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ST OSWALD’S CHURCH, RAVENSTONEDALE

Ravenstonedale’s churchyard is home to the village’s most ancient monument, the base of a Saxon cross, indicating the existence of Christian settlement well before the arrival of the Normans. Towards the end of the 12th century, the manor was gifted to the Gilbertine priory at Watton in Yorkshire, part of the only religious order to have been founded by an Englishman.

The son of a Norman knight and born at Sempringham in Lincolnshire, Gilbert died in 1189, having lived to be over 100. He was revered for his piety and his work with women and the poor, and over 30 houses were established in his name, although the priory at Ravenstonedale is the only one known west of the Pennines.

The ruins, which lie beside the church, date from around 1200 and once housed a small community of canons and lay brethren. Little remains apart from the excavated foundations, and it is likely that when St Oswald’s Church was rebuilt in 1744 the ruins were plundered as a convenient quarry of ready-cut stone.