Hardwick St. Mary's Church

By the middle of the 12th century the parish was a chapelry of Stoke Lyne, and by 1249 or 1250 Hardwick had become a separate ecclesiastical parish. The Knights Hospitaller owned the advowson by 1252, and held it until Henry VIII suppressed the Order in England 1540. In 1545 The Crown sold the advowson to an associate of William Fermor, the lord of the manor. The advowson remained with the Fermors until the middle of the 19th century, when their direct line died out and their estates at Tusmore and Hardwick were sold.The earliest parts of the Church of England parish church of St Mary the Virgin are the north and south doorways. Dr Mary Lobel says the doorways are from late in the 12th or early in the 13th century. The chancel is Decorated Gothic and certainly from the 14th century. The nave was rebuilt in the 15th century with a large new Perpendicular Gothic west window. In 1877 Henry Howard, 2nd Earl of Effingham commissioned George Gilbert Scott, Jr. to restore the church. Scott virtually rebuilt it and added the south aisle, porch and bell-turret. The east window of the chancel has some 14th-century Medieval stained glass plus a 19th-century Gothic Revival panel by Clayton and Bell. The Gothic Revival west window of the nave is by Burlison and Grylls but incorporates late 15th- or early 16th-century Gothic panels.