltshire, but was transferred to Gloucestershire in 1844. It is referred to in Kelly's Directory as "Kingswood (near Wotton-under-Edge), so called to distinguish it from Kingswood, near Bristol".
St Mary's Church, the Congregational Chapel, and Kingswood Abbey Ruins are all within a short distance of one another - a veritable 'Holy Corner'!
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 ST7473191993. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

St Mary's Church (St Mary the Virgin), Kingswood, Wotton under Edge shown on a Google Map.
Places of Worship in Wotton under Edge 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)

Information last updated on 17 May 2013 at 14:32.

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This Report was created 22 Dec 2024 - 01:28:38 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.

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