St Mary Magdalene's Church, Stapleford

St Mary Magdalene’s Church stands in the parkland of Stapleford Hall, a mile from the village of Stapleford in Leicestershire. The building is a Grade I listed example of late-18th-century Gothic Revival architecture, designed by George Richardson for Robert Sherard, the fourth Earl of Harborough. It replaced an earlier medieval church on the same site and served both the Sherard family and the local parish. Two restorations in the 20th century kept the fabric sound, and today the Churches Conservation Trust maintains the church. The exterior is built of fine limestone ashlar, with a west tower, nave, transepts and chancel. The tower rises in three stages, each marked by string courses and cornices, and its parapet is embattled with corner pinnacles. Windows carry Tudor arches, Y-tracery and roundels, while the nave walls hold three-light pointed windows with lozenge tracery. Around the building carved heraldic shields record marriages of the Sherard family, and the churchyard contains graves of the Barons Gretton and an Anglo-Irish peer. Inside, the porch vault has an octagonal stone boss, and the nave ceiling is plastered with a lozenge pattern and a central oval dome adorned with putti. A Coade stone fireplace sits above the Royal arms in the west gallery, and the chancel features a marble reredos with an anchor motif. Early memorials include a 1490 brass to Geoffrey Sherard and a 1640 tomb chest with life-size effigies of eleven children. The finest monument is John Michael Rysbrack’s 1732 work to the 1st Earl, showing Roman-style figures.