Church Of St Kentigern

The Church of St Kentigern is a parish church located in Aspatria, built between 1846 and 1848 by architects Travis & Mangnell. It stands on the site of an earlier Norman church and incorporates some of its features. The church is constructed from dressed red sandstone and features angle buttresses and eaves modillions, set on a chamfered plinth. The roof is made of graduated greenslate with coped gables and cross finials.

The building has a six-bay nave with aisles, a square three-storey west tower that includes a south porch and a north vestry, and a three-bay chancel with a south memorial chapel. The tower showcases a Norman-style west doorway, two-light windows on two levels, and a south clock face. The nave contains two-light aisle windows beneath quatrefoil clerestory windows, while the chancel features two-light windows and a three-light east window, which is topped by a carved oval panel inscribed in Latin to St Kentigern.

Inside, there is a Norman-style tower arch and an original zigzag Norman arch from the porch that has been reused as the vestry doorway. The nave is adorned with Early English style arcades supported by alternating round and polygonal columns. At the west end of the nave, there is part of an Anglo-Danish cross shaft along with other contemporary fragments, including a carved hog-back coffin. The 13th-century font has a square bowl resting on five shafts. The church also displays the Royal Arms of Queen Anne, dated 1711, and the aisle windows from 1910 serve as a memorial to Mary Lady Lawson. The 19th-century numbered pews, a marble wall plaque to William Lomas by P. Nixson from Carlisle dated 1823, and the chancel's 19th-century piscina and sedilia contribute to the interior's historical significance. Additionally, the Musgrave memorial chapel contains various 18th-century wall plaques dedicated to members of the Musgrave family from Hayton Castle.