Hutton Cranswick has two nuclei; the church is at Hutton, the railway station at Cranswick. There is a W tower, aisled nave, porch, vestry and chancel. The church is ‘of Norman origin’ (Pevsner and Neave 1995, 571), but that is not immediately recognisable.

Some windows, the porch and the vestry are by Ewan Christian, 1875-6. The chancel was restored in 1919, with various fittings, by Temple Moore (Pevsner & Neave 1995, 572; Brandwood 1997, 242). Most of the pieces noted in the outside walls by Morris 1919, 210-11, that is, reset beakheads and dogtooth, are no longer to be seen there. Only one reset fragment, with incised blackletter, was noted outside (E wall of chancel).

The early twelfth-century font formerly at this church (found as broken pieces in the Vicarage rockery) has been restored and is on display at the Hull and East Riding Museum, on loan from York Museums Trust. See the CRSBI report on that site.

Parts of the S nave doorway, and the 12 reset beakheads inside, are original.

Before the Conquest, in Cranswick and Hutton, there were 9½ carucates for geld and Eddulf, Norman and Cnut had three manors there. In 1086, Nigel held it all from the Count of Mortain and the value had fallen from 60s to 10s. Before the Conquest, in Skerne, Cranswick and Hutton, Game had 8 carucates: Hugh, son of Baldric, held the estate at the time of the Domesday Survey; here the value was one-third of what it had been in the time of King Edward (VCH II, 225, 277, 321).

South Doorway

The restoration of the S doorway was the work of Ewan Christian in 1875-6, and, according to the faculty papers, he rebuilt the S wall of the nave from the porch eastwards and the N and E walls of the chancel, and built the vestry, but did not plan to work in the area where the beakheads and dogtooth are now found, W of the porch. Morris (2nd edition published 1919) saw the restored south doorway but describes the beakheads and dogtooth in the outside walls, so their resetting over the windows inside the church may perhaps be attributed to Temple Moore, who worked there around 1919. The biography of Moore (Brandwood 1997, 242) lists under this date ‘chancel restoration’ as well as works on a new reredos and furnishings for a war memorial chapel. Apart from these latter designs, there are no papers for work by Temple Moore at the Borthwick Institute.

Beakheads

The beakheads inside the church belonged on a doorway, very likely this one; they would have formed a third order, perhaps four or five of them are lost. The beakheads are a close match for beakheads on the S doorway at Shiptonthorpe. That doorway has similar bases to those here; also the roll and hollow profiles used in the arches are very similar to those of the first order at Hutton. The Shiptonthorpe doorway has squat scallop capitals, as renewed for Hutton, and the opening is taller and narrower. At Shiptonthorpe the label is plain and square.