Old Bankend House, Castleton

This is an 1808 church, altered in 1885, which no longer has ecclesiastical use and forms part of a picturesque group with a combined stable/schoolroom/session house. The building is a T-plan structure constructed from rubble sandstone with polished ashlar dressings and coursed ashlar to the north (entrance) elevation. It features lancet windows, strip quoins, raised margins, chamfered reveals, and a moulded cornice.

The north (entrance) elevation is three bays wide, with an advanced gabled bay in the centre. A pointed-arched doorway leads to the interior, above which is a tripartite window. A louvred quatrefoil opening is set into the gablehead, and the gables feature an ashlar bellcote with a hoodmoulded opening and a cruciform finial. There are two lancet windows to each of the left and right returns. Single lancets are positioned in the recessed bays.

The roof is covered in grey slate, with slab coping, block skewputts, and conical ventilators. The schoolroom and stable, a two-storey building with a catslide roof, adjoins the main structure with a single-storey section to the rear. It has coped gabled-head stacks and small-pane glazing. A 17th-century carved stone is set into the north gable, inscribed with the words “Deo et ecclesiae, hodie mihi, cras tibi. WMS (Rev Walter Scott) 1621”, along with a heraldic shield bearing the inscription “MW”.

To the northwest of the church is a single-storey, three-bay house known as Old Bankend House, accompanied by a small pitched-roof annexe.

A high, coped whinstone boundary wall encloses the site, with a mounting block located to the northeast.

The building is situated on the B6357, approximately one and a half miles north of Newcastleton, shortly beyond the junction with the B6399. Castleton Churchyard, located further northeast along the B6357, was the site of the parish church from the 12th century until the construction of this building in 1808. The church was deliberately positioned centrally within the large parish of Castleton, rather than near the main population centre, for the convenience of all parishioners. Materials from the preceding church, built in 1777, were reused in the construction of this building. The schoolroom was also constructed on the site in 1808, serving the combined functions of a schoolroom, session house, and stables. The church closed in 1952, when the congregation relocated to St John's Church in Newcastleton, and is currently in a state of some decay.