I had a little time to kill in Northallerton so decided to take a walk around All Saints Church.

The church is Grade 1 listed, it’s described by Pevsner as being a dark and imposing church, it is a large church but not overly so, I think ‘dark and imposing’ is Pevsner being a tad dramatic, I visited it on a sunny day, perhaps that made a difference.

The origins of the current building date back to the early 12th century. Over the next few hundred years bits of the building were demolished and rebuilt, an invading Scotttish army even had a go at burning the church down. So the church we see today has been evolving for over 800 years. The oldest part of the church is the west doorway and north arcade.

There’s a fair bit loose stonework scattered around the church consisting of bits and bobs of stonework that have been unearthed during the various renovations of the church. Amongst them there’s a Saxon cross head which indicates that there may have been an earlier, probably wood-built, church on the site. There’s also a beehive quern, querns are hand mills and were used for grinding cereals, they generally date from later prehistory to Roman times.

One thing that caught my eye were a number of markings on the sandstone wall blocks on the interior and exterior walls. There were two styles of marks, both shaped like V’s or inverted V’s, with one group were quite crudely cut and the other more precisely incised. The marked blocks are in walls that date to the 14th and 15th centuries. I suspect that the marks may have been used to indicate the orientation of certain blocks to the builders.

On the last picture of the gallery above, just below the mason’s mark, you can also see a group of linear grooves.

It is not uncommon to find linear grooves on the exterior walls and porches of ancient churches, I call them scrape marks but they are also known as arrow stones, a while ago I wrote something about them here.

There are also a few pieces of graffiti dotted about the walls, they are mainly initials and Marian marks. In the final image there is a deeply carved face in profile, the implied spectacles and cigarette would indicate that it is not particularly ancient.

If you have time to kill in Northallerton it’s worth having a walk around the church, it’s located on the high street and, despite Pevsner’s gloomy descrition, is a welcoming place. There are other ancient stones that I’ve not described here both within the church and embedded into the exterior walls.