Church Heritage Record 643033

2½-bay aisled nave and south-west porch, chancel and north vestry.

Nave 12m (37ft) by 5m (16ft).

The church succeeded a small chapel-of-ease on the site, shown in a painting kept within the church. This earlier building appears to have been a simple long box with an open timber belcote at the west end and domestic rectangular windows, these details probably dating to an 18th-century restoration. One surviving ancient feature is shown, a Norman south doorway, the lobed head of which is now built into the (internal) west wall of the church vestry. The present building was designed by G E Street in 1873 and built in 1874-75 at a cost of £13,125 for Sir Tatton Sykes of Sledmere House, who also renovated another 13 churches in the local area. 

The surrounding area centred around West Heslerton is an archaeological site of national importance, with earthworks and underground remains of a substantial Romano-British and Saxon proto-urban settlement. The large-scale excavations here have changed our perception of the late Roman and early Saxon period.  There are also substantial medieval and post-medieval remains, including the nationally important site of Wharram Percy, and of course the other medieval churches in the area.

The church is in a loose and imaginative Gothic style, with pointed lancet windows in the aisles but variations on the Decorated style elsewhere, a doubtless deliberate and playful reversal of the “archaeological” development of a medieval church. A striking feature is the belcote, squat and square with tile-hung sides and an oak balustraded belfry stage, surmounted by a tall shingled broach spire with a weathercock, very untypical for this area and more at home in Sussex. Street seems to have been determined to tear up the rule book with this church.

The church stands on a chamfered plinth, the bays throughout defined by gableted buttresses of two weatherings on chamfered, roll-moulded bases, with angle buttresses at the corners. A moulded sill band runs around the church and forms the hood-mould over the porch arch. Coped gables, and gable crosses to porch, nave and chancel. Street made great play with the roof-lines, the chancel and nave under one roof broken only by the copings, the nave roof taken straight down over the aisles.

The vestry and porch both project forcefully and have steep gabled roofs, interrupting the flow and enlivening the view, the vestry being an integral part of the composition rather than as so often a purely functional add-on. It has a 2-light cinquefoil window in the gable end. A pointed doorway in the west return contains a square-headed door beneath a recessed shaped lintel. A large chimney stack rises from the vestry.

The porch stands on a double-chamfered, roll-moulded plinth. It has a pointed-arched opening of three orders dying into the walls, with a bracketed niche above containing a sculpted Virgin and Child by (J Redfern) under a rib-vaulted, crocketed canopy. The west return has a traceried round window.  The porch ceiling is cross-vaulted in stone, the ribs springing from slender columns with moulded capitals. Similar columns support the pointed outer doorway arch, which is moulded with fleurons. The internal doorway is also cusped and pointed.

The fenestration is very unusual in terms of both arrangement and design.  The large west window is a pointed 4-light with geometric tracery beneath a leaf-stopped coved hoodmould (this the case with all the pointed windows), flanked by pointed 2-light cinquefoil windows in the aisles; there is a similar window in the south aisle east end. The aisles have paired and tripled pointed trefoil-headed lancet windows.

The south wall of the chancel has three stepped lancets with traceried heads, and a rounded triangular window enclosing three trefoils to the east (over the sedilia inside). The north wall has a pointed 2-light window.  The circular east window of the chancel is the most unusual, recessed in a moulded pointed arch and consisting of a sexfoiled circle from which radiate six short trefoiled arches.

The interior is well decorated, with much carving and stained glass. The north and south arcades have pointed arches carried on cylindrical columns with moulded capitals and continuous hoodmoulds.  The aisle windows are deeply splayed in broach-stopped, chamfered openings with semicircular heads.  The nave is still fully pewed, and indeed little appears to have changed since the 1870’s.

The pointed chancel arch is of three orders, the outer chamfered, the inner two roll- moulded, on slender round columns with moulded capitals.   The chancel is stone-vaulted, with two bays of pointed arches carried on slender rounded columns with moulded capitals.  The arches are of two orders, the inner roll-moulded with fillets, the outer chamfered with nailhead.  On the south side is a sedilia, aumbry and piscina grouped beneath cusped, pointed arches on detached columns with a continuous gabled hoodmould.  Pairs of similar blind arches flank the altar. The floors throughout are of encaustic tiles, particularly extravagant in the sanctuary.

The eastern two bays of the nave roof have arched-braced king-strut trusses, with moulded struts and tie-beams, the western half-bay a corbelled queen-post truss with cusped and pierced spandrels and ceiling panels painted with the ihs monogramme. Every inch of the roof structure is painted with floral designs and texts and has attached painted metal suns and stars on the tie-beams. The vestry roof is tunnel-vaulted, similarly decorated to the nave.