Mort House

This is an early 12th-century Romanesque church, significantly altered and largely reconstructed in the 1860s by John Lessels, with later work by James Grieve in 1928, particularly to the north chapel. The church is rectangular in plan, composed of a lower, narrower nave to the east and a west tower with a pitched roof and a stone arched belfry. It sits centrally within a large, rectangular churchyard on an elevated, steeply sloping site.

The exterior displays a pebbledash render and incorporates later medieval additions, including a transept chapel to the east of the north wall (rebuilt in 1928) and a porch to the west of the south wall, which encloses the original Romanesque entrance door. The south elevation features pointed arched windows and doors, a small rectangular window, a plain doorway, and a complex four-light traceried window with a circlet to the apex of the chancel. Two small round-topped slit windows are located on the north chancel wall, alongside three carved stone, pedimented memorials to the east gable. A small stone walled burial enclosure with wrought-iron railings is positioned off-centre to the right. Decorative stone sawtooth skews with pyramidal skewputts, stone ridges, graded grey slates, and four gabled roof dormers with slated cheeks are present on the north roof pitch. Cast-iron rainwater goods are also visible. The windows are glazed with plain squared and diamond pattern leaded glass, incorporating various decorative painted panels.

The interior retains a fine scheme mainly from the 1863 remodelling, alongside surviving 12th-century Romanesque elements such as two widely splayed, narrow arched windows on the north side of the chancel and the two doorways to the nave. The roof is an arched braced exposed timber structure featuring a balcony at the west end with a quatrefoil-topped, detailed timber balustrade supported on octagonal timber columns. Timber boarding runs to the dado, with painted render above. The interior also contains timber pews and a stone slabbed floor. The chancel includes a large arched recess, two arched windows on the north wall, a large traceried window on the south, and a tripartite pointed arched memorial panel with a prayer to the gable.

The north chapel is characterized by exposed rounded field rubble stonework walls and a coursed stone vaulted ceiling. A recess in the north wall has paired round-headed windows and a circular light above. A decorative margined white marble floor pattern is laid down. The chapel also contains freestanding timber chairs, stained glass windows to the south, and leaded lights elsewhere.

The churchyard itself is a large, irregular, rectangular-plan area, enclosing the church on a steeply gradiented site with associated structures and a range of important 17th-century pictorial gravestones. A stone and slated mort house stands midway up the north boundary wall. A squared rubble stone wall enclosure with a wrought iron gate is present along the south wall, with a further smaller enclosure on higher ground to the west. Rubble and boulder capped walls define the north and south boundaries, with a hedge bordering the southeast corner, and taller, smooth coped walls to a later graveyard extension to the west. Rounded coursed red sandstone gatepiers with domed caps and decorative wrought-iron gates mark the entrances. A mid-20th century extension is located at the western, higher level end of the graveyard.