Tread lightly upon the weather-stained and moss-grown stones that loving hands have set up to keep alive the memories of those who sleep beneath. Near the porch is the chamfered shaft of an ancient cross, and close by two or three venerable yews cast their funereal shade. One of them, an aged torso, is garlanded with ivy, and buttressed on one side by a short flight of steps that have been built against it. Its gigantic roots grasp the earth with a tenacity that time cannot relax. It has lived through long centuries, and seen generation after generation christened, married, and buried, and, though now hollowed and decayed, the trunk still preserves some of that vitality that was in its fulness when the valorous Fittons were in the heyday of their power.
Separating the churchyard from the road is an artificial lake or fish-pond, one of a series of three or four, through each of which the water flows in succession, and where, in the chivalrous days of the knightly owners of Gawsworth, the water jousts and other aquatic games took place. But those times of pomp and pageantry have passed away, and the surface is now seldom ruffled save when occasionally a fish rises, or a stately swan glides gracefully through the warm sunshine. In its smooth mirror you can see the old grey tower, the projecting buttresses, the traceried windows, and the embattled parapets of the church, with their pleasant environment of green all clearly reflected, presenting the appearance of an inverted picture; while the old patrician trees that border the wayside bend over the glassy surface, creating in places a vernal shade that Undine might delight in.
On the opposite side is the Rectory, a picturesque old structure of black and white timber work, “magpie” as the people call it hereabouts, with quaint overhanging gables, grotesque carvings, and mullioned windows, with small diamond panes—one of them, that lighting the hall, a spacious apartment with an open timber roof, containing fragments of heraldic glass that would seem to have formerly belonged to the church. There is a wide entrance porch in the centre of the building, and over the door, between two shields of arms, this inscription—“Syr Edward Fytton, Knight, with my lady Mare ffyton, hys wyffe”—from which it has been commonly assumed that the house was built by Sir Edward Fitton, who married Mary, the daughter and co-heir of Guicciard Harbottle, of Northumberland, and so would fix the time of erection in the reign of Henry VIII. But this inscription originally belonged to another building of later date than the Rectory, which, as we learn from some verses preserved in Ashmole’s “Church Notes,” taken circa 1654, was erected by George Baguley, who was rector of Gawsworth from 1470 to 1497.
The “old” Hall, the ancestral home of the Fittons, now occupied by Lord Petersham, stands a short distance east of the church. Like the Rectory, it is half-timbered and of the Elizabethan period, but the building is now incomplete, a part having been taken down some seventy years ago, though the original quadrangular form may still be traced. In the rear, in what has been originally the courtyard, is a curious octagonal oriel of three stories, each story overhanging the one immediately below in a sort of telescope fashion. The windows are filled with leaded panes arranged in a variety of shapes and patterns. The principal front, which faces the road, has been rebuilt and painted in imitation of timber-work. Over the principal entrance is a shield of sixteen quarterings, representing the arms of the Fittons and their several alliances, surrounded by a garter, on which is inscribed the motto, “Fit onus leve”—a play upon the family name. There is also the following inscription beneath—
Hec scvlptvra finita fvit apvd
Villam Galviæ in Hibernia per
Richardvm Rany, Edwardo Fyton
Milite primo dn͞o presidente totius
Provinciæ Conatiæ et Thomoniæ.
Anno Domini 1570.