St Stephen's Church, Skipton

Virtual Tour - Nave & Gallery

>> Introduction  >  Exterior  >  Nave & Gallery  >  Sanctuary  >  Side chapel  >  Convent  <<

The porch houses the notices and acts as a narthex. The narthex is an ancient term given for the enclosed place at the entrance to the Roman catacombs. As such it is a link to the Christian martyrs who were buried in the Roman catacombs and the Roman Christians who gathered there to pray at their tombs. Indeed in the medieval English church, the porch was an important gathering place for the village people and its use as a place for notice boards remind us of this. The narthex is also a place of transition, where the secular world meets the sacred of the church. As such certain liturgical ceremonies are still carried out in the narthex such as the greeting of un-baptised babies who are brought to church to be initiated into the Christian family.

In the porch one sees a set of double doors which lead into the church proper. These doors were carved in Belgium and installed in 1911 but all the stonework is original and dates to the 1842 building. This was then the main West Door which led into the church. Immediately to the right of the doorway is the stoup on a pilaster. It contains blessed water and the custom is to bless oneself with it as one enters the church, as a reminder of one's baptism. This was added in 1852. Notice the delicate dog-tooth motif around the doorway and around the holy water stoup which is a typical early English Gothic feature.

Before you carry on, you may click HERE for a plan of the church which will open in a new browser window. It may help you to follow this virtual tour.

Entering the church, one is struck by how ornate it is in comparison to the restrained exterior. This is quite typically Gothic. We should recall that all medieval Gothic buildings were painted with garish colours and patterns and even the statuary was painted.

It is not immediately apparent that the church has transepts so one can still recognize the initial rectangular shape of the church. This is a single-aisle church and the main body of the church where the people sit is called the nave. This term comes from the Latin navis meaning 'ship'. The ship is still a symbol of the church, the ark of salvation that sails the tumultuous seas of life. Alternatively, the term may be related to the Greek word naon meaning 'temple'.

There are five windows on either side of the nave; eight windows are fitted with stained-glass. On pedestals between each window is a stone statue of a saint. There are seven in total and an eighth in a niche where the wooden pulpit used to stand. The pulpit was removed in 1975. The statues had wooden canopies over each of them which were removed in 1921. There are also the 14 stations of the cross; two beneath each saint. The stations of the cross are a pictorial meditation of Christ's journey to Calvary and is a devotion popularised in the Middle Ages allowing the Christian to focus on Christ's Passion and Death. These fine stations were erected in 1889 in memory of Charles Porri. The floor of the nave is truly exceptional and unique in the diocese. It is entirely mosaic apart from where the benches are in which case they are a hard-wood parquet in a herringbone pattern. This mosaic floor was laid in the 1930s in memory of Fr Richard Sharp SJ who had served the parish for forty years. The simple wooden benches were a gift of Thomas Fattorini in 1924. The entire nave is vaulted by a wooden ceiling made of Broughton oak given by Sir Charles Tempest. The dog-tooth pattern features prominently and it is modelled on the roof of Skelton Church near York.  

Looking back towards the West end is the gallery which was added around 1850. This helped to add a few more seats to the church but it became the preserve of the choir especially after the organ was installed in 1874. The gallery is now used by parishioners and the choir only sings from here on special occasions. The west window was installed in the 1860s in memory of the children of Henry and Jemima Tempest. Three sons died in infancy and Stephen F Tempest had died aged eighteen. The saints depicted here are their patrons:

Top left: St Norbert, founder of the Premonstratensian Order;

Top right: St Stephen the protomartyr

Middle left: St Stephen, king of Hungary

Middle right: St Peter, first Bishop of Rome.

The bottom panels depict angels, one holding a scroll explaining the windows' significance and the other a baby boy.

Incidentally, Henry and Jemima Tempest themselves are depicted with their children in the third and fourth windows on the north side of the church.

A confessional was installed under the stairs leading to the gallery. This is now used occasionally. The sacristy doubles as a more suitable place for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Nave features including statuary and windows >>