St Mary's Church, Kingsclere
Parish church
The big Norman church in the middle of the village, with the bedbug on its weathervane.
About
St Mary's is the large Norman church in the middle of Kingsclere, cruciform with a tower in the centre, built in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries on the site of a Saxon minster and restored in 1848. It's listed Grade II*. Look up at the weathervane and you'll see the bedbug. The story goes that King John, caught in fog after a day's hunting, spent a night in the village, got bitten, and had the vane put up in revenge. It's a legend rather than history, and some say the creature's a tortoise. The church is open in daylight hours.
What’s here
- Sunday services at 9am, traditional, and 10.30am, contemporary
- Holy Communion on the third Sunday
- Thursday service at 10.30am in the side chapel
- Open in daylight hours
- Grade II* listed
Venues and community places are listed as EveryVillage partners. We wrote this page ourselves, from information St Mary's Church, Kingsclere and others have published. Compiled 2 October 2026 from Historic England's list entry 1092447, the church's entry on A Church Near You (services and opening) and the church's own website (the office), read through search results of those pages. The bedbug story is the published legend; Atlas Obscura notes the doubts about it. Pinned at the grid reference on Historic England's list entry 1092447. If you help run it, send us a correction or ask us to take the page down.