St Robert's Church, Pannal

St Robert's Church, Pannal, North Yorkshire, England, also known as St Robert of Knaresborough Parish Church, is a Grade II* listed building. A 13th-century wooden church dedicated to St Michael was rebuilt in sandstone in the 14th century by friars of the Trinitarian Order from Knaresborough Priory. It was perhaps then that it was rededicated to Robert of Knaresborough. Its nave was rebuilt in the 18th century, restored in the 19th and remodelled in the 20th. Extensions were added in the 20th century. It is a parish church, and the vicar also serves the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Beckwithshaw.

Location The church stands on Main Street in the historic core of the village of Pannal, at about 85 metres above sea level. Pannal is a "straggling linear" village among farms, woods and former quarries. The crenellated church tower is a significant landmark locally.Harrogate Borough Council: Pannal conservation area character appraisal Retrieved 5 January 2014 The church stands opposite Pannal Hall, which from 1724 was the seat of the Bentley family: landowners whose memorials line the walls of the chancel.Bentley family from Pannal Hall (some buried in St Roberts churchyard) Retrieved 5 January 2014 The Bentleys had the right to church tithes and the duty to maintain the chancel.

History The first record of the village is "Panhale" in the Pipe Rolls of 1170. A wooden church occupied the site of the present church probably in 1250, and definitely in 1271 when the archdeacon of Rochester Witton (or William?) de Santo Martino resigned the ministry of Pannal, and when the village was also called Rosehurst.Genuki: Ecclesiastical history, Data from the 'Collectio Rerum Ecclesiasticarum' from the year 1842 Retrieved 18 March 2014 The church was dedicated to St Michael and was called St Michael the Archangel (or All Angels) until at least 1304.Ancestry.com: St Roberts Church Retrieved 5 January 2014 Its vicar became Archdeacon of Rochester in 1271.strobertschurch.co.uk. St Roberts Church website: history Retrieved 5 January 2014 Edmund Earl of Cornwall gave the church to St Robert's Priory in 1278. The present church was built before May 1318, when it was "said to have been damaged by a Scottish raiding party" who visited Pannal before or after attacking Knaresborough Castle, and left the village after stealing cattle and sacking and burning the church. The chancel was rebuilt in 1319 by friars from Knaresborough Priory. They belonged to the Trinitarian Order of St Robert of Knaresborough, and it may have been this event which inspired the rededication of the church. The priory received the church and its income from Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall in 1319, and it was consecrated in 1348. The priory was dissolved in 1539, and Pannal Church became Protestant. In 1549 the Chantry of St James, Pannal, was dissolved. There are parish register transcripts for Pannal, dating from the 16th century onwards, at the Borthwick Institute for Archives.Borthwick Institute for Archives: location of St Roberts parish register transcripts Retrieved 5 January 2014

Until the 19th century, this parish church was the village's civic and judicial centre. The parish chest held civil documents, and the vicar and warden held the keys. The church dispensed welfare monies and set up workhouses and poorhouses. The parish supported the village constable, and until the 1960s the old village stocks could be seen by the churchyard gate. In 1943 the 4th Harrogate (St Robert's) scout troop was located at the church.1942 Harrogate and Nidderdale Scouts Retrieved 5 January 2014

St Robert

Pannal Church is the only one in the United Kingdom dedicated to Robert of Knaresborough (1170–1218). He was born in York, the son of Touk Flower. He was ordained subdeacon and served at Newminster Abbey near Morpeth in Northumberland for four and a half months. He returned to Knaresborough to become a hermit. His patron Juliana gave him the chapel of St Hilda at Rudfarlington. He became known as a holy man and lived in various places, including Spofforth near Pannal. He cared for the poor, and received support from King John, Sir William de Stuteville the son of Robert III de Stuteville, and his brother who became the Mayor of York.Victoria County History: Friars of Knaresborough Retrieved 5 January 2014

Structure

The church was listed as Grade II*, number 1149449, on 18 July 1949 on the grounds that the tower and chancel constitute a medieval element of the dressed and coursed sandstone structure. It has graded-slate roofs. The chancel is lower and narrower than the nave, and was built in the 14th century, the east window tracery dates from 1350. Parts of the chancel may be remnants of the earlier 13th-century stone church. The tower was added at the west end in the 15th or 16th century. During the ministry of William Raper and after becoming derelict, the nave was rebuilt in 1772 with Georgian elements in the churchwarden style, including "rounded Georgian windows with amber glass, a plaster ceiling with a decorated cornice, box pews and a three-decker pulpit (all now gone).See image of round-headed Georgian windows: :File:Tarleton St Marys Church Windows.jpg It was restored during the ministry of Mark Rowntree in 1882 to 1884 while the church was closed. He replaced the box pews with pitch pine ones and removed the three-decker pulpit. He lowered the nave floor by and raised the chancel floor and ceiling to create the Bentley's burial crypt below. It was probably at this time that the present arch-braced truss ceiling was installed. Before Rowntree's work, the nave floor was higher than those of the tower and chancel. The same section was remodelled again in 1929 when the ceiling and some oak roof beams were replaced, and electric light installed. In 1930 perpendicular windows replaced the Georgian ones. In 1934 the church acquired an organ loft in the tower arch and the ground floor of the tower became a vestry.Church leaflet: The Parish Church of St Robert of Knaresborough Pannal: A mini guide On the south side a porch and choir vestry were added in 1952, the glazed and polygonal chapter house was built in 1977 and the parish meeting rooms and kitchen in 1988 or 1999.

