St Peter & St Paul, Shropham

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Shropham Church is one of those surprising little gems I always hope to find on my crawls. It is noted as being the final resting place of the local author Mary Mann who, when writing about the village, rather unkindly renamed it Dulditch.

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Inside, the deep jewel tones of the nativity window, designed by Mary Lowndes in 1898, are stunning. Lowndes was a pupil of Henry Holiday and was the first woman to have a full-time career as a stained-glass artist. She was heavily involved in not only The Arts & Craft Movement but also in the political rights of women. As a result, she opened her own firm, Lowndes and Drury, in order that she could provide a workshop to not only produce her own work but also that of other women artists. The Nativity window at St Peter & St Paul’s was one of the first windows to be produced by her workshop.

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In the chancel, the exquisitely executed reredos features a carving of the meal on the road to Emmaus, on the evening of Easter Day and are dedicated to the memory of Augustus Hethersett Hemsworth, who was killed in an air raid in near Hull. Either side of this panel are the figures of St Peter holding the keys to heaven and St Paul holding a sword.