Barmston is a village on the Holderness coast, about 6 miles S of Bridlington. The church, which is Grade 1 listed, lies adjacent to the Old Hall. It has a nave with S aisle, chancel, south-west tower and porch. There are Norman origins to nave and chancel; the tower is Perp. The main Romanesque features include two doorways into the nave (one open, one blocked), an arch in the S arcade, and a cylindrical font with bold lozenge decoration.

Four pre-Conquest manors in the area passed to Drew de Bevrère and then to the Aumale fee. Most of Barmston was held by the Monceaux family perhaps from the 1120s (VCH ER II, 215). According to the VCH, Barmston church was presented by Alan de Monceaux to Whitby Abbey. The grant was confirmed c.1170. (VCH ER II, 220).

It has been suggested that ‘the shouldered-lintel south doorway may have been reset from the 12^th-century nave... as an entrance to a screened-off south aisle.’ (VCH ER II, 221). However, the frame has a wide and deep hollow chamfer similar to that used on the arcade and chancel arch inside, which are said by Pevsner & Neave to be of Perpendicular date.

The blocked doorway is considered by the fieldworker to be perhaps late 12^th century, but no known parallels spring to mind.

The N wall of the nave and the E end of the aisle arcade (which includes what may have been an arch to a porticus or room off the nave of the first church) are said to be 12^th century. Arches off the chancel to possible chambers have been surveyed at Rillington and Sutton-upon-Derwent.

There are other fonts with double cable and trellis patterns: for example, Bainton, but compare particularly Flamborough, which has the same number of repeats vertically but uses convex rolls as divisions throughout (apart from an entirely blank panel). Both patterns at Flamborough are laid out and cut in a less practised manner than at Barmston, but the intention is identical. The dimensions of the basin at Flamborough are quite similar and the height of the cylinder is the same. The base is possibly also twelfth-century. Morris 1919, 62, calls it ‘a very interesting and unusual base’. It seems unlikely to be of this period because nothing else like it has been seen locally, although compare Edstone or Great Edstone of which Pevsner, North Riding, 155, says ‘the millstone-like base has Norman arcade carving’. Also compare the similar form and tooling of the spandrels of the arches on the Cowlam font. There are, fairly often, plain cylindrical bases forming a single step around a cylindrical font. The font at Atwick has a reworked base which could have been like this one.

(Note: Both font and base seem to have been coated with a dark reddish-brown render. This coating makes geological examination difficult. The font at Thorngumbald has been cleaned from a similar coating).

In the porch is a fragment of a hog-back tomb cover, though perhaps not local, as this piece has been cited in published discussions of a possibly 12th-century carving at Lissett (East Riding) and so is not covered here.