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Church of St Mary, Witham Friary

12th-century church buildings in EnglandChurch of England church buildings in Mendip DistrictChurches completed in 1200Grade I listed buildings in Mendip DistrictGrade I listed churches in Somerset
Witham Friary church and cottages
Witham Friary church and cottages

The Church of St Mary in Witham Friary, Somerset, England, dates from around 1200 and it has been designated as a Grade I listed building.The church was originally part of the priory which gave the village its name. The Witham Charterhouse, a Carthusian Priory founded in 1182 by Henry II, which had peripheral settlements including one at Charterhouse and possibly another at Green Ore. It is reputed to be the first Carthusian house in England. One of only nine Carthusian Houses, the priory did not survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries. At the dissolution it was worth £227; the equivalent of £52,000 today (2006).Although the original building dates from around 1200 it was altered in a transitional style in 1828, and then rebuilt and extended 1875 by William White in "Muscular Gothic" style. It has a three-bay nave and continuous one bay apsidal chancel, built of local limestone rubble, supported on each side by four massive flying buttresses. The plastered interior is entered through a Norman style doorway. Inside the church is a scraped octagonal font dating from around 1450. The Jacobean pulpit contains medieval work and there is a royal arms of 1660 at the west end. The stained glass windows contain fragments of medieval glass, with those in the south being made by Sir Ninian Comper.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Church of St Mary, Witham Friary (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Church of St Mary, Witham Friary
Dark Lane,

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Latitude Longitude
N 51.1686 ° E -2.3675 °
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St John the Baptist & All Saints

Dark Lane
BA11 5HF
England, United Kingdom
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Witham Friary church and cottages
Witham Friary church and cottages
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Witham (Somerset) railway station
Witham (Somerset) railway station

This station in Somerset is closed. For the open station in East Anglia, see Witham railway station.Witham (Somerset) railway station was a station serving the Somerset village of Witham Friary and was located on the Frome to Yeovil section of the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway that opened in 1856.In 1858, the East Somerset Railway opened a branch line from Witham first to Shepton Mallet and then, in 1862, to Wells; in 1870, this line linked up to the Bristol and Exeter Railway branch from Yatton to Wells, the Cheddar Valley line, and through services began. All of these railways were allied to, and were eventually subsumed within, the Great Western Railway. The Westbury, Wiltshire to Castle Cary section of the WS&WR also later formed part of the GWR's new express route to South-West England, avoiding Swindon, Bath and Bristol, that opened in 1906. Witham station was known as "Witham" for most of its life, but was renamed "Witham (Somerset)" under British Railways to avoid confusion with the town (and station) of the same name in Essex. Passenger services on the Yatton to Witham line through Cheddar, Wells and Shepton Mallet were withdrawn in 1963 under the Beeching Axe. The station retained services on the WS&WR route until 1966, when it was one of several village stations on the line to close. The station buildings have now been demolished. The junction at Witham remains and has been heavily used for freight trains carrying stone from Merehead Quarry, just off the East Somerset line at Quarry Junction. Part of the East Somerset Railway has also been re-opened as a heritage railway, starting at Cranmore. Today, the Reading to Taunton Line passes through the site of the station.