BOYLESTONE, DERBYSHIRE

Grid Ref: SK 182 358
Date: 29 April 2006 & 29 April 2022

Boylestone is a very quiet village now but as Arthur Mee relates it had a brief moment of drama.  During the Civil War, 200 Royalist troops sheltered in the church overnight while on their way to the relief of Wingfield Manor.  They did not set a watch and during the night Parliamentary forces surrounded the church.  At dawn they called on the occupants to surrender and all were disarmed without loss of life on either side. The earliest parts of the church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, are the buttresses to the chancel wall from the 13th century.   The chancel was rebuilt in the early 14th century with the east window from the 15th century.  The tower was built in 1844 by Henry Duesbury.

After a gap of 16 years, I revisted Boylestone and took a new set of pictures.

  St. John's  
  Church of St. John the Baptist, Boylestone  
  Altar  
  The Altar, 2022  
Stained glass   Sanctuary
John the Baptist and Elijah   The Sanctuary
Font   The Pulpit
The Font   The Pulpit

My picture below, taken from an illustration in the church in 2006, shows the church as it was in February 1834, when sketched by the Revd: R. R. Rawlins. This was ten years before the new tower was built. There is a list of ministers in the church from 1300 which is about 250 years before the Reformation, so the first nineteen on the list would be Catholic priests. After R. Reve in about 1527 the list has a gap for almost a century to the Rev. E. Wheatley who served from 1622 to 1640.

  spacerSketch of 1834  
  Sketch of the Church as it was in 1834  

 

Sources:

The Buildings of England, Derbyshire, by Nikolaus Pevsner, revised by Elizabeth Williamson, Yale University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-300-09591-0
The King's England, Derbyshire, by Arthur Mee, first published in 1937, 6th impression 1951

 

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© Craig Thornber, Cheshire, England, UK. Main Site Address: https://www.thornber.net/

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