St Mary's Church, Brewood

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

St Mary’s Church, Brewood

St Mary’s Church in Brewood, Staffordshire, is a Roman Catholic parish church designed by Augustus Pugin. It was built between 1843 and 1844 to serve a growing Catholic population, with land donated by the Giffard family of Chillington Hall, who also funded the early parish priests. The church, together with a presbytery and school, was built to replace smaller local chapels.

Key details:
- Denomination: Roman Catholic; Archdiocese of Birmingham; Parish of St Mary’s; Priest Tomas Zuna; Deacon Stephen Gee.
- Architecture: Early English style; cost £1,345; designed by Augustus Pugin; Pugin donated three stained-glass windows.
- Heritage: Grade II listed since 30 October 1974.

Notable features:
- A small 13th-century sandstone pillar outside the south porch, believed to come from Whiteladies Priory.
- Our Lady of Brewood (the Brewood Madonna): a wooden statue of the Virgin and Child associated with Whiteladies Priory. Legend says it once wept a healing liquid. It moved to the altar at Whiteladies, then to the Catholic chapel at Blackladies Priory, and finally to St Mary’s, where a shrine was built in 1931 in the Lady Chapel.