Wold Newton

Location

When Hawerby became redundant the parish was amalgamated with Wold Newton a few miles further into the Wolds.  In 1862 a new church at Wold Newton was consecrated by the archbishop of Canterbury Charles Longley. Designed by the local architect James Fowler of Louth, it replaced a seventeenth century building that in turn replaced a medieval building.  Early English in style, as were most of Fowler's church, it is built of ironstone with an apsidal east end.  So thorough was Fowler's work that the only reminder of the early church on the site is the fine late fourteenth century font, carved with an inscription recording the donors John and Joan Curteys. 



   
William Maurice Wright inherited the manor of Wold Newton in 1879 at the age of six and he would remain here until his death in 1956.  He was a staunch Anglo-Catholic, a member of the English Church Union and over time he transformed the church into something of an Anglo-Catholic shrine.  Fowler's gloomy polychromatic interior was whitewashed and corbels formed from masonry recovered from Bardney abbey and elsewhere, were added to the north and south walls to support rows of images of the saints. Wright evidently had collecting mania, for everywhere you look there are devotional objects and images.  On a windowsill is an image of Our Lady of Walsinghm, panels of continental glass hang from wires in the windows and in the chancel there is a portrait of Bishop Edward King, the saintly bishop of Lincoln and hero of the ritualist movement.  This is a prayerful place, where the Anglo-Catholic tradition is still maintained. 



Access: Park on the roadside in the centre of the village.  The church is on the hillside above the village up a public foot path through a field and is well marked.  The church is kept locked but the key is available from Rectory Cottage about fifty yards south of the church footpath.

There are more photos of Wold Newton in my Flickr folder.