Church of Saint Oswald

About

St Oswald's Church is the parish church of West Hauxwell, a village in North Yorkshire, in England. The church was built in the 11th century. In about 1230, the chancel was doubled in length, and a tower was added. The church was restored in 1861 by George Fowler Jones, who added a porch and a vestry. The church was grade I listed in 1967. In 2025, it was added to the Heritage at Risk Register, at which time it was described as in "very bad" and "declining" condition.

The church is built of sandstone with roofs of stone slate and lead, and consists of a nave with a south porch, a chancel with a north vestry, and a west tower. The tower has four stages, angle buttresses, a two-light west window, lancet windows, two-light bell openings, and an embattled parapet. The nave and the vestry also have embattled parapets. The gabled porch has a round-arched entrance and inside is a Norman doorway that has columns with scallop capitals, zigzag, billet and roll mouldings. Inside, there is a piscina, an octagonal font on a 13th-century base, a pulpit built from Jacobean panels, two 15th-century bench ends, and memorials including effigies of William de Barden, who died in 1309, and his wife...