St Oswald, St Cuthbert & King Alfwald, Halton

Halton Church is a Grade I building beside Halton Castle, Northumberland, dedicated to St Oswald, St Cuthbert and King Alfwald, in the parish of Corbridge with Halton and Newton Hall in the Diocese of Newcastle.

Overview

Historic England dates the church to the twelfth and sixteenth centuries: random rubble with a Welsh slate roof, nave, chancel and west vestry. Medieval masonry survives, but all external features are sixteenth-century. The three-bay nave has a south door with a segmental-arched, roll-moulded surround and two-light windows with round heads; the one-bay chancel has a similar five-light east window under a hoodmould. There is an embattled parapet and a gabled west bellcote.

The interior has an unmoulded twelfth-century chancel arch with plain chamfered imposts. The shallow-pitched roof has massive old tie beams with short king and queen posts, probably about 1400. Pevsner called the church originally Norman, noting that the north-west nave quoins may be Saxon. A local guide argues that the thin walls of reused Roman stone from the nearby fort of Hunnum (Onnum) resemble Anglo-Saxon work at Escomb. Cuthbert Carnaby of Halton is credited with the present windows and south door; the wooden roof was added in 1706. A Roman altar stands outside.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1155675
• British Listed Buildings: Halton Church
• St Andrew’s, Corbridge: Halton Church