ST. MARY THE VIRGIN, Walsgrave-on-Sowe.

Sowe chapel was on the ancient estate of Coventry Priory, and was not one of the Chester chapels granted to the priory in the 12th century. The font in the present church is the only visible survival of the Norman building. The chapel was appropriated to the priory in 1259, as part of the arrangements for the endowment of Holy Trinity vicarage, but the small tithes and dues were not given to the Vicar of Holy Trinity, as were those of Coundon and Willenhall, and remained in the hands of the chaplain. There is no evidence of the status of the chaplain or chapel before this appropriation.
The original endowment of the chapel was probably the village and the open fields. The delimitation of the boundaries of the surrounding parishes on the waste was delayed by the absence of tithable settlements there, and by the fact that precise rules were unnecessary while the priory held the great tithes of nearly all the surrounding churches.
In the early 15th century, for instance, the priory stored the tithes of Ansty, Shilton, and Sowe Shortwood in the derelict Ansty rectory, and other tithes from the waste in a tithe barn of the 'manor' of Hawkesbury. The priory claimed, in its dispute about the tithes of 80 acres of the waste held by the lord of Caludon, that Sowe waste was in Sowe parish, as part of the ancient foundation of the priory, but it is probable that this was not true, and that its parochial rights were only successfully asserted after the suit of 1337.
Even in the early 15th century there were pieces of land which were in no one parish. The Prior of St. John of Jerusalem, for instance, had a field described as both in Sowe Shortwood and in Ansty beside Ansty Park. The priory had specific agreements with some of the tenants of the waste, including Zouche and Beauchamp, for the collection of tithes, and found it necessary in the case of both Hawkesbury and Attoxhale to assert that these places were in Sowe parish. It is probable that the parish boundaries were finally determined only when the great tithes of the various parishes came into the hands of laymen after the Dissolution.
In 1279 the prior was said to have the chapel in his own hands, with ½ acre. of land appurtenant, and in the early 15th century to be rector of Sowe hamlet, with tithes of sheaves, hay, and wood, and of the mill, and the mortuary offerings and livestock. The chaplain could be removed at the will of the prior; he received the tithes of wool and lambs, and the small tithes, and had the graveyard, a house next to it, and 10 acres of glebe. There was also a house in the graveyard pro reclus'. It is clear that the church, graveyard, and vicarage already occupied the positions they were to be in until the 19th century.
In 1535 the 'chaplain and curate' John Aston was said to be a stipendiary of the priory, and to have received an income of £5, made up of all the tithes and other revenues, except tithes of grain.
A salary or stipend of £2 was still being paid to John Aston in 1546-7. It was then said, probably mistakenly, that the chaplain had been accustomed to have all the tithes except those of hay. In fact at that date all the tithes and the income of the church were leased, with the tithe barn, to John and George Bole for 80 years from 1538 at £8 yearly. A Crown lease of the church, for 21 years, was granted in 1539 to Michael Cameswell, and a fresh lease (for the same term) to William Oldnale in 1554, but this appears either to have been inoperative or to have been surrendered to the Boles. The church dues and small tithes were later recovered by the vicar, probably when the Bole lease expired. The advowson has remained in the hands of the Crown since the Dissolution and the right of presentation is exercised on the Crown's behalf by the Lord Chancellor.
The chapel and chaplain are first called the church and the vicar in the early 17th century. The expiry of the lease of tithes and dues then coincided with the ministry of the active and litigious George Dale, who was Vicar of Sowe from 1609 to 1644. In the glebe terrier which he compiled in 1635 Dale stated that he had built the vicarage on the south of the churchyard. The medieval vicarage, however, had been next to the churchyard, and Dale may have been exaggerating what he had done. In a dispute with Francis Peyto which began about 1608, Dale had claimed a house, which Peyto said was his property, as the vicarage, had granted it to a tenant, and had then tried to evict Peyto.
In the course of this prolonged dispute Dale was on one occasion chased by Peyto's bailiffs, and in retaliation had brought out the hue and cry on an order written in his own hand for the illiterate thirdborough; the case which finally reached the Star Chamber was brought against Dale for the forgery of this order, but it is not known how it was decided. In August 1642 Nehemiah Wharton, then stationed at Coventry, wrote 'our horsemen sallied out as their daily custom is, and brought in with them . . . an old base priest, the parson of Sowe near us, and led him ridiculously about the city unto the chief commander'. This must have been George Dale, at the unfortunate end of a long career.
In 1724 the tithes of grain, wool, and lambs were being paid in kind to the tithe owner, but one witness in the dispute of that year said that he had paid some wool and lambs to the vicar. Possibly as a result of this dispute, the vicar was in 1726 receiving £26 yearly from all the landowners in lieu of small tithes; he was also getting £1 from the great tithes, a sum that probably represented the earlier stipend. In the inclosure award of 1756 the vicar received an allotment of 37 acres in respect of glebe and the small tithes from the open fields, and 2 acres in respect of tithes worth £2 which had been paid by Craven, probably the stipend. He continued to receive the small tithes from the waste, of which those on beasts were paid in cash in 1797, until 1843, when they were commuted for £80 yearly.
In 1778 a petition was sent to the bishop, asking that the benefices of Sowe and Stoke should be united, on the grounds that their net values were only £80 and £90 respectively, that the services were already being performed by one clergyman (though there had in fact been a curate at Stoke since 1763), that the populations were small, the churches only three miles apart, and each church big enough for the congregations of both parishes. These arguments, most of them specious, were accepted, and the benefices united. It is not certain whether or not the vicars were resident before F. D. Perkins arrived at Sowe in 1817. Perkins either enlarged-or rebuilt the vicarage in Schoolhouse Lane, on the ancient glebe close called Norrit, and thereafter the vicar of the united benefice normally lived at Sowe, and a curate (there were sometimes two) at Stoke. The arrival of the conscientious Perkins in the disorderly parish marks the transition from the 18th to the 19th century in Sowe. During his ministry much work was done to the church, and the National and infant schools were begun.
In 1866 the inhabitants of Stoke petitioned for its separation from Sowe, on the grounds that they had no resident vicar, and in 1867 it was agreed that their wishes should be met when a vacancy occurred in the benefice. The vicar, Robert Arrowsmith, like Perkins an active and determined minister, had a long ministry, lasting from 1856 to 1884, and the benefices were therefore not separated until the latter year.
A mission church for the colliery district was licensed in 1859 and opened the following year at Hawkesbury, near the corner of Hawkesbury and Lenton's Lanes, and another church school started there. This church is inside the parish of Sowe, but from 1908 onwards has been served from the parish of St. Thomas, Longford, which was created in that year partly out of Sowe. The parish of St. Chad, Woodend, was created from part of Sowe in 1957.

