Country England Previous denomination Roman Catholic Church Website Church website Phone +44 20 7228 9648 | Denomination Church of England Churchmanship Inclusive Central Opened 1777 | |
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Location Battersea Church Road, Battersea, Greater London, SW11 3NA Address Battersea Church Rd, London SW11 3LX, UK Diocese Anglican Diocese of Southwark Burials Benedict Arnold, Joe James, William Hamling, John Gardnor Similar St Mary Magdalen Bermondsey, St Giles' Church - Camberwell, St Peter's Church - Walworth, Sacred Heart Church - B, St Mark's Church - Kennington Profiles | ||
St Mary's Church, Battersea, is the local Church of England parish church in Battersea, formerly in Surrey and now part of south London, England, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. The parish is now within the diocese of Southwark. Christians have worshipped there regularly for over a thousand years. It is a Grade I listed building.
History
St Mary's stands on one of the earliest known consecrated sites on the south bank of the River Thames. The original church was built as early as 800 AD, presumably by the Saxons, and the present building was completed in 1777. It was designed by Joseph Dixon, a local architect.
The church is built of brick, with stone used for quoins and other dressings. It consists of a nave, rectangular in plan, an apse at the east end forming the sanctuary, and a west tower. The west front has a single storey entrance porch with Tuscan columns supporting a pediment. The tower, rising immediately behind it, is topped with a clock chamber and a small spire. Inside, the whole width of the church is spanned by a flat ceiling, and there are wooden galleries supported by columns on three sides. The nave windows are in two tiers, the upper ones round-headed.
The church has strong connections with art and literature through the artist and poet William Blake, who married Catherine Boucher there on 17 August 1782, and J. M. W. Turner, who painted the river from the vestry window. Benedict Arnold and his family are buried in the crypt, and the church has links with the explorer Robert Falcon Scott.
The church is used weekly by Thomas's Battersea for their Thursday morning church service and also holds a Thomas's Kindergarten.