St Mary

There has been a church on this site next to the River Pont since Saxon times. The Normans built a tower with a lovely arch over the west door and walls thick enough to keep the Scots out. There must have been times when the people of Pontel0and hid here in fear. By the 14th century the vlllage was safer and new aisles could be built with larger windows. At the same time Adam and Eve were carved in the chancel arch looking young and virile on one side and old and haggered once they had discovered sin. As the centuries went on memorial tablets were added, for example to William Weallens, one of Robert Stephenson's engineers, and to a member of the Ogle family who mapped the coast of the Americas. A thousand years after Christians first worshipped here, St Mary's is a place of beauty and peace, loved and cared for by a worshipping community. Come and enjoy.