Church Of Saint Oswald

Church of Saint Oswald

Parish church, built in 1855. Constructed of tooled sandstone ashlar with limestone ashlar dressings and Welsh slate roofs, designed in the Gothic Revival style.

The church comprises a west tower with a projecting octagonal stair turret at the south-west angle, a four-bay aisled nave with a south porch, and a two-bay chancel with an adjoining vestry to the north.

The three-stage tower features a moulded plinth and angle buttresses with offsets. Moulded string courses separate the stages. The first stage has single lancets with hoodmoulds on the south and west sides, and slit lights to the stair turret. The second stage has oculi on the north, west and south sides. The third stage has angle pilaster buttresses and pointed two-light plate-traceried belfry openings with pierced quatrefoils above lancets and hoodmoulds. A corbel table and moulded string course complete this stage. An octagonal broach spire with pierced quatrefoils to alternate sides and a carved finial rises from the tower.

The aisles have buttresses at each end and a sill string course. They are lit by single and twin lancets to the north and south sides, and single lancets to the east and west. The south porch has flanking buttresses and a pointed chamfered arch with hoodmould beneath a coped gable. Small single lancets light the sides, with a pointed chamfered inner arch.

The chancel has diagonal buttresses, three lancets to the south, a single lancet to the north, and stepped triple east lancets with a pierced oval light above. Twin east lancets serve the vestry. Exposed rafter ends and coped gables with shaped kneelers occur throughout.

The interior features nave arcades of pointed double-chamfered arches on cylindrical piers and responds with plain moulded capitals and bases. A narrow segmental-pointed chamfered tower arch has an inner pointed chamfered order dying into chamfered jambs. A shouldered chamfered doorway provides access to the tower staircase. The chancel arch is pointed and double-chamfered, with a continuous outer chamfer and an inner order on short wall shafts with moulded capitals and bases terminating in carved knotted tails. A pointed chamfered door with broach stops leads to the vestry. Both nave and chancel have trussed rafter roofs.

The chancel contains several monuments. A notable Rococo white marble wall tablet commemorates the Worsop family of 1758, featuring an inscribed oval medallion supported by scrolls with urns and floral drops, a small medallion above with faded painted arms, and a plain base supported by a winged cherub's head. A plain segmental-headed wall tablet records Elizabeth Lister of 1729. A pedimented wall tablet to the Gee family of Haldenby Park, dated 1852, is by Skelton of York. A wall tablet to Reverend James Stovin Lister of 1844 by Fisher of York includes a carved dove and arms. In the nave, a wall tablet to Captain Augustus Webb of 1854 by Waudby of York records his death from wounds received in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. The south aisle contains a wall tablet to John Hopkinson of 1820, with a damaged urn on a segmental-headed base.

The church contains a nineteenth-century octagonal ashlar pulpit and an ashlar font with winged angels and a ballflower frieze to the bowl, octagonal shaft, and moulded base. Nineteenth-century stained glass includes east and south-east windows of 1855–56 by Gibbs of London.

The church stands in an imposing isolated position on a mound in the flat marshlands midway between Garthorpe and Luddington. It replaced a medieval church illustrated by C. Nattes in 1794 (Banks Collection, Lincoln City Library) and by G. Fairbairn in the mid-nineteenth century (a copy of the print hangs in the north aisle). A late twelfth-century font, now in the grounds of Waterton Hall, Garthorpe and Fockerby parish, may have come from Luddington Church.