St. Mary Magdalen, Tetbury, Gloucestershire

Description

The church of St. Mary Magdalen is a building of stone, in the Decorated style, consisting of chancel, clerestoried nave, aisles, and an embattled western tower, with pinnacles and spire, and containing a clock and 8 bells: the original church is said to have been built by Reginald de Walerie, soon after the Norman accession, but this structure having become very much dilapidated, was taken down, with the exception of the tower and spire, about 1785, and the present building erected on the same site, at a cost of £5,000; the tower and spire were rebuilt and a new clock with chimps placed in 1890-93, at a cost of about £10,000, by W. Hamilton Yatman esq. as a memorial to his son, W. F. Hamilton Yatman, and Mr. Yatman also provided an endowment for their perpetual maintenance: in the north aisle is an altar-tomb, with recumbent effigies of a man in armour and his wife, and the date 1586, to members of the Gastrell family, whose arms appear on the tomb: there is also a monument to Sir William Romney kt. of the 17th century; and one to Thomas Alexander, 1805, a local benefactor: there are sittings for 800 persons: in the churchyard is a mutilated cross-legged effigy of a knight in armour, said to represent one of the barons Braose of Gower; the organ was restored in 1912 at a cost of £550.

Church Records

The register of St. Mary Magdalen dates from the year 1631.