Church Of St Wilfred

The Church of St Wilfrid is a Grade I listed building located on Doncaster Road in Brayton. It dates from the 12th to the 15th centuries, with 19th-century additions. The church is constructed from magnesian limestone ashlar and features a slate roof. It has a four-bay chancel, a three-bay aisled nave, a south porch, and a west tower.

The chancel, which dates from the 13th to early 14th centuries, has a buttress on the south side, a doorway, and a lancet window in the third bay. The remaining windows are two-light with Geometrical tracery, while the east window is a four-light design with Curvilinear tracery. A mid-19th-century vestry is located to the north of the nave. The north aisle of the nave retains a lancet window to the west, with the other windows featuring Perpendicular tracery. The south porch, added in the 19th century, covers a late 12th-century doorway that has four orders of arches adorned with beakhead, medallion, and chevron ornament, as well as roll moulding. The porch includes three orders of nook shafts and responds with interlaced and figurative decoration, along with decorated square abaci.

The tower is a 12th-century embattled structure with three stages, small lancet windows, a string-course at cill level, and a continuous billet frieze at impost level that forms hood-moulds above the openings. It features a corbel table at the battlements and an octagonal Perpendicular upper section with two-light bell openings, topped by a slender octagonal stone spire.

Inside, the church has a 12th-century chancel arch with two orders; the inner order has chevron moulding, while the outer is a plain roll moulding, supported by responds with capitals featuring interlaced motifs and decorated square abaci. The early 14th-century nave arcade consists of double-chamfered arches on octagonal piers. The 12th-century tower arch has scalloped capitals. In the south wall of the chancel, there is a partly recut sedilia with crocket finials, as well as a 16th-century chest tomb for Lord D'Arcy, who died in 1558, and his wife Dorothea, whose effigies were mutilated during the Protectorate. There are also wall monuments to Robinson and Thomas Morley (1766) and to Joseph Thompson (died 1809), both crafted by Fishers of York. The east window features stained glass by H Hughes from 1878.