St Jude, Knarsdale

St Jude’s is the parish church of Knarsdale in the South Tyne valley, Northumberland, in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the Diocese of Newcastle. The church itself is not listed, though several monuments in the churchyard are.

Overview

Keys to the Past and a sundial inscription on the south wall record that the present church was erected in 1833 under the Revd Thomas Bewsher, rector, with churchwardens William Parker (or Barker) and Joseph Richardson, on the site of fourteenth- and seventeenth-century churches. Hodgson had seen the previous building in a ruinous state, with reused grave slabs in the fabric. The 1833 rebuild cost about £300 and was accompanied by a new rectory. The same inscription records enlargement in 1882 (or 1892 in some transcriptions) and a vestry and porch of 1906.

Pevsner, writing in 1957, did not name an architect. The churchyard holds eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tombstones, a Grade II* pre-Conquest cross south of the door, Grade II headstones, and a Grade II war memorial. A Kempe stained-glass window and a painted altar by the local artist John Bell are noted in visitor accounts. The parish is Knarsdale with Kirkhaugh (sometimes spelled Knaresdale).

Further Information

• Co-Curate: Church of St Jude, Knarsdale
• Keys to the Past via Co-Curate
• Alston Moor churches