St Lawrence
Warkworth, Northumberland
Although there was an important Saxon church here, the present building dates mainly from the 1130s.
Bede records a Synod of Twyford in 684 near river Aln (Alnmouth), that elected Cuthbert as Bishop of Lindisfarne. An Anglo Saxon church then stood on Church Hill and another, named for St Waleric and built around 1180 by the first Norman Earl of Northumbria, stood on the site for 600 years. It failed to survive a combination of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, coastal erosion and the Aln changing course in the Great Storm of 1806.
A Chapel of Ease then started in 1859 in a converted village granary, now the Hindmarsh Hall. The current Victorian church was consecrated on 6th November 1876 by Charles Baring, Bishop of Durham and is on land given by 6th Duke of Northumberland. The £2,595 build cost was raised by public subscription.
It features: Welsh slate roof; chancel, nave, north aisle, north & south porches and embattled western tower with spire from snecked buff sandstone with tooled ashlar quoins and dressings. The tower is in three stages and the spire tapers from square to octagonal, with twelve gabled lucarnes. A south transept was added in 1880 for use of Seabank School pupils and a removed Gothic window stands outside the church as an archway facing the sea.
In 1878 a church clock with 5 bells was fitted and a tolling bell in 1933 - bells were recast, re-tuned &, re-hung in 1936 but one is now disused. Internally: sanctuary ceiling is significant for shape & decoration, with Nicholas-Newbigin organ; replica of the Alnmouth Cross stands in the entrance porch (found 1789 on Church Hill and dated to 9th or 10th century, its layout and style linking it with Lindisfarne Priory. The original is in the Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle upon Tyne. The pulpit is carved with soldier saints (Oswald, Maurice, Martin & George), there is a memorial to Lieutenant HK Temperley killed in Flanders 1917.
Stained glass apse windows depict the Passion and Crucifixion. They are early work of Charles E Kempe and are complemented by 20th century windows of northern saints and monks by Leonard C Evetts.