Church exterior

The tower is in perpendicular style, in three exterior visual stages separated by stringing. On different levels it has three interior floors consisting of the vestry and its loft at the bottom, then a clock chamber whose floor is roughly level with the nave ceiling, and a bell chamber on the top floor. The bottom and middle floor levels are indistinguishable from the outside, because the diagonal buttresses run up the bottom two stages and half of the top stage, and there is exterior stringing halfway up the bottom floor but not between the bottom and middle floors. However, stringing on the exterior identifies the floor level of the bell stage. The interior chambers of the tower appear tiny because of the space taken by the spiral staircase inside its south wall. The church's ribbed west door, in a "segmental-pointed" arch with "broad chamfer" is in the lower exterior stage. The three-light window above is included in the exterior second stage with the spiral staircase windows and the blue clock faces. The three-light window is hidden in the interior, being inaccessible in the vestry loft. The third stage has double, uncusped, round-headed bell-openings on all four sides, and an embattled parapet. The tower is floodlit at night.

The nave was rebuilt in the Georgian era, and the visual evidence of this is the "rusticated quoins and the rusticated surround of a former blind north doorway." The two-light windows in perpendicular style were added in 1929, the south-east one having been shortened when the chapter house was added. The chancel is in decorated style. It has four windows, its east window having three lights and reticulated tracery, plus an ogee-headed priest's doorway on the south side. One of the chancel's stained glass windows is from Knaresborough Priory.Mentioned in William Grainge, Harrogate and the Forest of Knaresborough, 1871 It is a small window in the point of an arch, showing a coat of arms with two oaks above a red and blue Trinitarian cross. The oaks may commemorate the fact that "in August 1255 the king gave three oaks to the friars of the Holy Trinity for the fabric of the church of St Robert,". Pannal historian Anne Smith suggests that the object between the oaks is the gateway to the Priory.

On the south-west and north-west buttresses of the tower are ancient and almost-illegible carvings about across, and about from the ground. They may be consecration crosses, following the tradition in which Anglican bishops have anointed each corner of the church with chrism as part of the consecration ritual, then commemorative crosses were placed at the same points. At first sight the carvings appear to be Tudor roses or the fleurs-de-lis used by English monarchs from the 14th to 18th century, but the raised "petals" may be the gaps between the curved arms of the deeply engraved cross.See images: :File:Consecration cross St Roberts 037a.jpg, :File:Consecration cross St Roberts 041.jpg, :File:StRoberts 038.jpg

Church interior

Sanctuary and chancel In the walls of the sanctuary are two corbels which have been re-set, and they may indicate the use of a Lenten veil. On the sanctuary floor are early 20th century memorial mosaics, with a crypt below. The chancel contains a 14th century piscina with an ogee opening, but the piscina and the top of the sedilia are low on the wall to the right of the altar, indicating a raising of the stone floor which has 17th and 19th century ledgers. It has scribed render walls. The roof was restored in 1884, and is arch-braced with 4.5 bays.

Nave The "tie-beam roof on corbelled brackets, with cusped arcading over the beams" of the nave has been rebuilt and remodelled several times, but may perhaps be mainly attributed to the 19th century works. The walls are plastered and there are floorboards under the pews. Between the nave and the tower's ground-floor vestry is an organ, built against the tower arch. English Heritage describes the fixtures in the nave and chancel as follows: The font, probably of 1772, is of polished marble and of unusual oval shape. Its wooden canopy has a finial surmounted by a dove. The C19 pulpit is polygonal Perpendicular with a figure of the Good Shepherd. Pews are mainly C19 and their ends have notional poppy heads. Choir stalls have ends with scrolled foliage to the tops, and Gothic blind-panelled frontals. The C19 altar table incorporates C17 panels. The east window shows the Nativity (1883). There are C19 and C20 memorial tablets, and a memorial tablet to the Symeson/Simpson family set up after the death of William Simpson in 1886, by Day of Knaresborough.English Heritage listing details 1149449 The tower and chancel arches are on polygonal shafts and built in 1929.

The font is made of limestone from Derbyshire, and the stone contains small fossils. The church accounts of 1686 refer to "putting a loop ring" on the font for two pennies; the loop fitted on the rim of this rare oval font is still in situ, dating it to before that date. The church leaflet mentions legends of its origin in Fountains Abbey or in a mansion where the font was once a wine cooler. Contrary to the above listing description, it is the wooden cover and not the font which was made in 1772 and restored in 1975. The brass eagle lectern was presented to the church in 1875. The pulpit, presented to the church in 1955, is the work of Norval Paxton; this is possibly architect Norval Paxton of Tadcaster who designed the church hall (dedicated in 1947 and now demolished) at Foundry Mill Street in Seacroft. The east window in the chancel was presented by Eliza Bentley in 1883.English Heritage: A survey and gazetteer of places of worship 1900–2005 Retrieved 9 January 2014

Tower