Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

Of the four stages of the tower the lowest has an arcading of dressed stone, as there is at Bradford-on-Avon, and on the east, south and west sides a round-headed doorway, and on the north a triangular-headed one, with massive “Long-and-Short” work. The next stage exhibits triangular arcading with double lights and a massive baluster and capital under a triangular arch. The third stage has no arcading, but a similar two-light window. The fourth stage is not Saxon but early Norman in style. From the west of the tower projects a sort of annexe, fifteen feet by twelve, of the same width as the tower and cöeval with it, having quoins of “Long-and-Short” work, this is pierced with two small rude lights north and south, and with two circular lights on the west. These circular lights are of extraordinary interest, for they still have in them, across the top of the upper opening and at the bottom of the lower one, a portion of the old original Saxon oak shutter, perforated with round holes to let in light and air, a thing absolutely unique. A chancel, whose foundations have been recently discovered, projected from the tower eastward, and just below the floor, near the north wall, is a curious bricked chamber, which might have been a small tomb.

St. Peter’s, Barton-on-Humber.

ST. MARY’S, BARTON

The tower has four doorways irregularly placed and all differing from each other: it is fitted up for daily morning service, for which it has been used intermittently for over a thousand years; for no doubt the original church consisted simply of the tower and the two chambers east and west of it. At present, from the interior of the spacious Decorated nave, with its added Perpendicular clerestory, when you look up at the west end and see the rude round-headed arches of the first and second stages of the tower, and the double triangular-headed light of the next stage, all of which come within the nave roof, you see at the same time two deep grooves cut in the tower face for the early steep-pitched roof. These start from the double light and finish by cutting through the upright stone strips which run like elongated pilasters up the whole height of the tower on either side. The tower and its annexe is of such absorbing interest that one hardly looks at the rest of the church, or stops to note its beautifully restored rood screen with a new canopy to it, which serves to hide the wide ugly chancel arch. But we shall perhaps be able to make up for this if we go on to St. Mary’s Church, which was the church of the people of Barton, and served by a secular priest, St. Peter’s being an appanage of Bardney Abbey. The churches both stand high, and are quite near one another. St. Mary’s was a Norman building, as the north arcade testifies; the south arcade was rebuilt in the Early English period, to which the massive tower also belongs, the parapet being later. Once the nave and chancel had a continuous roof till the clerestory was added, and were of the same width, and built of brick and stone intermingled and set anyhow. The four-light windows in the chancel are handsome. The north arcade has five round arches, and one, at the west end, pointed. The south arcade has only four arches, but larger and with slenderer columns, consisting of eight light shafts round a central pillar. On the south the chantry chapel extends the whole length of the chancel, and has beside the altar an aumbry and, what is very unusual in such a chapel, sedilia. The aisles are wide and out of proportion to the building in both churches. The east window is white, with one little bit of old glass in it, and on the floor is a full-sized brass of Simon Seman Sheriff of London, in Alderman’s gown. Some Parliamentarian soldiers’ armour is in the vestry of St. Peter’s. There are also two fine oak chests, one hollowed out of a section of a large tree with the outer slab of the tree several inches thick as a lid. A similar, but smaller, chest is in Blawith church vestry, near Coniston Lake, Lancashire.[7]

St. Mary’s, Barton-on-Humber.

INTEREST IN CHURCH HISTORY

In Barton St. Peter’s the Rector has provided a very full account of the history of the church, for which all who visit it must be extremely grateful.