St Cuthbert, Great Salkeld

St Cuthbert’s is a Grade II* parish church in Great Salkeld, Cumbria, in the Diocese of Carlisle, notable for a late-medieval fortified west tower added to a Norman nave.

Overview

Historic England lists a late eleventh-century parish church with a three-storey square west tower of about 1380, alterations of about 1480 and 1674, and restorations of 1866 and 1879. The fabric is large blocks of red sandstone, the tower walls extremely thick, with graduated sandstone slate roofs. The plan is a five-bay nave with south porch and a two-bay chancel. The tower has small chamfered loops, a south clock face, a projecting angle stair turret and a battlemented parapet.

A porch of 1750 covers the original heavily carved eleventh-century south doorway of three orders of zigzag, some with carved heads. The porch holds a Roman altar from Old Penrith and fragments of medieval graveslabs. The listing records an iron-bound yett with drawbars in the tower, a barrel-vaulted ground floor, and an upper-floor fireplace reusing a graveslab. The nave walls were raised in the fifteenth century; the chancel has a round-headed priest’s doorway and a three-light east window that appears seventeenth-century.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1100260
• British Listed Buildings