The oldest building...

I am taking you on another trip beyond Saltaire... some 20 miles (32kms) SE as the crow flies, a bit further by road - to a little village called Ledsham. Saltaire, built in the 1850s, is historic - but in Ledsham stands the oldest church (and the oldest building) in our county of West Yorkshire. What is now All Saints Church was first built over 1200 years ago, in the early 8th century (900 AD).

The bottom part of the church tower, shown above, is part of an Anglo-Saxon porch. The doorway, the little window and surrounding wall are thought to be part of a large stone building that was an important centre of Christianity, perhaps a monastery. The church has been altered many times since but parts of the earliest building are still clearly visible. You can see from the picture below that the porch was built upwards in Norman times (12th century). There is an area (around where the clock now is) of random stonework and then a Norman belfry with the distinctive rounded arch.

The carving around the door was done in Victorian times but may be a copy of what was there originally and the spire was added later too. The groundplan of the church was extended several times, with many of the tiny Anglo-Saxon windows replaced by larger ones in the 13th century and still larger ones (like the gothic pointed arch that you see on the right) in the 15th century. (If you make the picture larger, you can see the outline of an older, smaller window to the left of the large window.)

 
I got so excited exploring this place - such history.... The village of Ledsham itself is interesting too. It had a school and an orphanage endowed by Lady Elizabeth Hastings (1682 -1739), both of which have been converted into very desirable homes.  Ledsham is now a quiet little commuter village, not far from Leeds and the motorway network. (And it has a very nice gastro-pub, The Chequers Inn, which unusually is closed on Sundays because of an old tradition).