Kingston St Mary Church, Taunton

If you were to ask me to imagine the quintissential village church, it would pretty much be St. Mary’s. Being the only church in this petite and ancient village, it’s not hard to find either.

I saw an old friend off up the aisle here last summer, and the blinding weather really did the day and the place proud. For nervous bridegrooms and supportive ushers, the village pub up the road is the Swan - it proved very handy.

It’s a dinky church steeped in history that probably looks very similar today as it did centuries ago, which on the day gave it a real sense of occasion and fraternity. You could pretty well whisper politely to someone the other side of the church without much difficulty, such is the intimacy.

They were even having a fayre in the village hall down the hill; I don’t think you could find a place more jam and Jerusalem!

OK, I'll come clean right away. This church is special to me for its family connections - my 4 x Great-Grandfather was married here in 1793, and three generations of ancestors lived here until mid-1850's.

So, lucky for me that the church is worth a visit in its own right, both for the setting - Kingston St Mary is a lovely village 3 miles north of Taunton, nestled in the foothills of the Quantocks - and because it possesses one of the best of the perpendicular 'Somerset Towers' in the County, and the most complete set of 16th-century bench-ends in the UK.

The church itself dates largely from the Early English gothic period around 1225, but it was extensively remodelled in the late 1400's. This rebuilding provided a new chancel (1490-1520), a new porch (1520) with a splendid fan-vault, and its magnificent tower.

A rash of church re-building on Somerset in the 1400's, largely funded by the wealth from wool, resulted in a crop of new, larger towers in the perpendicular style, with successive villages competing with each other in size and decoration. Kingston belongs to the so-called 'Taunton group', where the emphasis is horizontal rather than the 'Wells Group' which emphasise verticality in their design.

Kingston's tower (1490) is one of the Taunton group, with creamy Ham stone dressings on rich red sandstone. The tower rises in three stages. At each level, delicate stone tracery fills the windows and bell openings, and eight tall decorated pinnacles thrust up from the tower battlements (decorated with yet more tracery). The corner pinnacles each have four decorated flying buttresses. The tower is also decorated with 'hunky punks', squatting gargoyle-like statues, one of which depicts a woman giving birth to a huge baby. All in all, it is an astonishing architectural legacy for a small rural village.

Back inside, the bench ends, dating from 1522, are carved in oak. Each panel depicts a different motif, including oak leaves, rosaries, potted plants, oxen and yokes. A weaver's shuttle indicated the source of the wealth that allowed all this rebuilding. Also of interest is the tomb of John de la Warre, who fought at Poitiers in 1356, and took the sword from the captured King John of France.

Finish a visit with a stroll around this delightful village - and, of course, a pint or two in the Swan pub.