The church stands on the site of an earlier one and incorporates its 15th-century medieval tower. On 9 April 1713 the ancient church's 14th-century nave collapsed. The painter Godfrey Kneller was a churchwarden of St Mary's at the time and was active in the plans for reconstruction in the Neo-classical style by the local architect John James.[1][4]
A local resident, Lady Wentworth, wrote a month after the collapse that it had been foreseen by a new vicar, Dr Pratt:[4]
Dr Pratt had insisted that a tabernakle be erected in the churchyard, prior to the collapse. Soe he preached there and exhorted al to giv thanks for thear great deleverenc for the church not falling when they wear in it, it being then standing. The people all laughed at him, and in a weeks time it fell to the ground, soe all the parish contrebutse to the building of it.[4]
Inside the 18th-century church some older monuments have survived from the medieval nave, including a brass to Richard Burton, the King's chief cook, and Agnes his wife, dated 1443.[4][5]
Inside the church are some fine monuments including those to:[6]
The 18th-century nave of the church is in red brick with Tuscanpilasters and pediments. Following the reconstruction of 1713–14, the church was enlarged in 1754 and contains fittings of the same period, including a reredos and gallery fronts. The tower has a ring of eight bells, of which one dates from the early 16th century, three from the 17th and four from the 18th.[5]
Sir William Berkeley (1605–1677), Governor of Virginia from 1660 to 1677, was laid to rest in the crypt of the church in 1677, unusually encased in "lead exactly fitted to the shape of the body, shewing the form of the features, hands, feet, and even nails", instead of a coffin.[11] A year later he was joined by the remains of his brother Lord Berkeley, one of the Lords Proprietor of New Jersey. The brothers are commemorated in a memorial window in the present church, under which the ancient crypt survives.[11]
Sir Godfrey Kneller died in 1723 and his remains were entombed in the church.[1]
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) lies in the church under a stone slab engraved simply with the letter P, near a bronze memorial plate,[12] joining his mother, Edith Pope (1643–1733), who had been buried in the church in 1733.[5]
The actress and soprano singer Kitty Clive (1711–1785) was buried in the churchyard in 1785. A plaque to her memory was affixed to the outside wall in the north-east angle of the church chancel.[12]
There is a memorial to timber merchant James Montgomrey's wife Henrietta (1818–1905) in the church, but both she and her husband were buried at Isleworth Cemetery[15][16]
^Frederic Chapman, illus. Thomas R. Way, Architectural Remains of Richmond, Twickenham, Kew, Mortlake, and Petersham (The Wildhern Press, 2008 edition, ISBN184830059X), p. 65
^Martin C. Battestin, A Henry Fielding Companion (Greenwood, 2000, ISBN031329707X), p. 4
^Cecil Y. Lang & Edgar F. Shannon, Jr. (eds.), The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Volume II: 1851-1870 (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987, ISBN978-0674525849), p. 47
^Richard Stutely Cobbett, Memorials of Twickenham (London, 1872), p. 86.
^ abWarren M. Billings, Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia (Louisiana State University Press, 2010 edition), p. 268 (footnote)
^ abcLynn F. Pearson, Discovering Famous Graves (Shire Discovering vol. 288, 2008, ISBN0747806195), p. 82
