Church of St Lawrence

The Church of St Lawrence is situated in the village of Warkworth in Northumberland. It is a grade I listed building within the Diocese of Newcastle and dedicated to Lawrence of Rome.

The present church dates from the 12th century, however a wooden Anglo-Saxon church was mentioned as occupying the site in AD 737, when King Ceolwulf of Northumbria gave Wercewode along with St Lawrence's church to the Abbot and monks of Lindisfarne. The wooden church was almost certainly destroyed in the Danish raids of 875 when Halfdan Ragnarsson “pitched his camp by the Tyne and wasted the land cruelly from sea to sea". The church was rebuilt in stone during the 9th and 10th centuries; foundations of this church were discovered in 2008 beneath the present church when an investigative trench was dug. In 1120 Henry I gave St Lawrence's along with the churches at Corbridge, Rothbury and Whittingham to his chaplain Richard de Aurea Valle. Upon his death, all four churches were given to and became part of the newly formed Diocese of Carlisle and would remain so until Newcastle became a separate diocese in 1882.

More information

Comments Statistics

| | Public