Church Of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew

This is a church of 12th- to 14th-century date, substantially restored in the 19th century. The building is constructed of coursed ironstone rubble with hammer-dressed blocks, gritstone blocks, and limestone ashlar dressings, under slate and lead roofs. It comprises a west tower with a stair turret on its north side and vestry on its south side, an aisled nave with north and south porches, and a 3-bay chancel with an organ chamber on the north side.

The 13th-century square tower rises in three stages and employs massive reused Roman gritstone blocks for its lower quoins. The west face has a lancet window to the first stage, with string courses and single-light shafted belfry openings beneath a later battlemented parapet. The 3-stage stair turret has chamfered angles and incorporates reused moulded string courses and medieval carved head stops, with narrow lancets beneath a hipped slate roof. This turret was rebuilt in the early 19th century by W Fowler of Winterton.

The south aisle of the nave features a string course, two buttresses, and two pointed 3-light windows with hood-moulds and 19th-century tracery. A 13th-century west lancet and a 14th-century pointed 3-light window with Curvilinear tracery are also present. A parapet caps the wall. The north aisle has three segmental-headed 3-light windows with 19th-century tracery, and the clerestory has 19th-century rebuilt lancets. The north porch contains 13th-century side lancets with foliate stops and a moulded ogee-headed inner doorway. The south porch covers a late 12th-century inner door ornamented with three orders of shafts with foliate capitals and a richly moulded arch.

The 14th-century chancel displays a chamfered plinth, string course, and stepped diagonal buttresses with crocketed finials. The side walls carry pointed 2-light windows with hood-moulds, mostly with 19th-century tracery. The 3-light pointed east window has been reset with 19th-century tracery, and a blocked cusped lancet lies above it. The organ chamber, built in 1889 by C Hodgson Fowler of Durham, contains a reset 14th-century 3-light east window with Curvilinear tracery. Stone coped gables crown both the nave and chancel.

Interior features include a north arcade of four bays: three bays have 12th-century cylindrical piers with richly moulded octagonal capitals and pointed arches decorated with scallops, pellets, rolls, keel and chevron mouldings (probably reset in the 13th century). The fourth bay has a 13th-century keeled quatrefoil pier with a double-chamfered arch and a 14th-century octagonal respond. The south arcade consists of 14th-century octagonal piers with plain moulded capitals and double-chamfered arches. A 14th-century double-chamfered tower arch springs from octagonal responds. The north aisle contains a blocked pointed 2-light Perpendicular west window and a blocked 2-light pointed window with Curvilinear tracery. The chancel preserves a 14th-century sedilia with crocketed and cusped ogival heads, supported by 19th-century mullions.

The west window of the south aisle contains 18th-century painted glass depicting Christ, executed by Pearson of York. The chancel monuments include a mutilated 13th-century crusader effigy reset in a niche with 14th-century ballflower decoration, a 1776 marble statue of a mourning woman commemorating Sir Charles Sheffield and his wife Margaretta (by Fisher of York), and a 1816 recessed wall monument to Sir John Sheffield and Reverend Robert Sheffield by J Bacon junior of London.

The south aisle, south porch, clerestory, and chancel underwent restoration in 1865-66 by Edward Browning of Stamford. A vestry dated 1938 was added, and the north porch underwent later 20th-century boiler-room alterations.