Church Of Our Lady

The Church of Our Lady is a parish church, originally a manorial chapel, dating to the early 12th century. It likely incorporates fabric from an earlier structure, with the east end rebuilt around 1330 and a restoration with the addition of a west porch in 1895. The church is constructed of squared stone, with roughly-coursed rubble on the north side of the nave, and tooled stone in the west porch and upper part of the south nave wall. It has ashlar dressings and stone slate roofs. The plan features three cells, with no external division between the chancel and sanctuary.

The nave is short but tall, with two 19th-century lancet windows on the south side; a blocked round-headed loop from the 12th or earlier century on the north, and a slatted opening under a small pointed arch in the west gable. The eastern gable has a 19th-century gabled bellcote with a finial cross. The gabled porch has panelled double doors set within the re-used head of a 14th-century east window featuring reticulated tracery, with a single-light window on each return. The lower chancel has two small 19th-century windows on the south and one on the north, and a restored 3-light east window. Small, blocked doors are located close to the west end of both north and south walls; the south door has a roll-moulded surround of a 16th-century type.

Inside, the original west doorway, within the porch, has a plain square-headed opening beneath an arched tympanum with a head, probably from a Tree of Life design, comparable to that at St. Bartholomew's Chapel in Croxdale, County Durham. Above the doorway are three shields in cusped panels, and a square-headed window set above them. The chancel and sanctuary arches are near-identical, with soffit rolls between hollows, zigzag and hoods with billet moulding and chip-carved ornament, on semicircular responds with cushion caps beneath a chamfered impost string, which continues along the chancel and sanctuary walls below a plain barrel vault. A 14th-century piscina with a trefoiled ogee arch and shelf is situated on the south side of the sanctuary; an image bracket is located on the south of the east window. The nave has an 18th-century coved plaster ceiling with a dentil cornice and five shields in cusped panels set above the door.

The sanctuary contains a 14th-century effigy of a cross-legged knight, likely Sir Hugh Delaval, and a late 14th or early 15th-century lady, both standing on moulded plinths. Six large 18th or early 19th-century hatchments of the Delaval and Astley families are displayed in the nave.