St Cuthbert

St Cuthbert, in the beautiful village of Kildale in the North York Moors National Park, is approached across a railway bridge through which the Whitby to Middlesbrough Esk valley line passes several times a day. The church was rebuilt in 1868 in the Early English style, just a few years after the railway arrived in Kildale. The building continued a tradition of over 1,000 years of worship on the site. Many believe that the area’s churches named for St Cuthbert represent the places where the monks bearing the great north-eastern saint’s coffin towards its eventual resting place in Durham stayed overnight. The window on the south wall, installed in 1992, commemorates St Cuthbert and the millennium of Christianity in Kildale. It also shows scenes and people of the village. Another reminder of the site’s antiquity is the Norman font that is still in use today, and a font believed to be Saxon. Pevsner describes the building as being in Decorated Style, built of rock-faced stone and Welsh slate roofs. The oak altar rail was designed and made by Robert Thompson of Kilburn and decorated with his famous church mouse.

A village tradition that arose because of the railway-bridge access to the church is to tie up the gates with string during a wedding ceremony. When the married couple emerge, the string is cut and they make their way through to their new life together. This small parish, with a population scarcely larger than it was in the 18th and 19th centuries, remains proud of its church which for so long has been and still is the focal point of both joyful and sad life events for so many families, and which provides a peaceful place of contemplation and worship for parishioners and visitors alike.