St. Michael's Church in Wragby - Part 1

 

A headstop on the east window of the chancel

When preparing my day out to Nostell Priory, I tried to find out about the history of the Church of St. Michael and Our Lady but the only references that I could find were from my copy of Pevsner for the Yorkshire West Riding, which considers it to be Perpendicular throughout and mentions an inscription in the chancel by Prior Aluvet Comyn of Nostell in 1533, with the Historic England listing description again referring to this date. 

 

The south elevation

Having seen various historic buildings in Foulby and Wragby, I entered the churchyard from the driveway to Nostell Priory and when photographing the south elevation, I could see that the tracery to the south aisle windows and the parapets are Perpendicular Gothic in style, with the flat headed windows to the clerestory possessing four centred arches in a Tudor style. 

 

The porch

 

From a distance, I couldn’t see any differences in the pattern of the masonry and it is only when I purchased a copy of Medieval Churches of West Yorkshire, by Peter Ryder a year later, have I learned that he suggests that although the chancel, nave and aisle appear to have been built at the same time, the tower and the west end of the nave might actually date to the early C15. 

 

A detail of the porch

 

Looking at the stonework of the porch, I could see that several blocks had been replaced with a pale muddy brown/grey sandstone, which is a very good match for the original cross-bedded stone that looks quite soft and has differentially weathered and delaminated quite badly in places. 

 

Masonry on the east elevation of the porch

 

Together with the heads and dressings to the clerestory windows, the sandstone looked very clean and still retained sharp profiles, which made me think that the work had been undertaken quite recently, however, looking at the photos that I took back in 1999, when visiting Nostell Priory as part of a stone consultancy job at All Saints church in Pontefract, I can see that this restoration work had already been done then. 

 

A photo of the porch in 1999

 

At that time, although I didn’t see men on site, a scaffold to the west elevation of the tower was in the process of being either erected or dismantled and, lying on the ground, there were several moulded sections of stone that were presumably going to be used to restoref the aisle windows. 

 

Sections of roll moulds in 1999

 

Over the doorway, there is a fine sundial (1812) made by George Boulby, who was born and buried in nearby Ackworth Moor Top, with the motto “We resemble the shadow”. It barely gets a mention in the Historic England listing description of the church, although it does appear in the records of the British Sundial Society. 

 

The sundial

 

Moving anticlockwise around the church, I just took a couple of general record photos of the south aisle, which was partly in shadow, noting that some of the tracery, mullions and heads to some of the windows had been restored. 

 

The south aisle

After going to locate the Grade II Listed tombs in the churchyard on the south side of the church, I continued to the east end, where the chancel has a large transomed window with five cusped lights and Perpendicular tracery.

 

The east window of the chancel

 

On the north aisle, which I didn’t notice on the south aisle, the cross-bedded Ackworth Rock often contains concentrations of clay ironstone nodules and, looking at my photos, the sandstone appears to be more durable than that used in the porch and for parts of the south elevation.

 

Clay ironstone nodules

 

Although I didn’t examine any of the stonework very closely, the section on mineral products and agriculture in the geological memoir does state that the quality of the Ackworth Rock can be very variable. The differences in quality might therefore be attibuted to the use of stone from more than one quarry or from softer beds within a single quarry face.

 

Red algae on the north aisle

 

The masonry on the north elevation is also covered in quite a lot of lichen and, in several places, has extensive growths of what I assume to be some kind of red algae, which I had encountered before at St. John’s church in Ridgeway. 

 

A retstored hood mould

 

At the west end of the north aisle, the arched window head has been extensively restored and, compared to much of the masonry on this elevation, it still retains a very fresh appearance. It is the only window that I saw, where the hood mould has been largely replaced and I am therefore assuming that this is where the sections, which I saw back in 1999, were eventually used. 

 

A view along the north aisle

 

On the tower, just below the stringcourse between the lower and belfry stages, there is an unusual detail that comprises a niche with a cusped ogee head and double wheel patterns flanked by a finial on each side. 

 

An ornate niche in the tower

 

Finishing my very brief look at the exterior of the church at the south elevation of the tower, the cross-bedded nature of the Ackworth Rock can be clearly seen in a few pale muddy brown/grey coloured blocks of sandstone that have been face bedded and have decayed at a much greater rate than the adjacent normally bedded blocks.

 

Face bedded blocks