Description

SK 2381
6/12

PARISH OF HATHERSAGE
BANK TOP
Church of St Michael and All Angels

12.07.67

GV
I
Church. Principally C14 and C15, restored by Butterfield 1851-52, and with extensions and minor alterations in 1949. Massive ashlar gritstone with moulded plinth, C19 coped gables with moulded kneelers, cross finials and slated roofs laid to diminishing courses. West tower, nave, north and south aisles, south aisle porch, chancel with former chantry chapel, now a lady chapel to the north side, and a sacristy and vestry to the south side.

Two stage tower with stepped angle buttresses, rising off a three stage plinth. Above the string course to the first stage, 'Y' tracery belfry lights with cusped heads below hoodmoulds with stops. Moulded string course with gargoyles separates earlier work and C15 crenellations to parapet. C15 crocketed octagonal spire. Tower has a Perpendicular west window of three-lights with panel tracery.

Four bay nave with C15 clerestory, having flat-headed, two-light windows with mouchettes above cusped ogee-headed lights. Stepped hoodmould with stops below a moulded stringcourse, and crenellated parapet with grotesque spouts and C19 crocketed pinnacles to east gable. South aisle porch gabled, and with raking renellations above a moulded stringcourse, the merlons decorated with heraldic and floral motifs. Double chamfered surround and pointed arch to doorways, enclosing restored south aisle doorway.

South aisle mid C15 of two bays with stepped buttresses, one between the windows, the other angled at the east end, with tapering crocketed pinnacles. Two-light windows, remodelled in 1851 with flowing tracery beneath flat heads and hoodmoulds with stops. Moulded string course with crenellated parapet above. Two bay chancel with plain corbel table, and flat-headed, two-light window with ogee head within a moulded surround, now partially obscured by C20 vestry to south wall, which encloses a Decorated doorway to the chancel south wall. Restored three-light east window with flowing tracery beneath a hoodmould with carved stops. East gable has stepped angle buttresses.

Former chantry chapel circa 1459, of two bays with gabled east end, and crenellated parapet above moulded string course to north wall. East window of three lights and two, two-light windows to north wall, all Perpendicular, with cusped lights beneath shallow pointed arched heads with hoodmoulds and stops. Angle buttresses to corners and stepped buttress between north wall windows, with gargoyle above. Doorway with four-centred arched head to west end. North aisle with crenellated parapet above moulded string course and projecting ashlar stack between windows, shouldered at the eaves, and with a circular stone chimney. Blocked doorway at west end with deeply chamfered, pointed arch below hoodmould with stops.

INTERIOR: tall tower arch to nave, with embattled foliated bands as capitals. Roof line of an earlier nave visible above tower arch. Octagonal font of chalice form with heraldic shields of the Eyre, Barnake and Padley families on three facets, and carved decoration to the others.

Four bay nave with octagonal arcade piers and simply moulded arches. North arcade capitals have a form of stiff-leaf decoration, and the responds to the tower wall and chancel walls have a more elaborate form, the latter a restoration. One of the north arcade bases appears to have formerly supported a column of clustered shafts. South arcade capitals are plainly moulded. The chancel arch appears contemporary with the nave arcades. The north chancel chapel, added in 1463 as a chantry chapel to the Eyre family, with a shallow pointed arch giving access from the north aisle. The chapel east wall has tapered corbel supports for statuary, now missing, and an aumbry to the south of the window.

The chancel has a C14 two-light window to the north wall, above an elaborate ogee arched recess having a chest tomb to Robert Eyre of 1459 and his wife, Joan, with brasses reset in a slab of crinoidal limestone, together with brasses to their children. The tomb was restored by the Countess of Newburgh in 1852. The east window has glass by Kempe, originally in Derwent Church, but reset in Hathersage in 1948, following the creation of Derwent reservoir and the submersion of the church. Chancel south wall has an ogee headed piscina and triple sedilia, both late C14, beneath a continuous string course which steps up above the pointed arched doorway now enclosed by the vestry.

Other monuments to the Eyre family have been reset in the chancel south wall; Radulph Eyre, d.1493 and his wife Elizabeth, and Sir Arthur Eyre, c.1560. The brasses to Robert Eyre, c.1500, his wife and some of their children have been reset in the recess of the main Eyre chest tomb, and the brasses to what are thought to be two of their daughters, have been reset in the chancel south wall.

Listing NGR: SK2339881854

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Church of St Michael and All Angels at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q17530718

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Renovating Old Houses: Bringing New Life to Vintage Homes (For Pros By Pros)
• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)