The North Riding of Yorkshire (technically abolished on 1 April 1974) is predominantly a beautiful rural area. It stretches from beyond Hawes in the west, to the River Tees and County Durham in the north, along the coast to south of Scarborough, then through farming country almost to York and up back to the Pennines. It encompasses both the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors. Middlesbrough is the only town of real size in the Riding – but it is today considered part of Teeside rather than Yorkshire.
In the Middle Ages, its great claim to fame was its abbeys: Whitby (Benedictine, refounded 1078), Rievaulx (Cistercian, founded 1132), Easby (Premonstratensian, founded 1155), Jervaulx (Cistercian, founded 1156), Byland (Cistercian, founded 1177), Egglestone (Premonstratenensian, founded 1195) and Mount Grace (Carthusian, founded 1396), all now “bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang” (Shakespeare, Sonnet 73).
It was not a county for great medieval parish churches. However, its newer Catholic churches are of surprising interest.
The Catholic diocese is that of Middlesbrough. Beverley (founded 1850) was split into two in 1878, with Middlesbrough created to take the North and East Ridings, and Leeds the West Riding.
The oldest continuous place of Catholic worship since the Reformation in the Riding is the plain rectangular <strong>Lady Chapel</strong> on the hill above <strong>Osmotherley</strong>. It was attracting pilgrims in the early 17th century. In 1953, Lord Eldon, Ralph Scrope and their wives purchased the farm on which the ruined building stood. They retained the building (given to the diocese) but not the land. They paid for and supervised the restoration. Lady Eldon gave the 17th-century statue of the Madonna and Child; this remains a centre of devotion.
The earliest “new” Catholic chapel was <strong>St Mary, Crathorne</strong>, built 1820-21 by the eponymous recusant Crathorne family. The pleasant brick exterior gives no idea of the beautiful white Gothick interior with its triple hanging arches at the junction of nave and sanctuary.
<strong>St Peter and St Paul, Leyburn</strong> is another early church (1835). It was built as a simple Georgian preaching box for the Scropes of nearby Danby Hall. The exterior is simple, the interior again white Gothick with a complete set of box pews.
A Mr Jones of Barnard Castle built <strong>St Mary, Wycliffe</strong> in 1849 for the Catholic Tunstall family. It is a plain rubble chapel with buttresses and ashlar dressings. The font is 15th century, and the glass of the east window is by William Wailes.
The real wave of new-built Catholic churches started around 1855. In that year George Goldie (of Weightman, Hadfield & Goldie) built the rural <strong>St Anne, Ugthorpe</strong> in stone with its tower in 13th-century Gothic style. Ugthorpe seems to have had a pretty much unbroken Catholic tradition from the Reformation. Blessed Nicholas Postgate ministered here as parish priest until his martyrdom in 1679. The fittings are good; the stained glass by John Hardman Powell is of particular note.
Goldie went on to build <strong>St Peter, Scarborough</strong> in 1856-8. It is built on a hill overlooking the sea in stone 14th-century Gothic style. Charles Eastlake, the 19th century chronicler of the Gothic Revival, said St Peter’s was the first Gothic Revival church to have a windowless sanctuary. The latter is richly decorated with two tiers of blind arcading with Gothic tracery. The carved stone altar is by Thomas Earp of Lambeth.
The late-20th-century freestanding wooden altar is decidedly out of place. The apse has painted saints and a crucifixion scene by Charles Goldie.
<strong>St Hedda, Egton Bridge</strong> was built in 1866-7 by Hadfield & Sons on the site of an earlier church. It was a strongly recusant area with 415 Catholics in the locality in 1790. The church is built in Early English style in sandstone with ashlar dressings. The interior of the church is high, without a clerestory. Its glory is the richly decorated sanctuary with four painted saints between the lancets. The generously painted gilded altar and reredos (“showy” – Pevsner) are contemporary to the building, and came from Munich.
Weight man & Hadfield built <strong>St Hilda, Whitby</strong> in 1867 in 13th-century Gothic style in Aislaby stone “following a careful study of the ruins of the abbey”. There is an octagonal turret with octagonal spire. The sanctuary has good painted and stencilled decoration. The altar by Mayer & Co has marble columns and a richly crowned reredos of saints in canopied niches with crocketted gables and finials. The rood with crucifix and figures of 1893 has also survived.
