St Mary the Virgin Church

The church of St Mary the Virgin was built around 1200 with the nave and lower tower surviving from that period. In the early 13th century the upper tower, chancel and south chapel were added. The north chapel was built and restoration work was carried out by Thomas Rickman in 1836, and the church was further restored by George Edmund Street in 1875-7.
The earliest record of Henbury dates from 692AD when the Mercian King, Ethelred son of Penda, gave lands to the second Bishop of Worcester in what was then known as "Henbury in the Saltmarsh." It was a large parish, going as far north as Aust. Today the parish is smaller though, in size, said to be the largest in the Bristol Diocese and it stretches from Cribbs Causeway out to the Severn Estuary, including Brentry, Henbury and the vales of Hallen.
The first Norman building was succeeded by the present building in the 12th Century. Almost one hundred years later Bishop Giffard ordered the parishioners of Brentry to rebuild the chancel, which they duly did, making it longer and with the marked northward slant we see today.
St Mary's was then reordered in two phases during the 19th century, the second of which was overseen by the celebrated Victorian George Street. No subsequent work was completed on the building until 2008.
Residents of Henbury Churchyard include the Egyptologist Amelia Edwards, but no monument is more poignant or visited than that of Scipio Africanus. A servant of the Earl of Suffolk and Bindon, Scipio Africanus died in 1720 aged only 18 years. The stones, inside and outside the building tell the story of a community of worshipping Christians that has lasted over 1300 years.