Though the village of South Otterington situated on the east bank of the Rive Wiske, 4½ miles south of Northallerton, has its origins in the era of the Domesday Book and even earlier still, its church, to the untrained eye, may look contemporaneous with William the Conqueror and his marauding Normans, but is in fact a clever Victorian façade.
The church dedicated to Saint Andrew was constructed in 1846/7 at the sole cost of William Rutson Esq. of nearby Newby Wiske for a sum of £7,000 in memorial to his father William Charles Rutson Esq., an eminent Liverpool merchant.
Under the direction of Anthony Salvin, the church began erection on the same site as three previous structures, including an actual former late Norman church (and an earlier one found when digging the foundations for the current building). It features a three-stage west tower, capped by a Lombard frieze and hipped pyramidal roof constructed from the stones of one of the earlier churches.
Throughout the building, you can find dogtooth mouldings and semi-circular windows, scalloped capitals and a king-post roof, but if you look closer, you’ll see that they just don’t look quite ‘right’; they just don’t look ‘old’. And they aren’t—not even 200 years in age. The church’s architect, Salvin, who was one of the most successful in the first half of Queen Victoria’s reign was heralded as an early pioneer of the Gothic Revival design, and began the transformation of the Tower of London as well as restored Newark, Carisbrooke and Caernarfon Castles. Yet his views were in opposition to the likes of William Morris, who, amongst others, founded ‘The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings’ four years before Salvin’s death, in a desperate bid to halt the church restorations they felt were destroying all trace of the medieval parish church. And Salvin’s design here is perhaps a perfect example of just what Morris and his SPAB acolytes were championing against.
Address: St Andrew’s Church, South Otterington, Northallerton DL7 9HD
Books by Dr Emma Wells
