The churches are not just interesting for their architectural styles and often surprising construction. They are witnesses to local history, events that shaped individual communities, aspects of the past of which there may be no other trace left now but the church.

The earliest Saxon churches were typically built on ground that had already been invested with some pagan religious significance. For the same reason that the early Christian church sited its rituals like Easter and Christmas on dates in the old pagan calendar, so the buildings in which its observances were to be carried on were founded on land where pre-Christian rituals – invocations of springtime rebirth, or the propitiation of the earth in the dead of winter – were enacted.

Originally, church buildings were made of timber. They were modest in proportion, and not designed to withstand the climatic extremes of a cold northerly island, let alone survive the ever-present threat of fire. Nevertheless, they represented an advance on the earliest forms of worship, which might simply involve bedraggled, windswept gatherings by a rough stone cross. The wooden churches were the original minsters, and it was just such a modest construction that was the precursor building of York Minster. Click here to find out more about York Minster.

One of the few surviving examples of the ancient transition from pagan worship to early Christian modes is in the parish church at Rudston in east Yorkshire, where the churchyard includes a commanding megalithic stone around 25ft high, the tallest in England. Whether it was once appropriated as a Christian symbol by having a cross somehow attached to it when its church, All Saints, was founded, we don’t know, but it has now returned to a defiantly pagan demeanour, possibly some sort of fertility totem, towering above the Christian gravestones.

Norman carvings of dragons and humans on the the south porch of Kilpeck parish church, Herefordshire
© TopFoto.co.uk/Charles Walker

1066 onwards

The Norman incursion of 1066 saw many of the rudimentary old churches renovated and reconsecrated. Much of this work was paid for by flourishing local trade. Elaborately carved stone doorways and lintels are the decorative hallmarks of Norman church-building, and may still be seen in churches where they were deliberately preserved during the architectural modifications of succeeding centuries.

In Saxon times, a church interior consisted of little more than two interlinked areas, known as the nave and the chancel. The nave was the main part of the church, where the congregation stood (long before the advent of seating on pews), while the chancel, which was separated off from it by a narrow archway, was where the officiating priest and his attendants conducted the ecclesiastical business. In the early church, it was felt that these rituals were too sacred to be exposed to the eyes of the vulgar masses, and so the archway was sealed with a wooden screen known as the rood-screen, which bore on it a depiction of Christ crucified. By this means, the faithful were encouraged to reflect on their own sinfulness, while the unseen priest consumed the propitiatory bread and wine on their behalf.

With the Norman influence, the ground plan of the churches

began to be a little more complex. Aisles were put in on either side of the nave, and towers began to spring up, initially in the centre of the building. Some of these were the four-square towers widely seen throughout Yorkshire and the east Midlands, while others, known as spires, tapered to a point. An interesting example is the famous twisted spire of the church of St Mary and All Saints at Chesterfield in Derbyshire. These towers were intended to draw the eye upwards, pointing as they did to God’s heavenly home in the firmament.

A logical development then was the cruciform church, whose layout was in the shape of a cross, with the tower built above the intersection of the four limbs. Since early times, the altar end of the church has always lain to the east of the building, a devotional practice the Christian church inherited from the Jewish custom of praying towards Eden. The congregation faces east since that is where the New Testament says Christ’s second coming should be looked for, and because this is where the sun rises, symbolic of God giving light to the world in the bodily form of his son.

The areas to the north and south of the cross were known as transepts, and were very often given over to private worship by the local landowning gentry. Smaller burial chapels might be added at the behest of a noble family, where provision would be made for the priest to say daily mass over their tombs. These are called chantries.

Crypt of St Mary Magdalene, Paddington, London
© English Heritage/Boris Baggs

Architectural styles

The two basic architectural styles of medieval churches are Classical and Gothic. The Classical style, which took its cue from the building styles of ancient Greece and Rome, is characterised by broad columns and rounded arches, while the Gothic is recognisable by the pointed arch and narrower, more delicate-looking columns. The pointed construction is more efficient at load-bearing than the semi-circular type, meaning that masonry could afford to be thinner and taller, and the windows more ornate.

This was the period in which complex window tracery began to be seen, in which the window space is decoratively subdivided and filled in with stained glass. With the rapid development of glass technology in the 12th and 13th centuries, windows were made to increasingly elaborate designs, depicting incidents from the life of Christ, or allegorical representations of the Last Judgment. They were intended to be contemplated in the same manner a painting might be, with the added lustre of being illuminated when the light shone through them.

The community centre

The church provided the first and most obvious focal point for all communities. Its rites structured the cycle of life, from the baptising of babies, through the witnessing of wedding vows, to the disposal and commemoration of the dead. For many centuries, the church was the biggest building in any community of people, only losing its pre-eminence during the growth of the urban centres that came with the industrial revolution. They survived whatever transformations might take place in the towns and villages around them. The reason many parish churches look ridiculously large for the communities they serve today is that larger populations moved away in centuries gone by with the removal of particular trades to the cities, leaving the church standing in witness to former times.

Links within the communities were forged through the church. Hearing confessions and dispensing penances, it acted as both counsellor and law-enforcer, while its premises – particularly the churchyard – were the venue for village gatherings where itinerant preachers were heard and local grievances settled. After the Reformation of 1539, the preaching of sermons took on a much more central role during church services themselves, and rows of box pews, facing a pulpit from where the priest addressed the faithful, were installed.

A feature of country churchyards, seen from around the mid-15th century onwards, was the lych-gate. Still in evidence today, these are covered gateways at the entrance to the church premises, usually with pitched wooden roofs and with benches inside. Deriving from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “corpse”, these marked a stopping-point during funeral services, where pallbearers could rest while they waited for the arrival of the priest. Alternatively, they provided a shelter where a shroud-wrapped body, the deceased member of a family too poor to afford a coffin, could be deposited until the priest arrived to lead the little cortège into the church.

St Denis, East Hatley, Cambridgeshire
© English Heritage/Boris Baggs

Victorian age to today

In the Victorian era, a major revival of Gothic architecture took place, at the same time that the new Houses of Parliament were built. Many towns suddenly started sprouting huge, overwhelmingly grand edifices at not far off cathedral dimensions. A typical example is the Holy Trinity Church in the Lancashire resort town of Southport. Its massive square tower, with its eight pinnacles, was for generations the tallest structure in the town, and the interior is a grandiose vision in sandstone, marble, wrought iron and oak. Churches like this were designed as fit places of worship for a colonial power flexing its muscles on the world stage, and supremely confident in its own version of the faith.

In modern times, churches have faced huge challenges finding funds for their upkeep. Roofs deteriorate, woodwork rots, damp penetrates: everywhere there is restoration work to be done. The era of the National Lottery has helped, as have grants from various cultural bodies, but finances have been crucially underwritten, as always, by years of bring-and-buy sales, village fetes, hoop-la and children’s country dancing – not to mention the all-important weekly collection plate.

The Inspired! campaign launched in May 2006 by English Heritage aims to identify all those places of worship that are in need of help with repair bills, evaluating what is unique about each building and making the case for co-ordinated grant support. This could be your chance to find out more about your local parish church, about its history and its distinguishing features. To begin with, if you haven’t been there within living memory, you might at the very least pay it a visit…