The Church of St. Mary in Bishop's Lydeard, Somerset.

Leaving Taunton and driving along the A358 toward Williton one soon spots, just a field or two from the road, the distinctive tower of the Church of St. Mary in Bishop’s Lydeard.  It is easy to agree with Edward Hutton in his Highways and Byways of Somerset (Macmillan and Co. Ltd, 1912) who writes of the tower:

“Its noble blood-red, double-windowed tower is the finest in all this country, a thing to delight one in the memory of having seen it.  It was, perhaps, the first of such towers to rise in all this rich vale of Taunton Dean.”

Arthur Mee in his The King’s England, Somerset (Hodder and Stoughton, 1968) describes Bishop’s Lydeard and its Church of St Mary as follows:

“It is as red as the soil of its fields, its church and houses all made of the sandstone from its quarries.  High above them all rises its lovely tower, a fifteenth century masterpiece.  A narrow door, heavily clamped and plated, indicates that it was a tower of refuge as well as a storehouse for the arms of Sir John Stawell, the Royalist against whom the redoubtable Blake was sent with his army.”

The Church of St. Mary in Bishop's Lydeard, Somerset.