Middleton Chapel

Middleton Chapel is a church dating back to the 12th century, with substantial restoration work carried out in 1857. It is constructed from stone rubble with ashlar dressings and has a plain-tile roof.

The plan consists of a chancel, a nave with a north porch and an integral bellcote. The east window of the chancel is a 19th-century addition, featuring three Norman-style lancet windows with a roundel above. A blocked door has a plain, flat-headed tympanum above it. The south wall includes a single 12th-century lancet. The north wall has a single 12th-century Norman lancet. The nave's north wall incorporates a 12th-century Norman lancet, as well as a restored 19th-century Norman-style lancet, doorway, and two ashlar buttresses. The south wall features one 12th-century lancet and three 19th-century Norman-style lancets, set between three ashlar buttresses. The west end was rebuilt in the mid-19th century, incorporating an arched window of Norman style, set within a projecting buttress that rises to form a bellcote with an ashlar-roofed canopy and a single bell-opening. The north porch is a 19th-century gabled structure with a sandstone-slate roof, built on a timber frame and an ashlar plinth.

Inside, the chancel has a single-bay, single-purlin restored roof with reset rafters and ashlaring. Stained glass by Kempe is in the east window. The chancel arch has been restored and features a scalloped capital and half-round shaft. A restored screen with eight openings supports a gallery above, retaining mostly original material. The screen has unpierced end bays, open central bays, and a mid rail with tracery under the side bays. An arched entrance is inset with carvings and the initials N N on one spandrel. The screen features open pendant tracery in Decorated-style pointed arches. Vaulting above the arcade has a bressumer with three bands of foliage carving. A plain, vertical-panelled gallery has restored foiled tracery in its central panels. It is likely original and associated with a rood loft that was not restored with the screen, the screen being dated 1582 prior to restoration. The nave has a four-bay restored roof with three arch-braced hammerbeam trusses and a single trenched purlin roof. Each truss comprises principals, collars, hammerbeams with carved ends, struts, restored arch-braces, wall-posts, and brackets. A plain, octagonal font, likely dating from the 16th century, is also present.