Church of St Lawrence, Warkworth

The Church of St Lawrence is situated in the village of Warkworth in Northumberland. It is a grade I listed building within the Diocese of Newcastle and dedicated to Lawrence of Rome.

The present church dates from the 12th century, however a wooden Anglo-Saxon church was mentioned as occupying the site in AD 737, when King Ceolwulf of Northumbria gave Wercewode (as Warkworth was then known) along with St Lawrence’s church to the Abbot and monks of Lindisfarne. The wooden church was almost certainly destroyed in the Danish raids of 875 when Halfdan Ragnarsson “pitched his camp by the Tyne and wasted the land cruelly from sea to sea". The church was rebuilt in stone during the 9th and 10th centuries; foundations of this church were discovered in 2008 beneath the present church when an investigative trench was dug. In 1120 Henry I gave St Lawrence’s along with the churches at Corbridge, Rothbury and Whittingham to his chaplain Richard de Aurea Valle. Upon his death, all four churches were given to and became part of the newly formed Diocese of Carlisle and would remain so until Newcastle became a separate diocese in 1882.

Building of the church as we see it today began in 1132; it was constructed not only as a holy place but also as a sanctuary for the villagers in dangerous times. It had very substantial walls, with very narrow, high windows to keep out the enemy. On Saturday 13 July 1174, the day of the Battle of Alnwick, Donnchad II, Earl of Fife, commanding a column of the Scottish King William the Lion’s army, entered Warkworth and set fire to the town, killing 300 of the inhabitants who had taken refuge in the church. Around the year 1200 a tower was built at the western end of the church although the belfry and the spire were not added until the 14th century. In the 15th century the south aisle and entrance porch were added; above the porch there is a parvise which is reached by a spiral staircase; prior to 1736 it served as a schoolroom.

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