Get to Know: St Mary's, Itchen Stoke

This article comes from an extract of our May members' exclusive online lecture. Each month, we provide an in depth introduction to one or more of our churches, followed by a lecture from an expert guest speaker. We are proud to have welcomed several household names to speak in our members' lectures, including Dan Snow, Janina Ramirez, and CEO of the RSPB, Beccy Speight. Become a member to join our June lecture, and watch past lectures on our video streaming website, CCTdigital. 

Our journey begins near Jane Austen's house in Hampshire, 15 minutes down the road at a stunning church called St Mary’s in Itchen Stoke. 

At first glance, it feels both ancient and unexpectedly theatrical. But what we see today is not a medieval survival. It is a bold Victorian rebuilding, completed in 1866 by the architect Henry Conybeare for his brother, the Reverend Charles Ranken Conybeare. The earlier church was considered cold and damp, but what replaced it was not simply practical. It was visionary. This is a church designed not just for worship, but for experience. A building that uses architecture, colour, and above all light to create something immersive and deeply symbolic.

It is situated in the quiet valley of the River Itchen, just a short distance from Jane Austen’s house at Chawton. Here, almost hidden within the landscape, stands St Mary’s Church, Itchen Stoke.

As you approach the church up the steep path, it rises dramatically into view, tall, narrow, and strikingly elegant.  Its design is directly inspired by the great royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, built in the thirteenth century for the French kings. 

As noted in the guidebook, Conybeare was drawing on French Gothic precedents, including Sainte-Chapelle and its successors. This matters because Sainte-Chapelle represents a turning point in church design. It is not a building defined by walls, but by glass. Here at Itchen Stoke, that same ambition is recreated in miniature, in rural Hampshire. The tall lancet windows dominate the structure, signalling that this is a church built to hold light. 

Stepping inside, the effect is immediate. The church has been described as a kaleidoscopic wonderland, and that description feels entirely appropriate. The architecture itself is relatively restrained, with slender shafts and a simple plan, but every surface is richly treated. The roof is painted. The font is inlaid with coloured marble. The decorative scheme extends across walls, furnishings, and floor. 

But what is so important here is that everything works together. This is not just a church with stained glass. It is a fully integrated decorative scheme in which glass, colour, and pattern transform the entire interior into a unified visual experience. 

The stained glass here is quite different from what many of us might expect. Rather than large narrative scenes, the windows are filled with small pieces of coloured glass, arranged into geometric and repeating patterns. 

As the guidebook explains, the decoration relies heavily on mosaic-like arrangements and richly coloured surfaces rather than figurative storytelling. This creates something much more immersive. Light is filtered through red, blue, and green glass, shifting throughout the day and filling the interior with constantly changing colour. So instead of reading a story, you experience the church. Stained glass is not just illustrative. It is atmospheric. It shapes how a space feels as much as how it looks. 

At the centre of this visual experience is the remarkable west rose window. Positioned above the entrance, this window immediately draws the eye. It is divided into a central circle and eight surrounding lights, filled with thirteenth century-stained glass mosaics. These were gifted by Lady Ashburton in memory of her husband, Francis, 3rd Lord Ashburton. 

The story of Lady Ashburton is central to this church. She was of French origin, the daughter of the Duke of Bassano, and her support appears to have been crucial in enabling this French-inspired vision. Her gift of medieval stained glass quite literally embeds continental history into this English church.  At the same time, the parish community contributed financially towards the windows, giving £50 as a mark of their regard for the rector. So, this building is both international and local. It brings together aristocratic patronage, French artistic influence, and community investment in a single, cohesive vision. 

One of the most extraordinary features of this church lies not in its walls, but beneath your feet. Set into the floor of the apse is a tiled labyrinth, based on the famous example at Chartres Cathedral. This labyrinth is over five metres in diameter and formed from brown and green tiles. It is a simplified version of the Chartres design, but its significance remains the same. Labyrinths in medieval churches were used as symbolic pilgrimages. For those unable to travel to holy sites, walking the labyrinth became a spiritual journey in itself. What makes this example particularly special is that it is the only walkable tiled labyrinth church in the UK. There are other labyrinths in Hampshire, such as the turf labyrinth at St Catherine’s Hill and another at Breamore, but this is the only one indoors. So here, movement becomes part of worship. Just as stained glass transforms light into experience, the labyrinth transforms the floor into a journey. 

The church also contains a deeply personal use of glass, in the form of a memorial plaque. This plaque commemorates Major Reginald John Ponsonby Cox, who was killed in action at the Battle of Loos in 1915. The inscription tells us that he was born in Edinburgh in 1874, the only son of Major John Ponsonby Cox and Emily Ponsonby Cox and educated at Moffat and Haileybury College. What is particularly striking is the form of the memorial itself. As noted in the church interpretation, it is made up of very small pieces of glass, carefully leaded together in a mosaic-like composition. It is both delicate and intricate, and its final line, that it was placed here by one who loved him, brings an intensely human dimension to the space. The church also connects to later moments of loss within the local landscape. A current display recounts a Second World War tragedy in July 1944, when three Spitfires collided during a training exercise and crashed into nearby fields. The pilots, Flight Lieutenant H. W. Adams, Flight Sergeant J. G. L. Hughes, and Flight Lieutenant B. Lees, were all killed. The account describes the sudden change in sound, a “sickening crump,” followed by the sight of aircraft spiralling down into the fields below. These stories remind us of that churches like this are not isolated from history, they stand within living landscapes shaped by memory, conflict, and community experience.