Our Lady, Seaton Delaval
Our Lady, Seaton Delaval
The Church of Our Lady is a Grade I parish church in the grounds of Seaton Delaval Hall, off The Avenue between Seaton Sluice and Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, in the Diocese of Newcastle.
- Location
- Seaton Delaval, Northumberland
- Country
- England
- County
- Northumberland
- City / town
- Seaton Delaval
- Address
- Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, NE26 4QR
- Postcode
- NE26 4QR
- Built
- Early C12; east end rebuilt c.1330; west porch 1895
- Denomination
- Church of England
- Dedication
- Mary
- Diocese
- Newcastle
- Parish
- Delaval
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Norman
- Materials
- Squared stone and rubble with C19 ashlar dressings; stone slate roofs
- Grid reference
- NZ 321 764
- Opening hours
- Opened by the Friends at weekends and bank holidays in summer time.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas. Ramp or level access available on request
Overview
Historic England records a former manorial chapel of the early twelfth century, probably incorporating earlier fabric; the east end was rebuilt about 1330, and a west porch was added in a restoration of 1895. The three-cell plan has no external division between chancel and sanctuary. Fabric is squared stone, with roughly coursed rubble on the north of the nave, tooled stone in the west porch and upper south nave wall, nineteenth-century ashlar dressings and stone slate roofs. The short, tall nave has two nineteenth-century south lancets and a blocked round-headed twelfth-century or earlier loop on the north. The eastern gable carries a nineteenth-century gabled bellcote. Inside the porch, the original west doorway has a square-headed opening beneath an arched tympanum with a head, probably from a Tree of Life design, and an arch with zigzag. Near-identical chancel and sanctuary arches have soffit rolls, zigzag and billet-moulded hoods on semicircular responds with cushion caps, below a plain barrel vault.
The sanctuary holds fourteenth-century effigies of a cross-legged knight, probably Sir Hugh Delaval, and a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century lady. Six large eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century hatchments of the Delavals and Astleys hang in the nave, which has an eighteenth-century coved plaster ceiling with a dentil cornice. The chapel became the parish church of Delaval in 1891. Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register notes structural movement monitored since 1998 and urgent need for external repointing.