Church Heritage Record 643114

West tower, nave with a two-bay arcade opening into a north aisle of the same length. The chancel is shorter but also has a two-bay arcade opening into a north co-terminous chapel. There is also a south porch.

The first mention of a church at Whenby is in 1250, but the present building is all Perpendicular and c.1480 has been suggested as a date, but the rougher masonry of the tower and north aisle indicates that these parts may be earlier. The church was restored in 1871 at a cost of £700 - which is probably when the roofs were renewed and the chancel refurnished - but the architect is not recorded. Some work was done in c.1910 by Herbert Clavell Ingram, a pupil of Bodley and Garner who was born in 1877 and began practice in 1901.

The nave, tower and chancel with their ashlar masonry and prominent battlements are more finely constructed than the north aisle, and it is therefore the best view of the building which is seen as the church is approached either along the ridge from the west or up from the road to the south. The north aisle, which its random rubble masonry and lack of parapets, is decently concealed from sight.

The west tower is not high. It has two stages the lower of which has a blocked doorway with continuous mouldings (which may well have been reset) and a two-light window above which is also surrounded by disturbed masonry. The top stage has two-light belfry openings with trefoiled heads set within rectangular recesses (that on the north with only a single light). At the western angles are buttresses, that to the south-west being an ordinary diagonal buttress but that at the north-west beginning as an angle buttress parallel to the west wall and then about halfway up suddenly becoming a diagonal buttress like the other. There seems no very good reason for this peculiarity. Both buttresses die into the wall below the parapet and there are no pinnacles. The embattled parapet stands above a moulded stringcourse, and there is a moulded plinth at the foot of the tower.

The nave continues the moulded plinth, as does the chancel. The south wall of the nave is divided into two bays by a buttress close to the middle. To the east of this is a two-light window with cinquefoiled heads to the lights and a curved hood ending in triangular carved heads. There is a similar window towards the west end of the wall and next to this is the south porch, a grand piece of design on a relatively humble scale. This has a moulded arch in the south gable which is virtually semi-circular and has decayed moulded imposts (altogether looking rather seventeenth-century). In the gable above, a small shield carved with the sacred monogram IHS looks like the work of Bodley and therefore was presumably added by Ingram. It is set above a moulded course which has evidently been altered at each end. Judging by the style of the porch, it originally must have had a roof of lower pitch and an embattled parapet, the present roof being quite steep and without parapets. The floor is paved with stone flags and there are stone benches along each side under the two two-light windows with cinquefoiled heads in each wall give the porch its particularly grand character for so small and remote a church. The porch is not bonded into the nave wall.

The chancel is slightly lower and slightly narrower than the nave but otherwise continues the same style, with two south bays each containing a two-light window like those of the south nave wall and articulated by buttresses like those of the nave except that those on the chancel formerly terminated in pinnacles above the parapet. The east wall has a three-light window with trefoil-headed lights of equal height under panel tracery with a moulded hood. The parapet crowns the low-pitched gable with the tops of the battlements running parallel to the slope. 

The north wall of the north aisle is continuous and is divided into three bays. The eastern one has a two-light window with trefoiled heads to the lights under a square head and the other two bays each have a two-light window similar to those on the south wall but slightly plainer (and without hoods). In the western bay there is a small doorway with a two centred arch. The west gable is faced with ashlar similar to the nave, chancel and tower and has a two-light nineteenth-century window.

The internal walls of the nave and chancel are stripped of plaster, while those of the north aisle and chapel remain plastered. The north arcade has an octagonal pillar with octagonal moulded base and capital and there are semi-octagonal responds at the east and west ends of the arcade. The former is like the pillar but the latter has a carved head in each panel under the moulded impost. The tower arch is set off-centre towards the north and has two chamfered orders, the inner resting on crudely carved corbels against the plain responds. The floor is paved with black and red tiles which probably date from the 1871 restoration and the simple timber roofs appear to be of this time also. There is no proper chancel arch, but the division is marked by a Perpendicular screen and by an arch-braced tie-beam slightly more prominent than the others. It rests, moreover, on short colonettes and stone corbels set lower than the others. The north arcade of the chancel seems to be almost entirely a nineteenth-century reconstruction, and between it and the altar there is a doorway with a continuous moulding of two hollow chamfers. This poses a problem, partly on account of its unusual position and partly because there is no evidence whatever of its existence outside the church. It may perhaps have been moved here simply as an architectural feature in one of the restorations. The chancel floor is two steps above the level of the nave and there is then one step at the communion rails and another for the footpace. A piscina in the south wall has a round drain set off-centre.

The north aisle follows the arrangement of the chancel except that the chapel is only one step above the aisle and the screen here is seventeenth-century rather than fifteenth. The roof is rather plainer and runs the full length of aisle and chapel without a change in the design. There is a multilated carved head on the north side of the respond between nave and chancel which may be connected with a previous roof structure.