George Goldie built St Joseph and<strong> St Francis Xavier, Richmond</strong> in 1867-8 in coursed rubble in 13th-century Gothic style for the Jesuits, who remained in charge of the church until 1961. Pevsner talks of “a naughty, High Victorian NW turret with extraordinary things happening at the corners”. The sanctuary has a fine marble and ashlar curved reredos.
The picturesque <strong>St Simon and St Jude, Ulshaw Bridge</strong> was built in 1868 on the site of an earlier chapel for the Scropes of Danby Hall in Romanesque style by Joseph Hansom. The octagonal tower draws attention to the church. Sadly it has been recently decided that Mass should no longer be celebrated regularly on Sundays.
Leonard Stokes built <strong>St Joseph, Pickering</strong> in sophisticated Perpendicular Gothic style for a convert priest in 1911. Its has a beautiful white stone font carved by Eric Gill.
The <strong>Benedictines</strong> arrived at <strong>Ampleforth</strong> in 1802 and remain there to this day, currently a community of some 46 monks. The current abbey church of <strong>St Laurence</strong> replaces an earlier church by Charles Hansom. It is now a cruciform building in stone with a central tower. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott completed the retrochoir and high altar in 1922. He was still alive in 1961 to complete the crossing, transepts and nave. The church is large and can seat 800 people in addition to having 87 choir stalls for monks. The furnishings are excellent and include much stained glass by Patrick Reyntiens, himself at the school.
<strong>Sacred Heart, Middlesbrough</strong> was (rather well) designed by Bishop Thomas Shine in 1933- 4. The church is designed in Italian Romanesque style in brown brick and consists of a tall four-bay nave, north and south aisles, a north-west campanile and a semicircular apsidal sanctuary. There is much mosaic work inside, and also good glass.
The Anglican architect Francis Johnson, best known for his country-house work, built <strong>St Joseph, Scarborough</strong> in brown brick in 1958-60. The most distinctive aspect of the design is the baroque west front, built on Italian and Scandinavian precedents, with projecting towers and a central bellcote. The interior is classical and handsome.
The original <strong>St Mary’s Cathedral, Middlesbrough</strong>, a charming Gothic building of 1878 by Goldie and Child, was left derelict and finally demolished after being severely damaged by a fire in 2000. The new cathedral was built in 1985-7 in orange brown brick over a central steel frame in accordance with deemed Vatican II principles. There is a detached campanile with external bells. The cathedral is now the only unlisted English Catholic cathedral, a judgement with which it is difficult to disagree.
One remarkable new 21st century work is the new <strong>Stanbrook Abbey at Wass</strong>, near Ampleforth, the Benedictine nuns there having moved from Worcestershire. The new chapel was built by Feilden Clegg Bradley in 2015. The exterior is austere and upwardsloping. The inter ior is simple with the nuns’ stalls facing each other. The Blessed Sacrament is reserved in a separate chapel. The building has a wonderful quality of light with views of the countryside.
<strong>Our Lady of the Crag, Knaresborough</strong> is a 15th century chapel hewn in the side of a sandstone cliff. It was built by a man known as "John the Mason" in a former quarry. He reputedly decided to build it after a rockfall was about to crush and kill his son. The master mason turned to the Virgin Mary in prayer and desperation, after which the stones miraculously changed their course thus saving his son. "John pledged to create a chapel as thanks for the miracle," which is recorded in a contemporary charter of King Henry IV. It has "a carved altar with a canopied niche, gargoyles, a vaulted ceiling, roof bosses, pillars with floriate capitals, a Celtic head, a piscina and externally a large carving of a medieval knight guards the entrance".
After the Reformation it ceased to be used as a place of worship until 1916, when the land was bequeathed to monks at Ampleforth who had it reconsecrated as a Catholic church.
(Header photo: <strong>St Joseph, Pickering</strong>)
<strong><strong>This article originally appeared in the April 2024 issue of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click</strong> <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">here</mark></a>.</strong>
