Downholme Church

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Mon, 03/02/2025 - 00:00

St Michael and All Angels' Church, Downholme, North Yorkshire, must enjoy one of the prettiest locations of any northern chapel. Very few appear to live close by, for it is thought that the original Downholme village was all but vacated at the time of the Black Death and relocated a mile away. Quite why this was deemed to be safer is not obvious. The church, however, stayed put.

Most of it is Norman dating to around 1180, with a few thirteenth and fourteenth-century additions. It is largely unmolested by nineteenth and twentieth-century restorers; to walk into St Michael’s is to see what the ancients beheld, give or take. There are traces of medieval carving:

A fourteenth century gravestone, built into the porch wall:

A late Saxon stone coffin next to the chancel door:

A rounded, Norman doorway:

And an octagonal, twelfth-century font:

The village’s relocation seems to be emblematic of British society as a whole in our own twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The bulk of the population has moved away from Christianity, imbibing a dull and ignorant paganism, dreary materialism, or worshipping at the plethora of religious altars supplied by mass immigration. Yet no matter how far away people move, the Church of Jesus Christ remains, sitting prettily on its little hillside, quietly radiating long held truths and dispensing ancient revelation. Any who seek enlightenment may climb up and discover for themselves the life-changing, soul-saving truths of Jesus Christ. As the dark valleys of this ignorant and idolatrous century populate with the multitudes of the godless and self-sufficient, so the little churches remain, offering light and hope.