A church has stood on this site since Saxon times. The church is dedicated to St. Gregory, his statue is over the south door in the porch which is 15th century. The Patronal Festival of Gregory the Great is 3rd September. (Extra kudos if you visit on that day!)
The parish registers date back to 1561 and continue until present day. The registers were stolen and the early entries were re-copied in the year 1600 by the vicar of the time, Thomas Cutler. He did this exactly as they had been (not in the way he would have done them if he had had the chance to do it his way!), which is fortunate for us because they were in English and not Latin!
The 17th Century church stocks are under the ancient Yew tree opposite the South porch. They were used by the churchwardens as punishment for offenders at church services.
The octagonal tower contains a ring of five bells, The largest, the tenor, weighs 19 cwts. Their inscriptions are:
1. First I call to wake you all. 1628
2. God save the Church. 1714
3. John Barrington and W. Tuttiett churchwardens. 1818
4. Messrs. Hembrow and Barrington, churchwardens. 1828
5. John House and John Miller, churchwardens. 1823
The Church is open during the day, so you can go and see:
...the pulpit, Jacobean with carvings of figures on its five sides, representing ‘Time, Faith, Hope and Charity’, with their corresponding symbols in the lower panels:- ‘hour glass, spear, anchor, and dove’. The fifth figure it is believed to refer to a story from the Jewish Talmud where the Archangel receives the soul of Adam, the lower panel seems to depict the fatal apple and what may be some tool signifying labour.
...the pew ends, carved and surviving from Elizabethan times.
...the font, made of Ham Stone, is octagonal in shape and dates from the late Decorated period 1325 - 1377.
...the stained glass window. E. Pierce, vicar in 1719 wrote in the registers "The scription in a window of our Parish Church of Gregory Stoke is this...Will Conqueror occisso Harold Regno potitus, istam ecclesiam in suis possessionibus". The inscription no longer remains.
For more information on Stoke St Gregory, you might like to visit our village website
If anybody would like to expand to this series please do, I would just ask that you could let Sadexploration know first so he can keep track of the Church numbers and names to avoid duplication
To view the church micro stats page, please click here