ST. ANDREW’S CHURCH AYSGARTH

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Parish Church of St Andrew, Aysgarth

Church History

Aysgarth is a Scandinavian settlement.  The name comes from the Norse words:

           eiki meaning oaks or an oak wood

           scaro meaning a gap

The full meaning is a gap or pass with an oak wood.

Although Christianity came to England in 597 we must not think of the country as divided into parishes from that date.  There was no parochial system until kings and nobles could be persuaded to build and endow churches on their estates.  The custom grew up of mass being celebrated around a cross raised on high for the service.  Later, standing or fixed crosses were used.  One such cross was discovered in a field close to the present church in 1968.  So the area was a centre of worship before the Norman Conquest.

There is no mention of a church at Aysgarth in the Doomsday Book (1086) and it is not known when the first church was built.  The only clue is that there was a church at Askrigg dating from 1175 and that was built as a chapel of ease to Aysgarth Church.

Some idea of the growth of the parochial system can be obtained from the following information.

Aysgarth became separated from the parish of Wensley in the twelfth century.  Wensley in turn was once part of the parish of Catterick which owed its importance to Paulinus the missionary who brought Christianity to Northumberland (land north of the Humber) in the seventh century.

Aysgarth parish was vast and chapels of ease were built at Askrigg, Stalling Busk, Hawes, Hardraw and Lunds.  The latter is very close to the Ure / Eden watershed in the wilds of Mallerstang.  It is now closed but the others all, in due course, became parishes in their own right.  Even today, in geographical terms, Aysgarth is one of the largest parishes in England.

The present building dates from 1866.  The oldest part of the church is the base of the tower.  Some believe that it dates from the reign of Henry III (1216-72).  Our architect disputes this, though he is happy to accept that it dates from the reign of Henry VIII (1509-47) when an extensive restoration was undertaken as a result of an agreement between the parishioners and the Abbot of Jervaulx, Adam Sedber(gh) as lay rector.  There is a beam on the north side of the chancel with the inscription “A.S. Abbas Ann. Dm 1536”.  By the nineteenth century further restoration was needed.  The walls were out of perpendicular, the roof timbers were rotten and the nave pillars were unstable.  The church was rebuilt, a new belfry was added to the tower base which was strengthened with buttresses.  The cost was £4,106 5s 7d.

A good deal of interesting information surrounds the advowson, the right of the patron (usually descendants of the original founder of the church) to present a priest the church, usually known as a living.  Until 1397 this belonged to the Neville family (they owned Middleham Castle) who exchanged it with Jervaulx for land at Worton, Newbiggin and Askrigg.  In 1423 the abbey became lay rectors.  The abbot still presented a  priest the living and became responsible for keeping the chancel in good repair.  The main purpose of the change was to enable the abbot to take tithes from the parish.

When the monasteries were dissolved in the second half of the 1530s the lay rectorship passed through the hands of Henry VIII (the whole  process was handled by the Court of Augmentations) to Michael Wentworth.  Trinity College Cambridge acquired a great deal of monastic property at this time.  In the mid 1550s economic uncertainty forced the college to apply for further lands and in 1554 it was granted the rectory of Aysgarth upon Michael Wentworth’s death.  By 1563 the college was in possession and has remained the lay rector to this day.  In 1866 it paid for the gilding and painting of the Jervaulx Screen which was moved from its position separating the nave and the chancel to its present one.