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St Saviour, Stydd, Lancashire

Location
(53°49′5″N, 2°31′42″W)
Stydd
SD 653 359
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Lancashire
now Lancashire
medieval York
now Blackburn
  • James Cameron
20 Mar 2018

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=16102.

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Feature Sets
Description

Stydd is a small collection of buildings - the church, cottages, a farm and an 18thc Roman Catholic church - a very short walk from Ribchester. The church is a single-celled building, with an Early English S doorway, and an E window with intersecting tracery. The N wall has two small lancets, while the S wall has a very tall narrow one. The W wall has a Y-tracery window, and a blocked opening high up. The monastic buildings seem to have been to the N of the church, but excavations have not proved conclusive. There are now some sheds erected over the area.

History

The manor of Stydd was acquired by the Knights Hospitaller and attached to their preceptory at Newland near Wakefield about 1265. It is indicated in the aquisition that there had been a hospital there for at least fifty years. By the 14thc it seems to have lost its function as a hospital and became attached to the church St Wilfrid a short walk away. Its 16thc font suggests that it was parochial by then.

The place Stydd seems to be generally synonymous with this hospital foundation, which otherwise can really be considered as the outskirts of Ribchester. The placename, meaning simply "place" or "farm", is also used at Yeaveley Preceptory in Derbyshire.

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Comments/Opinions

The most recent Buildings of England: North Lancashire describes the hood ornament as "zigzag". However it seems quite distant from true chevron. There are no other features that suggest the church to be Romanesque: without this door one would claim it rather as late 13thc or even early 14thc. The round arch however, qualifies it for the corpus. While the S door certainly could date from 1265 when the hospitallers took over the hospital (allowing for stylistic lag in the remote north west), this could plausibly be from the first foundation of the hospital around 1200.

Bibliography

'Hospitals: St Saviour, Stidd under Longridge', in A History of the County of Lancaster: Vol. 2, ed. W. Farrer and J. Brownbill, London 1908, p. 166.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol2/p166

"The parish of Ribchester", A History of the County of Lancaster: Vol. 7, ed. W. Farrer and J. Brownbill, London 1912, 36-44.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol7/pp36-44

"Townships: Dutton", A History of the County of Lancaster: Vol. 7, ed. W. Farrer and J. Brownbill, London 1912, 54-61.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol7/pp54-61

C. Hartwell and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Lancashire: North, New Haven and London 2009, 660.