Home Our Parish St Mary's Barnard Castle St Mary's Barnard Castle Exterior Features
St Mary's Barnard Castle Exterior Features PDF Print E-mail
The North (main) entrance is now at the base of the 1870 tower. The earlier entrance, adjacent, was erected in the time of Richard, Duke of Gloucester’s lordship in Barnard Castle (1477-85). It was made redundant at the building of the new tower doorway, and was variously used as the repository of the town fire engine and an arsenal for the Durham Militia.

In the Churchyard are several fragments of cross slabs and other architectural remains.

The C12th South Door, probably the original entrance to the church, was re-located to its present site upon the building of the south aisle (1260 –1339). It was obscured until 1860 by a porch. Once the porch was removed, the doorway remained built up and covered with plaster until it was restored to its ‘original’ state in 1870.

The blocked-up ‘confessional window’ at the west end of the south aisle wall, was possibly originally located elsewhere in the church. Other suggested uses have been for the ringing of a Sanctus bell or Sacring Bell at the moment of elevation in the Mass. Its re-location here may have been to provide light for the underside of the west gallery until it was removed in 1870.

The table monument is of George Hopper, of Black Headly in Northumberland, who died in 1725 aged 23 years. Formerly situated inside the church near the west end of the south aisle, it bears an effigy on its north side wearing early C18th costume of frock coat, tricorn hat and long hair. He holds a flower in his right hand, and an inscribed scroll in the other. (The effigy was originally coloured – the coat blue, the breeches yellow, the flower a red rose). It bears the inscription ‘Here stands my statue carved in Stone To mind ye living I am gone, and ‘He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down’.
On the south side is a skeleton with a scythe as a representation of death, ‘That phantom of grisly bone’ and ‘Death cuts down all, both great and small’.

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The 'fat' man (Church side) The 'thin' man
The stone coffin found outside the south window of the south transept was discovered in 1828.
The east window of the south transept bears a cognizance of Richard III (a boar 'passant'), who, as Duke of Gloucester, was Lord of Barnard Castle 1477 - 1485.
On the south side of the churchyard is a memorial to the 143 inhabitants of Barnard Castle interred there under, who died of the Asiatic Cholera between 18th August and 18th October 1849.