HAUXWELL, St. Oswald (SD 166 931)     (May 2010)

(Bedrock:  Carboniferous Namurian Series, Millstone Grit Group)

 

St. Oswald (605 - 641), King of Northumbria from 633 A.D. until his death, is credited with introducing Christianity into his kingdom.  He lived in turbulent times which he seems to have done little to pacify:  he spent some of his adolescence in exile at Iona Abbey following the death of his father in battle against the East Anglians, and he was himself killed in like manner, twenty-five years later, fighting the Mercians as Oswestry (Oswald's Tree). This is one of several churches dedicated to him locally:  others include the nearby church at Thornton Steward, and somewhat further afield, the churches at Askrigg, Castle Bolton, East Harlsey and West Rounton.

 

St. Oswald’s, Hauxwell (shown left, from the southeast), is a small but significant building in an attractive rural position, some five miles northeast of Leyburn.  Consisting of a chancel with a N. chapel, a nave with a S. porch, and a W. tower, much of the architecture is late eleventh century in date, with a twelfth century S. doorway and an Early English (i.e. thirteenth century) tower.  Subsequently, battlements were added everywhere, except on the chancel.

 

The eleventh century is announced on approach to the church by the areas of rubble walling with courses set herringbone-wise.  Sir Alfred Clapham, discussing such masonry in English Romanesque Architecture: After the Conquest (Oxford University Press, 1934), wrote "[Herringbone-work] generally occurs sporadically in a wall, in occasional courses or patches, and seems to have been introduced with the idea of strengthening the construction, though it is difficult to see in the majority of cases what advantage was gained.  It is practically always an indication of an early date, and though it was occasionally used in the Saxon period it is commonly distinctive of late eleventh century building."  This probably establishes the date of the nave, chancel arch and western parts of the chancel.  The chancel arch (illustrated below left, from the nave) carries a series of rolls, supported below the abaci by a pair of nook shafts forming an outer order and a pair of demi-shafts attached to the jambs.  Its excellent condition suggests it may have been retooled but its basic authenticity does not seem in doubt.  The S. doorway (inside the porch) is late Norman work, composed of an arch bearing (working from the outside, in) billet moulding, chevron in shallow relief, a roll, and finally a few narrow mouldings followed by a second roll.  (See the photograph, below centre.)  The tympanum is decorated with latticework containing circles, the lintel is plain, and there is an order of shafts beneath, with single-scallop capitals, cable moulding round the necks, and large, worn abaci above, with chamfered under-edges.  The square-headed N. doorway (now blocked and only visible outside) displays an order of nook-shafts and an Anglo-Danish cross-shaft re-used as a lintel.  (See below right.)  The nave is lit by two lancets on either side (i.e. to north and south, including one on the south side, west of the porch)  and a two-light Decorated S. window with reticulated tracery.  The porch is a Victorian addition, in a heavy pseudo-Norman style.

The comparatively long chancel appears to represent the thirteenth century extension of the eleventh century original.  The S. wall is cut by a renewed priest’s doorway to the west, followed respectively by an odd-shaped one-light window and two lancets.  Inside, all three of these windows open in round-headed splays, suggesting the date is scarcely later than c.1200.  The E. window is formed of three lancets lights, set in an encompassing arch with a flat-chamfered surround.  The chapel is lit by a single N. lancet and opens internally to the chancel through a double-flat-chamfered arch which dies into the jambs.

 

The angle-buttressed W. tower is not divided by string courses and rises to two-light, square-headed late Perpendicular bell-openings.  However, its original date is shown to the south by four narrow lancet windows, two side by side some 8′ (2.4 m.) up, and two more set one above the other, above those.   The only other window in the tower is a two-light Victorian one to the west.  Inside the church, the very wide tower arch is formed of an unmoulded outer order that continues all the way round, and a flat-chamfered inner order supported on quarter-octagonal responds, set into the tower wall.

 

Woodwork in the church is not of much significance:  the most important piece is probably what seems to be a partially reconstructed Jacobean pulpit, now with a modern base.  Monuments are more notable and include a recumbent knight and his lady in the tower, believed to represent William de Barden (d. 1309) and his wife (church notes), and many wall monuments in the nave and chancel, commemorating members of the Dalton family, of nearby Hauxwell Hall.  Among these, on the N. wall of the chancel is one in marble, with a scrolled pediment containing an urn, and two cherubs beneath, supporting a curtained inscription dedicated to Sir Marmaduke Dalton (d. 1711) and his wife, Dame Barbara, while next to it on the right, a larger and less well-preserved monument in ordinary limestone, with a lengthy Latin inscription amply decorated with those symbols of mortality beloved of seventeenth century sculptors, recalls William Dalton (d. 1671).  Neither appear to be signed.