The chancel of a late 12thc manorial chapel survives in a much altered with further buildings attached to its E and W ends. The buildings are on private property and used largely for farm purposes except for the easternmost section of the chapel, its chancel, where loose sculpture is kept. No medieval masonry is standing beyond the W wall of the chancel (Tomson 1996, 30). The chancel is built largely out of Magnesian limestone and a light-yellow sandstone. The chapel is to the S of a modern house which is on the site of the medieval manor house; both lay within a moated site. An archaeological survey of the chapel was done in 1994; restoration followed and was completed in 1997. For full details, see Tomson 1996. A watercolour of the chapel by Rowland Hibbard may have been prepared for the Rev. Joseph Hunter, c. 1828 (Tomson 1996, 6-7).

The E wall of the chancel, which is 3.85m wide internally, remains. The N wall, facing the modern house and containing a doorway with a lintel, survives, as does a part of the S wall having a window with one-piece head; on the W side the position of the chancel arch is now walled over. The nave area is open on the S side and extends S of the medieval line. It is used for farm storage.

Inset in the chancel wall are a piscina with a drain, and an aumbry. There are remains of 4 or 5 round-headed, splayed windows. The octagonal column in the S wall of the chancel is at the limit of the twelfth-century work, and is likely to have been moved there from the chancel arch; the N column of the arch is probably still in situ against the N wall. The sum of work seen is Transitional, with rather more Gothic than Romanesque features.

As well as standing remains of the building, there is a collection of loose stone kept in the chancel, while a wall butting onto the NE corner of the chancel and running N towards the house contains various reset fragments of sculpture in both faces. There is also a round-headed doorway at Owston Hall, which probably once belonged to the chapel.

Balne is a suffix once added to Fishlake, Pollington and Carlton, but now obsolete (Hunter 1828, I, 217). Late 12thc connections seem to be with the family of a daughter of Otes de Tilli.

Windows

A better comparison for the three E windows than the elaborate window in Conisbrough castle chapel is perhaps the fenestration at Farnham, where a square chancel has three windows on each wall, their arches making a continuous arcade.

Doorway

The lintel is a quite ancient-looking structure in this context. The profile of its 'label' is different from, for example, the moulding round the adjacent window of the chancel, but that is 13thc, from the time of the widening of the window opening (Tomson 1996, 34). The priest's doorway at Cantley has similarities: a lintel carved with an inset 'tympanum'. The arch over the doorway is segmental but without a chamfer; the jambs have a slight chamfer.

Paint was noted by the surveyors, Tomson 1996, 23, 34.

Piscina alcove. There are trefoil-headed alcoves in Conisbrough castle, in the lord's chamber, chapel and vestry. A piscina with a round head, but otherwise simple and chamfered as here, is in Kirk Sandal church.

Loose or reset stones with dogtooth: this pattern is used on a round-headed doorway at Conisbrough church, and one dogtooth occurs in a moulded arch in the chapel of Conisbrough castle.

Dogtooth is probably a development of Romanesque beading, via nailhead. The examples at Thorpe-in-Balne include two examples with a pierced centre of the motif, relating it back to the usage in earlier decades, when star patterns commonly had a bored central depression, perhaps to take an inset of a fragment of glass.

Reset fragmentary stones in wall

Where the more ornamental fragments could have fit in the surviving building is a puzzle (as it often is with loose stones). The Tomson report notes that some fragments came from the demolition of an 18th century farmhouse, so perhaps they were part of a domestic setting somewhere else on the manorial site. In this case, again, the capital might be compared to work at Conisbrough castle, especially to some of the capitals of the fireplace in the lord's chamber. There is little other secular work for comparison, and no significant historical connection need be implied by the repetitive naming of Conisbrough.

Hunter describes the chapel, which he visited as such: it was even then in use 'as a barn, or a place in which to store husbandry utensils...it is less ornamented than the chapel of Steetley near Worksop, it bears to it a close resemblance' in size if not decoration. After the Dissolution, no record was found of services being held in the chapel, endowment having ceased. Visiting before the major collapse in 1865, Hunter describes the chapel in some detail, saying it is a longitudinal building of 16 by 6 paces (modern measurements give 9.94m x 6.45m externally), divided by an arch into two equal portions. There were two lancets on either side (that is, N and S walls) and another at the W end. In the E wall there were 'three windows placed around one which is wider than the rest', though whether all of these were blocked by then he does not say (Hunter 1828, I, 218).

Hunter's work on South Yorkshire was to be illustrated and a watercolour which may have been intended to be used for it was identified in Doncaster Art Gallery and used on the cover of Tomson 1996. The watercolour is by Rowland Hibbard (DONMG 143.41) and shows the chapel from the NW, with the nave and the chancel under one continuous roof, and the nave walls intact though cracked. The W window mentioned by Hunter is shown as a small rectangular opening by the artist. Hunter says there were two windows in both the N and S walls, and the plan in Tomson 1996, 33 shows two: the watercolour shows a blocked window in the N wall of the nave to the E of the doorway. The lintel of the chancel doorway was already cracked; the nave doorway then still in place was removed after the major collapse of the chapel in 1865 to Owston Hall (see separate report).