Church of St Andrew, Spennymoor 2006


Church of St Andrew, Spennymoor 2006


Church of St Andrew, Spennymoor 2006


Church of St Andrew, Spennymoor 2006

Parish church. 1883 (foundation stone) -1884 by C.H. Fowler; site given by the Weardale Iron and Coal Company; extension 1890, (west foundation stone); 1895 memorial chapel and vestry. Snecked sandstone with plinth, quoins and ashlar dressings; Welsh slate roof, with roll-moulded ridge tiles, red on nave and grey on chancel, and stone gable copings. Nave with south porch, south-east tower and north aisle; chancel with north memorial chapel and vestry. Boarded door in wide-chamfered surround with dripmould in gabled porch; Tudor-arched surround to door in right return. Buttresses with offsets between 4 nave windows, of 3 cusped lights (except for 2-light window beside porch). 2 lights in chancel windows under dripmoulds, with buttress between the eastern two. Large 5-light east and west windows, the west with Perpendicular tracery.

Square tower has 2-centred-arched door in right return; small rectangular lights in high first stage, broached to string below tall octagonal belfry with 4 lancets and embattled parapet; octagonal spire with bud finial. Square-headed 3-light window with cusped lights in east vestry gable; 2-light window in similar style to room above. Steeply-pitched roofs with stone cross finials.

Interior: painted plaster with ashlar dressings; roof of arch-braced collar-and-king-post trusses on stone-corbelled wall-posts, and shorter intermediate trusses on cornice between posts; roof continues over chancel which has cusped wind-braces below 2 levels of purlins. Dripmould to seven 2-centred hollow-chamfered arches of north aisle, the westernmost narrower, on moulded capitals of octagonal piers. Blank west arch has ogee cusping. Flower-stopped dripmould over east window. Delicately-carved chancel screen. Octagonal stone font with pointed cover, gift of parish school, 1884. Brass plaque beside memorial chapel to Thomas Charles Baring, M.A., M.P., placed by the parishioners, vigil of St. Andrew, 1895. Brass plaque by chapel door 1896 to William Semmens, killed in fall of stone at Tudhoe Colliery. Memorial chapel contains C17 marble altar and reredos brought from Spain by Thomas Baring. Pews have rail backs and shaped ends; memorial chapel kneelers 1959 by Thompson of Kilburn. Glass includes 1901 chapel north window by G.I. Baguley, showing Saints Peter, Andrew and Mark. The east window is a First World War memorial, with the names of the dead on a memorial screen at the west end of the nave (1).