Church Of St Oswald

The Church of St Oswald is a parish church located in Thornton in Lonsdale. It was rebuilt between 1933 and 1935 after a fire, designed by the architectural firm Austin & Paley, although the 15th-century west tower remains intact. The church is constructed of limestone rubble with sandstone dressings and features a Westmorland slate roof.

The building includes a south entrance porch, a four-stage west tower, a four-bay nave with aisles, north and south chapels, and a two-bay chancel. The south porch has a steeply pitched gable and a pointed arched entrance with a moulded surround and a plank door. The tower features a moulded surround to its pointed arch west entrance, a plank door with strap hinges, and a hoodmould. It also has a three-light trefoil-headed mullioned window with panel tracery and a small ogee-headed window above it, which has a decorated hoodmould and sill. The bell stage contains two trefoil-headed lights with panel tracery and a continuous hoodmould. The tower is supported by diagonal buttresses and topped with an embattled parapet and a late 19th-century pyramidal spire made of slate with a lead finial.

The nave has three two-light chamfered mullioned windows with alternating trefoils and cusped Y tracery on the south side, and two two-light windows and a three-light window on the north side. Buttresses flank the side chapel, which has a three-light window on the south and three lights in the east window. The east window of the chancel is a four-light window with trefoil heads and features a cruciform finial at the east gable end. There is also a north vestry entrance.

Inside, dating from around 1935, the church has four pointed arches in the south arcade and a similar arch on the north side, while the rest are in a Romanesque style, with one featuring zig-zag moulding. The roof is supported by jointed cruck trusses with windbraces. The church contains memorials to several members of the Redmayne family from the late 17th and early 18th centuries, as well as a memorial to Edward Talbot Day Foxcroft, who lived from 1837 to 1911. The church was apparently rebuilt after the fire based on a design from around 1870.