Church Of St Magnus

Church of St Magnus, Bessingby

Built in 1893–4 to the designs of Temple Moore, this is a church constructed under the will of George Wright of Bessingby Hall. It replaced an earlier brick church of 1767 that stood nearby. The building is faced externally with Whitby ashlar stone, with internally the lower parts clad in red Dumfries sandstone and upper sections in Ancaster stone. The roof is covered in red clay tiles.

The church comprises a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, a central steeple, and a north-east vestry. The architectural style is 14th-century Gothic. The dominant exterior features are the sturdy central tower and the continuous roofs spanning the nave and aisles. At the west end stands a four-light window with Decorated tracery. Substantial gabled buttresses separate the nave from the west ends of the aisles, which are lit by small cusped lancet windows. The chancel at the east end features a five-light window with flowing tracery; a foundation stone at the north-east corner records the date of 1893. The chancel walls contain two-light Decorated windows. The aisles are reinforced by large central buttresses and lit by small two-light cusped windows in square-headed frames. The low, massive central tower has a projecting south-east stair-turret flush with the east wall of the south aisle. The tower itself displays cusped lancets and cusped Y-tracery belfry openings. The spire, set behind embattled parapets, has one tier of small spire-lights.

Inside, pink stone is used below the springing of the arches with cream-coloured stone above. The crossing features north and south chamfered arches, with more elaborate moulded arches towards the chancel and nave. The two-bay arcades have piers with a complex section comprising two foils with fillets and two ogees, with quirky detail to the ring moulding of the shafts. All roofs are painted blue. The nave, chancel and crossing roofs are peppered with stars. The boarded wagon roof to the chancel is divided into panels by moulded ribs with a brattished wallplate. The nave roof is steeply canted. A flat panelled roof covers the crossing, while aisle roofs are divided into panels. The north and south walls of the chancel are divided into bays by arcading; the western arch on the north side opens into the vestry, while the centre arch contains a small organ. The east wall is plain.

The church contains an elegant integrated design of choir stalls and a low timber chancel screen, panelled with restrained blind and pierced tracery. The chancel screen returns as two reading desks facing each other, and the choir stalls have tall, panelled backs with a coved cornice. The timber altar rails are equally low-key in design. A slender timber drum pulpit stands on a stone base, its sides decorated with blind tracery. Nave benches have ends with concave shoulders and a simple hollow-chamfered moulding. The oldest item in the church is a 12th-century tub font on a 19th-century ashlar base. The tub has blind arcaded sides carved with zig-zag and lozenges; one panel is carved with stylised flowers and another with two animals joined at the soles of their feet. Around the font the floor is paved with old inscribed monumental slabs.

The east window is a fine work in stained glass by Victor Milner, Temple Moore's preferred stained glass artist. The other chancel windows are also of excellent quality and are presumably by Milner, who may also have designed the west window. In the south aisle are two small but good windows by C E Kempe. Several early 19th-century wall monuments, resited from the old church, are present, including one to Lady Ann Hudson (died 1818), signed by R J Wyatt of London, featuring a good group carved in relief.

Temple Lushington Moore (1856–1920) was one of the greatest church designers of the late Gothic Revival. Born in Ireland and educated in Glasgow and Yorkshire, he maintained a close affinity with Yorkshire and received many commissions there. He was articled to G G Scott Junior from 1875 to 1878 and began independent practice in the 1880s. His greatest achievements occurred between the mid-1890s and the start of the First World War, characterised by what one contemporary critic called "good proportion and sweetness of line". The elaborate ornament and polychromy of 1860s and 1870s architecture have no place in his work, which forms a key bridge between Victorian and twentieth-century church architecture. As a devout Anglo-Catholic, much of his work was for High Church clients.

Moore made three designs for the church; the design selected involved a substantial central tower with a recessed spire. Unusually for the end of the 19th century, the crossing tower is quite evident inside, so the building assumes a three-cell appearance on its main axis with a strong sense of separation between the nave and chancel. Moore illuminates the tower space very effectively by means of windows in the side walls. The church cost £2,896, plus £252 for fittings.