St Mary's Church, Moseley is a Grade II listed parish church in the Church of England located in Moseley, Birmingham. It is now part of a united benefice with St Anne's Church, Moseley. The War Memorial in the South-East corner of the Churchyard, facing Oxford Road, is unusual in that it depicts Christ upon the cross in carved stone. The War Memorial has achieved its own Grade II listing.
History
A religious building dedicated to St Mary has been at the heart of Moseley for over 600 years. The foundation of the church for public worship is taken to be the Papal Mandate from Pope Innocent VII dated 2 February 1405 by which he instructed the Bishop of Worcester to allow the local parishioners to have mass and other divine offices celebrated by fit priests in the chapel of St Mary Moseley. At that time, the Parish Church was at Bromsgrove and that church was said to be so distant that access at certain times of the year was impossible, without danger, especially for old men and pregnant women and other weak persons, on account of the distance and floods.
Earlier references to Elizabeth of York, the wife of King Henry VII, giving land in October 1494, upon which to build a church, are now found to be mistaken. She did not become the Lord of Manor until May 1495 on the death of her grandmother Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, who had been given the Manor for life by her son, Edward IV. The land given by Cicely to the trustees of the existing chapel of the Blessed Mary, in return for a red rose every midsummer's day, was not for any particular purpose and was entirely covered with water which would not have been a good place to build anything! Perhaps this was the origin of Ladypool.
In the 5th year of the reign of King Henry VIII (1513–1514), a tower was built using 48 cart loads of stone from the walls of the parsonage at Bromsgrove. In addition, repairs were done to the chapel and bells were bought.
The Commissioners of King Edward VI confirmed the continuation of a priest in the chapel in 1548 at the time that Chantries were being abolished at a salary of £4 13s 4d (7 marks) a year which was still being paid well into the 19th century.
Dissenters ministered in the Chapel in the 17th century but were ejected in 1662 after the restoration of King Charles II.
Throughout this time, Moseley was regarded as a Perpetual Curacy, with trustees looking after it, and a Chapel of Ease first to Bromsgrove and then to King's Norton churches. As a result of augmentations to the living from Queen Anne's Bounty during the 18th century, Moseley became an ecclesiastical parish (‘body politick’) in its own right, but without a defined boundary, in 1755.
By 1780 the Chapelry of Moseley was described as a very ancient structure the middle aisle of which was falling down and all other parts except the Tower were so ruinous that it could no longer be supported and "not being large enough to contain the inhabitants that resort thereto must be taken down rebuilt and enlarged before divine service can be performed therein with Safety to the Minister and Congregation". A public subscription was sanctioned by Letters Patent of George III to secure the architect's estimated cost of rebuilding of £1028.5s.10½d., excluding old materials.. The chapel was widened and the height was raised by about 8 feet.
In 1823, with the benefit of a grant of £250 from the Incorporated Society for the Enlargement of Churches and Chapels towards the total cost in the region of £2000 raised by another public subscription, Thomas Rickman (1776–1841) was chosen as the architect to improve the building with his ideas of Gothic Revival but it was all sham. The walls were brick, plastered inside and out in imitation of stone; the flat ceiling was crossed by parallel and diagonal imitation oak beams in plaster and the window mullions were cast iron. Even the font was a plaster bowl fixed against the west wall, modelled on a medieval piscina. Everything had to give way to accommodation for an additional 362 seats of which 247 were free. This church was about the length of the Nave of the present church. There was no Chancel, but rather an apse for the altar at the East End. Against the tower at the West, there was a loft, accessed from the belfry, which housed a small barrel organ and choir.