Old Parish Church, Castleton

The Old Parish Church at Castleton is an 1808 building, with alterations made in 1885. It no longer functions as a place of worship and forms part of a picturesque group alongside a combined stable, schoolroom, and session house. The church is a T-plan structure built of rubble sandstone with polished ashlar dressings, and coursed ashlar to the north (entrance) elevation. It features pointed-arched windows, strip quoins, raised margins, chamfered reveals, and a moulded cornice.

The north elevation has three bays, with an advanced gabled bay in the center. A pointed-arched doorway leads to the church, above which is a tripartite window. A louvred quatrefoil opening is located in the gablehead. An ashlar bellcote with a hoodmoulded opening and cruciform finial sits atop the gable, alongside two lancet windows on each return. Single lancets are found in the recessed side bays.

The church has a grey slate roof with slab coping, block skewputts, and conical ventilators. The combined schoolroom and stable is two stories high with a catslide roof, coped gabled stack chimneys, and small-pane glazing. A 17th-century carved stone is set into the north gable, bearing the inscription "Deo et ecclesiae, hodie mihi, cras tibi. WMS (Rev Walter Scott) 1621,” along with a heraldic shield inscribed with "MW.”

To the northwest of the church is a single-story, three-bay house called Old Bankend House, with a small pitched-roof annexe. A mounting block and a high, coped whinstone boundary wall are also present, the wall enclosing the churchyard.

The church is located on the B6357, approximately one and a half miles north of Newcastleton, just beyond the junction with the B6399. The site was occupied by the parish church from the 12th century until the construction of the 1808 building. Materials from the earlier church of 1777 were incorporated into the new structure. The schoolroom, session house, and stables were built on the same site in 1808 and served a combined purpose. The church closed in 1952 when the congregation moved to St John's Church in Newcastleton, and is currently in a state of disrepair.