Church Of St Andrew

The Church of St Andrew, now a chapel and residential youth centre, dates back to the 13th century, with significant rebuilding in the 19th century and conversion around 1970. The building is constructed of rubble with a stone slate roof. It comprises a west tower and a nave, with a ruined chancel.

The three-storey west tower has flat-headed belfry openings with mullions and transoms on all four sides. A stair turret is situated on the south side. The nave has five bays divided by shallow stepped buttresses. The south door retains Early English jambs under a pointed arch datable to 1811. Above the doorway, a large round window containing a quatrefoil was removed from the north side around 1970. The nave features Perpendicular windows of two lights with ogee tracery under flat heads. The east wall of the tower shows a Perpendicular roofline at a higher level than the present roof, along with a blocked single-light, flat-headed opening. The east window of the nave is of three lights with Perpendicular tracery above a crested transom, set within hollow-chamfered jambs. The west wall of the tower has diagonal buttresses; a window of three lancet lights under a single pointed arch is on the ground floor, and a single-light window is on the first floor.

Internally, the two easternmost bays of the nave are used as a chapel, while the remainder has been converted into hostel accommodation. The church has no aisles, but an Early English arcade was placed laterally across the nave in 1811, incorporating two round piers supporting one arch and two half-arches. Numerous tombstones of medieval, 17th, and 18th century dates are set into the paving. The font sits on an Early English column base, featuring a deeply-cusped stem and basin. An Early English piscina has a deeply-cusped basin. A Jacobean altar table has contributed panels to the modern reading and prayer desks. Memorials are located on the south wall to Thomas Fawcett of Oxque, who died in 1783 and was a celebrated cultivator of bees, and to Francis Morley of Marrick Park, who died in 1854. On the north wall are memorials to John Sherlock, who died in 1809, and Mary Sherlock, who died in 1814. Fragments of medieval stained glass remain within the tracery of the east window. An Early English tower arch is present, featuring plain responds, and a hatchment dated 1696 is displayed within. The ruined chancel contains the jambs of a wide east window; the south window survives with springing for Decorated tracery, as well as fragments of an aumbry, piscina, and sedilia. An Early English doorway, removed from the nave around 1970, has been incorporated into a hostel building immediately north of the church. Farm buildings adjoining the tower to the north incorporate fragments of earlier fabric. Originally the church served the Priory of Benedictine nuns founded in the 12th century. The nave was originally the conventual church, and the choir the parish church, transitioning after the Dissolution to the nave serving as the parish church.