Image ID: 08151

Rooftop scene looking towards the Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene, Newark

Courtesy of G Stark

Central Newark
Newark on Trent
England

Looking from Barnbygate Methodist church roof (?). Newark's Parish Church is a magnificent medieval building dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. It has a spire which soars to over 230 feet is a landmark for miles in the Trent valley. The church is almost cathedralesque in its scale and is one of few parish churches to have an ambulatory and chapels east of the High Altar. It also has the heritage of music of a Song School and choir, due to the bequest of Thomas Magnus in the 1520s. The present church is the third on the site. Of the Saxon church nothing remains. It stood on land owned by the Earl of Mercia who gave the land to the monks at Stow near Lincoln. Robert de Chesney, Bishop of Lincoln built a church in the late 12th century. Of this only the large piers at the crossing and the vestry remain. It was in 1230 that work began on the present church, beginning with the Early English tower which still stands. Pevsner notes that the tower was built in an unusual arrangement whereby it is 'engaged' (i.e. set flush) with the west facade of the building. Inside the tower there are thick compound piers with fillets and moulded capitals distinctive of English Gothic. The west portal is of four major and three minor orders and built on an ambitious scale, with dogtooth ornamentation in the voussoirs. In 1310 there was an ambitious scheme to rebuild the church and the result is the church as it can be seen today. The south aisle and the spire were complete before the Black Death (1349) and are examples of Decorated Gothic. The spire is decorated with broaches and four tiers of four dormer windows in alternating positions. The rest of the church is in the Perpendicular style, being completed in the latter part of the 15th century. It was during this time that the chapels were built by the town guilds. The South entrance porch is two-storeys, the upper floor housing the church library given by Bishop White in 1698. Galleries were erected in the church during the 18th century but removed after the Anglo-Catholic revival in the 1840s. At the end of the 19th century, a fine reredos was installed by Gilbert Scott. There were two major restorations in the third quarter of the 20th century, with the erecting of a platform in front of the choir screen for a Nave Altar and restoration of paintings of the nave roof. A window of medieval stained glass in the Holy Spirit Chapel (some of the which dated back to 1300) was arranged at random and became jumbled like a jigsaw in 1790. It was restored in 1957 by Mrs J Howson of Oxford university.

Date: 1920

Organisation Reference: NCCE001958

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