Church Of St Cuthbert

The Church of St Cuthbert is a parish church dating from 1849-50, designed by John Dobson. It was extended between 1881 and 1886 with the addition of a south aisle, choir vestry, and organ chamber by J.W. Walton Wilson. The church was built on land and with a grant of £450 from Thomas Wilson of Shotley Hall, with the remainder funded by public subscription. It is constructed of coursed squared sandstone with a plinth, quoins, and ashlar dressings, featuring roofs of graduated thick purple slate and Welsh slate with stone gable copings. The church is aligned north-south and includes an aisled nave, a ritual north-west porch tower, a south-west choir vestry, a chancel, and a north vestry and south organ chamber. It is built in the Early English style.

The tower has a drip-string over boarded double doors set within a double-shafted, many-moulded 2-centred arch, featuring elaborate hinges. Above the doorway is a slit window and a clock, followed by a set-back belfry with high 2-light openings. Full-height clasping buttresses with offsets are present, and the broach spire incorporates lucarnes and a wrought-iron finial, resting on a nail-head corbel table. Lancet windows are arranged in pairs in the north aisle, under a corbel table, triple in the east front, and paired in the west front. A vesica is positioned over the central west buttress, and a large vesica is also present in the south-west vestry. The north vestry has a projecting stack with offsets and a round chimney.

Inside, the church is plastered and features ashlar dressings and an arch-braced nave roof on alternate corbels and shafted corbels. A scissor-truss chancel roof is supported by corbelled wall-posts. There are four-bay arcades with double-chamfered arches on round piers with octagonal plinths and capitals. A many-moulded chancel arch rests on half-octagonal pilasters and corbelled Frosterley marble shafts, with capitals recording the dates of the building and enlargement. A 2-bay chancel arcade is adorned with carved brackets and corbels. A high lancet window leads to the choir vestry, and a balconied doorway provides access to the first tower floor. Glass in the south aisle is signed by Percy and Bacon bros. of Newman Street, London; one window commemorates Thomas Siddell, a veterinary surgeon who died in the Crimean War in 1855. The chancel floor is tiled, and the nave floor is flagged. A brass foundation plaque dated 1849 names John Dobson as the architect. Roll-moulded square-ended pews are marked with Roman numerals. Boot-scrapers are set flanking the tower door.