St. Mary

Introduction

Saint Mary's in Selby, which opened in 1856, was designed by Dunn and Hansom of London and is built in the early decorated Gothic style.

History

From 1783 Father Edward Leadbitter O.P. came from Stourton to Selby on alternate Sundays to offer Mass, and in 1785 he was appointed to take charge of Selby until his death in 1788. The first church was built by the honourable E. R. Petre and stood at the corner of Gowthorpe and Brook Street. In February 1953, the Parishes of St Mary's Selby and St Mary's Carlton were united, but separated again by 1967. In September 2008, the Parishes of St Mary's Carlton and St Mary's Selby merged once more, to become St Mary's Carlton and Selby.

In 2000 major repair work was carried out on St Mary's, principally on the roof and the tower and steeple. The Parish Centre, designed by Martin Stancliffe, Architects of York, was added to the church in 2004 and was blessed and opened on 19 November of that year. During October, the month of the Holy Rosary, the parish recites the Rosary twenty minutes before weekday Masses.

Architecture and furnishings

The church has a tower over the south door with broach spire and diagonal buttresses, an apsidal baptistery at the west end, and a north-west chapel decorated internally with undressed stone in the manner of a grotto. The East Window consists of five lights, with the centre one of Our Lady, the principal patron of the church, and St Germain and St Lawrence on one side with St William of York and St Edward the Confessor on the other. In 1919 a sculptured pulpit was erected to the memory of those who died in the Great War and this now forms the ambo.

The interior includes an elaborately sculpted pulpit, contemporary font, and crocketed font cover, and a three-bay arcade to the west gallery. The East window is by Wailes and the window of the Sacred Heart Chapel is by Ball. The church is built of hammer-dressed stone with ashlar dressings and a pitched slate roof, in the Decorated style.

The arms of the Petre Family appear in the side windows. Near the Sacred Heart chapel are tablets commemorating members of the congregation who died in the two World Wars.