Church Of St Oswald

The Church of St. Oswald is a parish church dating to the 14th and 15th centuries, with substantial restoration and renewal work undertaken in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is constructed of squared sandstone with a shallow-pitched roof hidden behind a parapet. The church comprises a west tower, a nave with a south aisle, a chancel with a south chapel and a north vestry.

The three-stage, Perpendicular-style west tower features diagonal buttresses, a west door, a three-light window with Perpendicular tracery, louvred two-light belfry windows, and a corbelled-out embattled parapet with crocketed corner pinnacles. The three-bay, buttressed south aisle includes a 19th-century gabled porch, with a two-light window on each side of it, and a three-light window with reticulated tracery in the third bay. The two-bay south chapel has large four-light windows with Perpendicular tracery. The chancel was rebuilt in 1926 and has a five-light east window in Perpendicular style. The north wall of the nave, comprising four bays, has a shallow porch to the second bay, three three-light windows with reticulated tracery, and four square-headed clerestory windows each of two cusped lights.

Inside, the early 14th-century three-bay aisle arcade features double-chamfered two-centred arches supported by short octagonal columns with moulded capitals. The chancel arch is double-chamfered and springs from figured corbels. The roof has king-post trusses of shallow pitch with arch-bracing springing from stone corbels depicting angels with Instruments of the Passion, and trefoil-headed panels over the tie-beams. An early 18th-century wooden pulpit is octagonal, with fluted pilasters and fielded panels. The church contains an exceptionally fine collection of monuments, including the tomb chest of Sir Robert Waterton (died 1424) and his wife, featuring recumbent alabaster effigies under a crocketed canopy; Lord Welles (died 1461) and his wife, also with recumbent alabaster effigies; Sir John Savile (died 1606), with his son Sir Henry (died 1632) and his wife, on a tall tomb chest with black Ionic columns; Charles Savile (died 1741) reclining on a large lettered base with his mourning wife seated beside him (by Scheemakers); and John Savile, 1st Earl of Mexborough (died 1778), with a semi-reclining figure pointing upwards (by Wilton).