Church Of St Oswald

Church of St Oswald

Parish church with origins in the 12th century, with significant additions and rebuilding in the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. The building was restored in 1870. It is constructed of coursed limestone rubble and ashlar with slate roofs. The plan comprises a nave with bellcote, chancel, south porch, north aisle and north chapel.

The west end was rebuilt in the 14th century in ashlar, added to the earlier rubble nave. A two-light west window with reticulated tracery in a pointed surround is flanked by stepped buttresses. Above this is a gabled double bellcote with pointed bell openings.

The north aisle contains a single 13th-century lancet window with chamfered surround to the west. The north wall of the aisle has two two-light 15th-century windows with trefoil heads and chamfered rectangular surrounds, as well as a blocked segmental-headed doorway. The 15th-century north chapel features two two-light windows in the north wall with cusped ogee tracery, quatrefoils to the heads and hollow chamfered rectangular surrounds. To the east is a three-light window with cusped intersecting tracery in a hollow chamfered pointed surround.

The 14th-century chancel east window has two lights with reticulated tracery. The south wall of the chancel contains two matching windows, one of 19th-century date. The south wall of the nave displays a three-light 16th-century window with panel tracery, slightly pointed heads to the lights and a hollow chamfered surround.

The gabled south porch has a continuously moulded outer doorway, above which is a stone shield of arms. The interior contains side benches. The reset 12th-century inner doorway features nook shafts and cushion capitals, with a plain tympanum containing a scratch dial and a single plain order beneath the chamfered hood mould.

The interior comprises a three-bay north arcade dating to around 1200, with circular piers, annular capitals and octagonal responds, all supporting double chamfered round arches. At the east end of the north aisle, a pointed double chamfered 13th-century archway with shafted reveals leads into the north chapel. A similar opening exists in the north wall of the chancel. The south wall contains a single aumbry and the north wall a double aumbry. The north chapel contains a further aumbry, two statue brackets on the east wall, and to the west a blocked circular quatrefoil window.

The church contains significant fittings and monuments. In the north chapel are six quarries of 15th-century painted glass. Early 18th-century altar rails feature tapering turned balusters with a moulded handrail. A 19th-century openwork ashlar pulpit stands in the nave. The 14th-century octagonal font displays cusped quatrefoil panels and armorial shields, with a moulded underside to a plain octagonal stem. In the porch is a 10th-century tapering limestone ashlar grave slab with a tall central raised cross flanked by two smaller crosses.

The north chapel contains a cusped pointed 14th-century tomb recess with a ledger slab depicting busts of a lady and child, both praying and set within trefoiled surrounds. An alabaster wall monument to Sir Charles Dymoke and his wife features two praying figures in a surround of Corinthian columns supported on acanthus brackets, with a moulded entablature and armorial escutcheon.

In the sanctuary is a low relief slab to John Croxby, Rector (circa 1470), showing a robed and tonsured figure beneath a trefoil arch with black letter marginal inscription. The chancel contains a similar plain slab with marginal inscription commemorating Sir Nicholas de Hebden (died 1416) and his wife Katherine (died 1424). A further slab in the nave of 1458 commemorates Richard Boteler and his wife.