YELDEN St. Mary: “Externally most Decorated, but certain disjointed feature are Early English, i.e. the South aisle doorway…” [Pevsner]

A good example of the medieval village churches of northwest Bedfordshire, consisting of a west tower and spire, nave with south aisle and porch and chancel with north vestry, basically thrteenth century, but with considerable fourteenth century overlay, built of mellow local stone. Furnishings include architectural features such as the piscina, sedilia and Easter sepulchre, two tomb-recesses in the nave and south aisle (the latter particularly splendid), wallpaintings of St Christopher and St James and a third depicting a Georgian reredos, a south chancel window of unusual monochrome glass of c1870, four seventeenth century bells, a turret clockof 1876, a late Georgian register chest, a sheet of lead with grafftiti verse dated 1703, a small organ in Gothick case c1840, a communion table dated 1629 together with a cup and paten given in the same year, and the following fifteenth century furnishings: pulpit, font (retaining its original cover), and nave seating. Monuments include several ledger stones, three good brasses (1433, 1617 and 1628) and a small Georgian wall tablet.[ extract from CCC minutes 26th July 1995]