Church Of St Oswald

The Church of St Oswald is a Grade I listed building located on Church Cliff Drive in Filey. It dates from the 12th and 13th centuries, with 15th-century battlements. The church was restored and partly rebuilt in 1885 by W S Barber, and the roof was partially rebuilt in 1908 following a fire. It features a 19th-century south porch and 20th-century vestry and north porch. The structure is made of dressed sandstone with slate and lead roofs.

The church has a six-bay aisled nave with a clerestory, transepts, a crossing tower, and a chancel, along with north and south porches. The two-stage, embattled crossing tower includes two-light pointed bell openings set under a round-headed arch, with a continuous sill band. The south door to the nave is elaborately designed with four orders of moulded round arches, interrupted by a later inserted stoup. A vertical slit window in the west end was originally intended to illuminate a stair turret for a west tower. The aisles and nave feature an impost band.

The transepts are supported by stepped angle buttresses and also have a continuous sill band. The chancel includes a pointed Priest's Door under a corbelled dripmould on the south wall, accompanied by a mass clock and a 17th-century bronze sundial inscribed in Greek. The east end of the chancel has a group of three stepped lancets beneath a continuous hoodmould, with diagonal buttresses. Lancet windows are present throughout the church, with those in the chancel and transepts dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, while the others are from the 19th century. An embattled parapet runs over a corbel table around the building.

Inside, the nave arcades feature tripartite responds with a keeled middle shaft, alternating round and octagonal piers with moulded capitals, and chamfered pointed arches. The clerestory openings are deeply splayed and round-headed, with similar openings at the west end of the north aisle. The chancel and south transept have sedilia with trefoil heads, and each transept includes a piscina. Notable furnishings consist of a late 13th-century carved wooden figure in the south aisle, a sealed altar slab carved with five crosses in the sanctuary, a 13th-century plain bowl font on a cylindrical shaft, and a hatchment over the north door.