St Lawrence's Church
It is known that a church has existed here since AD 737. King Ceowulf of Northumbria gave the village - then “Wercewode” - and the Church of St Lawrence to the monks of Holy Island. Northumbria bore much of the brunt of the early Viking raids.
Holy Island itself was reputedly the first victim in AD 793 and this first, almost certainly wooden, church at Warkworth surely perished during that period. The beach near the mouth of the Coquet at Amble is still known as Birling - the Danish for longships.
A stone church replaced it and the altar was underneath today’s chancel arch. There are no visible remains of this church. It was built between 1132 and 1140, at around the probable time of the first motte and bailey castle built here by Henry, son of King David of Scotland in around 1139. There is no certainty in any of this. The nave and chancel are more or less unchanged since that time.
The lower levels of the west tower as far as the belfry were added in around 1200. The belfry and the spire were added in the fourteenth century. It was not until the fifteenth century that the fabric of the Norman church was tampered with through the addition of a perpendicular style south aisle and arcade.
A south porch with a parvise room above was added at the same time and, is so often the case, this parvise room became in time the home of the village’s first school. The south aisle had a clerestory that was removed during restoration in 1860 when the original nave and chancel roof-lines seem to have been reinstated. The church has needed considerable buttressing over the centuries and one might speculate that the clerestory was removed to reduce the weight of masonry bearing down on the side walls.
A per-restoration etching also shows a perpendicular style window at the south west of the chancel and this has been restored to a Norman profile that matches the original window to the east of it. The east window was also in the gothic style and has been replaced by a Norman style triple lancet arrangement. A circular window was built into the gables of both the chancel and the nave. Thus, rather remarkably, the church now looks more Norman than it did for half a millennium!
The nave is the longest Norman nave in Northumberland. It still has its original windows on the aisle-less north side. The west wall was the original extent of the church prior to the later addition of the tower. It is a fine Norman composition. The chancel arch too is original Norman.
Like the rest of the church - indeed, like most Norman work in Northumberland - it is rather austere with none of the riots of chevron mouldings, beakheads and extravagantly carved capitals that adorn many Norman chancel arches elsewhere. There is a course of palmette carvings and and another of pellet moulding. It is the chancel itself, however, that is the gem of this church. The ceiling comprises two separate quadripartite vaults, each with ribs richly adorned by zig-zag moulding.
More details can be found in the Church guide or Great English Churches.
A Brief History of Warkworth Village
Warkworth lies on the north-east coast of England in mid-Northumberland with the River Coquet running west-east through the parish. The most prominent and well known monument is the medieval Warkworth Castle however the oldest known remains can be attributed to Bronze Age burial sites at Sturton Grange and at Walkmill.
Warkworth is famous for an unusual Neolithic cup and ring marked cliff that rises from the River Coquet at Morwick. These motifs contain rare spiral forms as well as simple cup marks. Their exact meaning is unclear but they could have been religious or linked to tribal boundaries.
In the Iron Age there is thought that there was a fort on the site that is now occupied by the medieval castle. The original fort dominated the coast and also guarded the entrance to the Coquet and the horseshoe shaped river with the castle at its ‘neck’ protected the settlement.
Warkworth lies north of the Roman Wall and there is no evidence of any Roman settlements remains in the area.
The first known settlers in Warkworth (or Wercewode as it was once called) were the Anglo-Saxons due to the fragments of a cross found in the River Coquet and other artifacts suggesting the presence of a church.
The village was once of the five given to King Ceolwulph in AD 737 when he entered the monastery at Lindisfarne.
Warkworth flourished in the medieval period when it was a harbour and market town. As previously mentioned it lies in a loop of the River Coquet and still retains a basic medieval layout, having a medieval defended bridge together with a gatehouse at the north end of the village, leading up the main street to the imposing castle on the highest point at the south end of the village.
The Church of St Lawrence is an excellent example of a Norman church and quite unique in the county.
Outside the medieval town there were rural settlements, including Sturton Grange which belonged to the Cisterian Newminster Abbey in Morpeth. Plans for a new settlement at Birling, just outside the village were begun but it didn’t last long. Other villages and hamlets stood at Low Buston and Brotherwick.
Warkworth has played an important role in the history of the area – for example in 1174 many men who followed William the Lion burnt down most of the village. In the post-medieval period the landscape changed in a number of ways. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, the Sturton Grange area was divided between a several landowners.
In 1715 the Jacobites under the orders of General Forster proclaimed the Pretender as King of Great Britain at the Market Cross. In the 18th and 19th century most of the buildings seen in Warkworth today were built. This was also a period of new ideas in farming and, as these developments spread, many farmhouses and farm buildings were built in the area, including Maudlin, New Barns, Northfield, Southside and Sturton Grange.