St. Mary's Church, South Stoneham

St Mary’s Church stands in a quiet corner of Southampton University’s accommodation campus, near Wessex Lane. Parts of the building go back to Norman times and the chancel arch is twelfth-century work. The nave dates from the thirteenth century and the tower was added late in the fifteenth. The north transept was rebuilt in 1728 to hold a baroque monument by Nicholas Hawksmoor, while the south transept was added in 1854 by G. Guillaume. The church has kept its medieval plan: a nave with north and south transepts, a chancel, and a west tower. The tower carries a sundial dated 1738 with the motto ‘So flies life away’. Inside, the chancel arch shows twelfth-century detail and the east window is fifteenth-century Perpendicular. The gallery at the west end holds an 1857 organ and a rare ‘dumb organist’ turned by hand. The font is Purbeck marble from about 1180, its bowl carved with round-headed arches. On the walls hang monuments to the Dummer family, including Edmund Dummer’s large grey and white marble tomb. The churchyard has eighteenth-century headstones with cherub and skull motifs and a Grade II listed brick boundary wall.