Qualla: St Mary Redcliffe

St Mary Redcliffe: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FrDr, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1574, Queen Elizabeth I came to Bristol and was taken to see the parish church of Redcliffe. She is said to have called it 'the fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England.' Half a century later, her grandson Charles I echoed her: 'one of the moste famous absolute fayrest and goodliest parish churches within the Realm of England.' Modern critics have not dialled this back. Simon Jenkins gives St Mary Redcliffe the maximum five-star rating in England's Thousand Best Churches, one of only eighteen churches in the country to receive it. Nikolaus Pevsner wrote that it 'need not fear comparison with any other English parish church.' It is so large that tourists routinely mistake it for Bristol Cathedral.

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Image: FrDr | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Mary Redcliffe: A spire and a lightning strike

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The spire reaches 274 feet - 84 metres - to the top of the weathervane, making St Mary Redcliffe the second-tallest structure in Bristol and the sixth-tallest parish church in England. Until the completion of Castle Park View in 2020, it was the tallest building ever erected in t...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

St Mary Redcliffe: Stone vaults from floor to roof

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tadeusz Hare, CC BY-SA 4.0. Inside, the church is the only parish church in England to be vaulted entirely in stone throughout the medieval period. Every bay, every aisle, every chapel - all of it covered in carved stone ribs and bosses, not the timber ceilings that almost every other English parish church ...

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Image: Tadeusz Hare | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Mary Redcliffe: A tram rail in the churchyard

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nickuae, CC BY-SA 4.0. On Good Friday in 1941, a German bomb fell in a nearby street during the Bristol Blitz. The explosion threw debris in every direction. One piece - a heavy chunk of tram rail, ripped out of the road - hurtled into the churchyard and embedded itself in the ground. It is still there...

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Image: Nickuae | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Mary Redcliffe: Bells, organs, and the Colston window

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Edkins, CC BY-SA 2.0. The bells at St Mary Redcliffe are among the finest rings in existence. The tower holds twelve bells (with a thirteenth, a 'flat sixth' added in 1951), cast in their current form by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough. Ringers travel from across the British Isles to ring them. Over ...

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Image: Keith Edkins | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Mary Redcliffe: The Redcliffe Pipe

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nickuae, CC BY-SA 4.0. Threading through the churchyard runs the Redcliffe Pipe - a conduit given to the church in 1190 by Robert de Berkeley, Lord of Bedminster Manor. He granted the parishioners the right to build a pipe 2,514 metres long, from a spring on Knowle Hill down to the church, to bring fre...

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Image: Nickuae | CC BY-SA 4.0