The Church of St-Mary - Further information

In the windows of the chancel and tower is a quantity of painted glass acquired by James West. The pieces in the east window, and some removed thence to the tower window in 1904, came from the Netherlands and Germany, and some of them are dated 1605 and 1632. The remaining glass in the tower window, mostly heraldic, is English, of the 16th century and later. The glass depicting heads, in the north and south windows of the chancel, allegedly taken from Evesham Abbey, is probably 17th-century and perhaps also from the Netherlands. The small cup-shaped font was made in the 18th century. The organ was given in 1895 by James Roberts West. In the chancel are two groups of mural monuments in marble to members of the West family, including one by Peter Mathias Vangelder (1800) and one by Richard Westmacott the younger (1838); also mural monuments to members of the Mariett family, and one with figures, brought apparently from St. Mary's chapel, Islington, to Sir Nicholas Kempe (d. 1624). There were three bells c. 1700; two by Henry Bagley, 1635, survive, and the third is by Abraham Rudhall, 1713. The plate includes a chalice with base and stem of c. 1500 and a remade bowl and paten-cover given by Sarah, wife of James West, 1747; also an Elizabethan chalice and paten-cover. The registers begin in 1540 and are virtually complete.

There is said to have been a medieval chapel at Alscot, on the site of which Alscot Park was built. No documentary evidence of this has been found; the possibility that the moulded stones found at Alscot were brought from elsewhere is the stronger because of James West's antiquarian interests.From: 'Parishes: Preston on Stour', A History of the County of Gloucester: volume 8 (1968), pp. 81-89. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66386%20