The parish church of ST. MARY THE VIRGIN stands on the corner of Ansty Road and Hall Lane, at the main cross-roads of the village. The graveyard was levelled and turfed c. 1955. The church consists of chancel, nave, north and south aisles, vestry, south porch, and west tower. It dates mainly from the 14th and 15th centuries, but retains its Norman font.
The chancel, of 14th-century date, is built of red sandstone. The buttresses, the east window and gable, and the upper parts of the walls have all been rebuilt or refaced. The east window contains cusped intersecting tracery. In the south wall is a priest's doorway flanked by two-light windows with forking tracery, hoodmoulds, and head-stops; there is a similar window in the north wall. Internally the south wall contains a piscina with a trefoil head. The character of the south nave arcade, of three bays, suggests that both nave and south aisle are of early14th-century date, but the chancel arch appears to have been inserted and the aisle entirely rebuilt in the late 15th or early 16th century. The south aisle windows are square-headed and the arch of the south doorway is four-centred, the door itself being original. At the east end of the south arcade there is a rood-loft stair with both upper and lower doorways in position. The north aisle is built of grey sandstone ashlar, patched with red; the two end gables have been rebuilt and these may originally have been timber-framed. The aisle probably dates from the late 15th century and has square-headed windows and a four-centred north doorway, now leading to the vestry. The aisle's three bays are longer than those of the south aisle, so that the nave arcade is of two bays only and the third bay is built against part of the north wall of the chancel, where it probably formed a chapel. One of the original north chancel windows was blocked when the aisle was built and this has now been made into an archway. There is also a small doorway into the easternmost bay of the aisle, perhaps originally an external north doorway to the chancel. The tower is of grey sandstone and is of late-15th-century date; it is of two stages and has diagonal buttresses and an embattled parapet with angle pinnacles and gargoyles. There is a blocked west doorway, probably a later insertion. Above the doorway and at the belfry stage are Perpendicular windows. The stair-turret is at the north-east angle.
During the incumbency of F. D. Perkins (1817- 56) the church was expensively re-pewed, increasing the sittings from 130 to 296. The small north vestry was also built, and plans were prepared for the restoration of the fabric. The church was thoroughly restored in 1865 under the direction of G. E. Street. It was probably at this time that the nave clerestory, which formerly had square-headed windows, was altered, the nave and chancel were re-roofed, and the brick south porch was replaced by one of red sandstone.
The 12th-century font is circular and is carved with arcading in shallow relief; it closely resembles the font at St. Mary Magdalen, Wyken. In the upper lights of the east window of the south aisle is some ancient glass, depicting angels carrying the arms of the Peyto family. There is an oak chest in the church dated 1702 with initials 'IB' and 'TH'. The organ is housed in the east bay of the north aisle.
In 1552 there were said to be two bells and a 'little sacring bell', but according to a later note the largest bell was subsequently sold to meet the cost of repairs to the church. In 1910 there were five bells, nos. 4 and 5 of 1702 by William Bagley of Chacombe (Northants.), nos. 1 and 2 of 1843 by W. and J. Taylor of Oxford, and no. 3 of 1872 by J. Taylor and Co. of Loughborough. In 1964 there were said to be six bells waiting to be re-hung. There is a silver chalice and paten of the Elizabethan period and a modern set of plate. The parish registers, which begin in 1538 and are complete, are very full and include a number of inventories of church goods.

From: 'The City of Coventry: Churches:
Churches built before 1800', A History of the County of Warwick: Volume VIII:
The City of Coventry and Borough of Warwick (1969).