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Church of St Mary, Meesden
Our little church, standing isolated among trees and half a mile from the village itself, is more interesting than it appears on external examination. Outside it is now almost all Victorian, except for the plain west doorway, which is probably fourteenth century, and a proud Tudor porch in English-bonded brick. It has a four-centred doorway, and the side windows, a pair of round-headed lights beneath a square head, are typical of the sixteenth century. However, inside the porch the inner doorway is round-arched, early twelfth century Norman work. Nothing else of this date appears to survive in the building, however, so perhaps the doorway was taken from an earlier church and re-set here.
The nave and chancel windows, which are all externally renewed, are variously two-light, in Perpendicular style, consistent in form with c. 1300, a date that might fit the mediaeval features within. The east window is formed of three cinquefoil-cusped lancets, inside an encompassing arch. The nineteenth-century bell-cote is shingled both above and below a short stage with supermullioned tracery. Inside the nave, the two-bay arcades to the transepts are probably most revealing for, like most of the other surviving mediaeval features, these appear to date from the very beginning of the fourteenth century, suggesting there was a wholesale reconstruction of the church at that time. The church has no chancel arch but the chancel is demarcated by being raised by one step while the sanctuary is raised by another.
Other features in the church include, in particular, the early fourteenth-century floor tiles in the sanctuary, forming a semicircular pattern with a surrounding rectangular border. The chancel north wall has a striking seventeenth-century monument, commemorating Robert Younge (d. 1626), distinguished by a bust of the deceased.