St Mary's Church, Beverley

St Mary’s Church stands in the market town of Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It began as a 12th-century daughter church for the town’s traders, built beside the older Minster. The building is a wide cruciform shape, 197 feet long, with aisled nave and chancel, two transepts and a crossing tower. Below the north transept lies a crypt, while the northeast chapel has a sacristy and priests’ rooms above. The church is listed Grade I for its historic importance. The church shows over eight centuries of building and rebuilding. Fragments from the 12th and early 13th centuries survive, but most of the present structure dates from the late 13th to the 16th centuries. Work paused after the Black Death and resumed in the 15th century with new clerestories and wooden ceilings. In 1520 the central tower fell, crushing part of the nave, and was rebuilt within a few years. Archbishop William Rokeby left £200 for the repairs, and merchants and minstrels paid for the north arcade piers. Inside, visitors find richly decorated ceilings painted in the 19th century with forty English kings and later figures. The 1530 font of Derbyshire marble carries an erased inscription. The 1884 clock has three dials and bells, and the organ has grown from an 18th-century rood-loft instrument into a four-manual four-manual instrument rebuilt in the 1950s. Recent stonework restorations have added new carvings inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia and figures of nine women including Amy Johnson and Hilda Lyon.