The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
All Hallows (formerly)
Parish church
Spofforth is a village 5 miles S of Harrogate in North Yorkshire. The church is a large one, outwardly Victorian neo-Norman, c.1855 (Leach and Pevsner 2009, 715). Lawrence Butler (2006, 390) describes the church as 'destructively restored' by J. W. Hugill. It has a Perp W tower with late 12th-century N and S arcades and chancel arch remaining from the medieval church; the head of the S doorway is also largely of this period. The exterior of the church before restoration is illustrated in Butler 2007, 390, but shows no sign of 12th-century work.
Parish church
The church stands on a small but prominent hill in the middle of a large village and overlooking an extensive pond. There is a W tower, aisled nave and chancel (Pevsner and Neave 1995, 618-9).
Most of the structure is later than our period, but the chancel arch has been refashioned from a Romanesque original, and there is a splendid cylindrical font.
Parish church
The village lies on a spur between two valleys in the Wolds escarpment above Market Weighton. The church is a stout building in an open position looking W, although it is not seen from the Vale.
The church has a 13thc chancel, a 12thc nave with N arcade dated to c.1190; the W tower was built from the 12thc onward. A hexagonal font is likely to be of the 13thc.
The use of the space below the tower is an unresolved curiosity. The tower was built at the same time as the nave and chancel arch. It had a W doorway, and there are traces of blind arches on the E wall; these are earlier than the present tall round-headed windows adjacent on the N and S walls. The internal doorway with tympanum would have led to a spiral stair vice in the NW angle; weakness on the N and W walls on the slope has interfered with this doorway and the exterior W doorway.
Sculpture of early 12thc decorate the S doorway, the internal doorway and the chancel arch; a W doorway of the same period can be identified; there are two reset fragments. The N arcade can be dated from the end of 12thc.