County Durham is an underrated county which has some beautiful countryside and some very attractive villages, of which Staindrop is one.  The church (shown left, from the east) stands at one end and is a large, important building, about which there is much to say, though probably nothing that is new.  The kernel of the present church appears to have been a small rectangular Saxon structure which once occupied the space now corresponding with the three eastern bays of the nave.  Its most substantial remains are the two round-headed windows, one each to the north and south (the former blocked) in the spandrels above the easternmost piers, where they have been intersected by the arcades below (see the remnant of the S. window above the arcade, below right), but there are also a few other fragments of pre-Conquest masonry to be seen, including a former sundial, high up on the left of the present chancel arch.  The date is likely to be the early eleventh century for it seems that a few decades afterwards, but still prior to the Norman invasion, a small tower was added to the west, where the fourth bay of the nave from the east now stands (and not, pace Pevsner, the present tower, which is another bay to the west again).

 

Perhaps the Norman contribution to the church consisted of the construction of the original aisles and the concomitant knocking through of the Saxon nave walls to insert what were originally three-bay arcades, but if that was the case, then the date was certainly late in the period.  Separated from the additional western bay by short intervening wall pieces, these consist of double-flat-chamfered arches supported on circular piers and responds formed of an order of keeled shafts between narrow-chamfered outer angles.  (See also the N. arcade, right.)  The capitals vary but one displays leaf volutes while another resembles water leaf (or perhaps more precisely, broad upright cabbage leaves), and the hood-mould over the S. arcade is decorated with nailhead, a late Norman or Early English motif. Taken together, these features suggest a date scarcely before c. 1180 and certainly later than the 'early twelfth century' ascription given in the notes on the building  in the church, although Pevsner's suggestion of 'c. 1170-80' (Nikolaus Pevsner & Elizabeth Williamson, The Buildings of England: County Durham, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 426)  is probably just about admissible even though he created what appears to the writer to be the false distinction of describing the nailhead as 'nutmeg' moulding.

 

In all events, it seems likely that the transepts were added next, perhaps two or three decades later.  Subsequently the S. transept was absorbed into the widened aisle, but the N. transept still projects beyond the aisle slightly and its three equal N. lancets remain, set internally in deep splays.  (See the photograph near the bottom of the page, on the left.)

 

The Saxon tower appears to have been removed in the mid to late thirteenth century, enabling the nave to be extended westwards by a fourth bay over the site and a new tower to be constructed west of that, flanked by two-bay extensions to the aisles: the westernmost bays of the now four-bay nave arcades, and the tower arches to both the nave and the encompassing aisles, are all in the same style, save only that the nave arches are still round.  All comprise two flat-chamfered orders, the inner supported on semicircular shafts with fillets and the outer, on the rectangular corners of the responds with just the narrowest of chamfers at the angles.  The compound piers which this arrangement produces at the northeast and southeast corners of the tower (as illustrated below left, in the photograph of the northeast pier) create impressive internal perspectives.  The tower is lit by a narrow W. lancet, which only just fits in beside the large square stair-turret (contemporary with the later bell-stage) projecting beside it to the north (i.e. on the left), making the tower appear curiously wide when viewed from that direction.  (See the photograph below right, taken from the southwest.)  At the very same time this work was going on, it appears the chancel was being reconstructed and extended, and the large northeast vestry built, although it was probably only then what might be termed one and a half storeys high (that is, with the upper storey constructed within the roof space) rather than two full storeys as it is now.  Perhaps the upper floor provided a dwelling for a hermit or anchorite priest (cf., for example, Romaldkirk in this county,  or - to give one just example from southern England - Toddington in Bedfordshire).  The dating evidence for this work includes the double-flat-chamfered chancel arch with its inner order supported on semicircular responds with fillets, and the three-bay stepped sedilia between the two easternmost windows in the chancel S. wall, with stiff-leaf corbels between the trefoil-cusped bays, shafts with fillets at the ends, and mouldings around the arches that include a roll with a fillet.  

 

The tower bell-stage looks like an early fourteenth century addition and a curious one at that, for it is corbelled out from the stage below, creating a top-heavy impression.  The bell-openings have cinquefoil-cusped Y-tracery and there are battlements above.  In contrast to these uncertainties, the S. aisle, with its segmental-arched, reticulated windows, is known to have been widened in 1343, when Ralph de Neville established three chantries here.  A small projection at the southeast angle, looking externally almost like a large buttress, is actually a tiny sacristy.  Simultaneously, while this was being built, the S. transept was removed beyond the line of the aisle and the S. porch was constructed – a low, windowless structure with, however, a steeply-pitched stone roof, supported by a ribbed tunnel vault.

 

Most other windows in the church are Perpendicular in style, if not necessarily so in date.  The N. aisle appears to have been widened in the early fifteenth century and has tall, untraceried, square-headed windows.  The chancel windows are very elaborate in the two westernmost bays (to the north especially, but also to the south, where they have been squashed in to the west of the vestry).  The easternmost S. window has supermullioned tracery and the E. window is Victorian.  The clerestory windows are three-light and untraceried and carefully aligned with the arcade apices below.  The far more steeply-pitched, pre-clerestory nave roof-line, can be seen above the chancel and tower arches.

 

 

The church contains a large number of important monuments, including two recumbent effigies in recesses beneath the easternmost S. aisle S. window.  Of these, the left hand one (illustrated above right), which lies beneath blank tracery set inside a crocketed gable, commemorates Euphemia de Clavering, the mother of Ralph de Neville mentioned above.  Most other important monuments in the building may be found in the west ends of the aisles.  Notable church woodwork includes the tall but simple fourteenth century rood screen with a four-light section each side of the central gates and applied tracery on the dado.  However, the fifteenth century choir stalls are more impressive and consist of twelve misericords (including two return stalls) on each side, beneath tall panelled backs with applied alternate tracery in very dark wood.

    

Finally, a note should be added on the use in the church of two unusual local building stones:  the font with its octagonal bowl, curved downwards and decorated with blank shields, is of fifteenth century date and constructed of dark grey Egglestone marble, and the chancel floor was repaved early last century using tiles of black Frosterley marble, both of which are actually crinoidal limestones from horizons near the top of the Dinantian Sub-system (formerly known as the Millstone Grit) of early Carboniferous date.