Church Of Saint Bartholomew

The Church of St Bartholomew is a building with a complex history, dating back to the 11th century or earlier, with significant additions and alterations in the 12th, early 13th, and late 19th centuries. It is constructed of coursed cobbles with freestone dressings, and red brick to the tower parapet, all covered by a slate roof.

The church comprises a nave with aisles, a south porch, a chancel, a north chapel, and a west tower. The substantial three-stage west tower features a moulded plinth, angle buttresses, alternating quoins, and scroll-moulded strings between stages. It has lancet windows to the first and second stages. The third stage’s north elevation retains original unaltered belfry openings – two pointed lights with a mid-wall shaft under a round roll-moulded arch on nook shafts. The other sides of the tower have pointed three-light windows with Perpendicular tracery, and a dentilled brick parapet.

The nave has buttresses with offsets and two three-light square-headed windows with cusped ogee tracery under hood-moulds to the west and centre, and similar two-light windows to the east and clerestory. A pointed south door has a continuous chamfer. The chancel has a two-light square-headed window with cusped ogee tracery to the east, a pointed priest’s door with a continuous wave moulding under a reused arch with chevron ornament to the left, and above the window is the head of a former slit window decorated with affronted beasts and geometrical ornament. A 4-light east window has 19th-century tracery under an elliptical head.

Inside, the early 13th-century pointed tower arch comprises three orders with rolls on hollow chamfers under a stopped hood-mould, moulded capitals, a filleted shaft to the responds, and water-holding bases. Late 19th-century north and south arcades incorporate round and pointed arches on circular piers with shallow moulded bases. In the south aisle, the north wall contains a circular Anglo-Saxon sundial with an inscription reading "Ulf who ordered this church to be built for his own and Gunware's souls" and a small figure of a Roman soldier, possibly from the 12th century. The north chancel chapel has a pointed 14th-century arch with chamfered imposts. A chest tomb holds the effigy of Sir John de Mulsa, who died in 1377, featuring shields and quatrefoils under billet ornament. A late 14th-century effigy of a woman is set within a pointed chamfered arch into the chancel. A blocked round-headed slit window with spiral ornament is visible on the chancel north wall. A 15th-century font, now disused, stands in the west end of the nave, with a shallow basin on an octagonal pillar and a high moulded base, believed to have been brought from the lost Church of St Hilda, Cowden Parva.