Welcome
Welcome to St Andrew's Church, Utterby
"Here, across a shady lane, village church and manor house face each other as they have done through many centuries."
About Utterby Church
Our Church
The Anglican parish church in Utterby, Lincolnshire, is dedicated to St Andrew, patron saint of fishermen, and is the oldest existing building in the village.
The church and tower were built about 1340 AD.
However, the list of rectors which can be seen in the church begins a century earlier in 1220 AD.
A few yards from the entrance gate lies the base of a medieval cross which would have served as the focal point for earlier Christian services, possibly going back even earlier than 1220AD
Our Building
The church has a restored tower, chancel, from the 14th century, and a 15th century nave.
Within the porch is a dainty little doorway with crocketed hood and finial and moulding dotted with flowers and leaves, human heads and grotesques, a fox with geese, a bearded man with a club and a monkey on a string, and a monkey holding a child.
The chancel keeps its old piscina and aumbry, a statue bracket, and a windowsill serving as a sedile. By the chancel arch is a beautiful canopy shaped like a turret with embattled top, and richly carved with tracery and flowers. The screen, stalls, altar rails, and canopied reredos are all fine examples of modern woodwork.
The devils doorway is on the north wall outside the church. It is supposed to be left open during a baptism, to allow the devil to leave.
In the wall of the north aisle is a memorial stone to a 14th century vicar, William Cumberworth, which shows his half figure deeply sunk in a quatrefoil, his hands clasped in prayer.
Another memorial is a hatchment with the coloured arms of William Davison who died a young man in 1702. Hatchments were hung out of the window of a house where a dead person lay, and put in the church after the funeral, but it is rare to find one inscribed as a memorial.
Another rare sight is the open channel by the 14th century font, made for draining off the water into the churchyard, and in this case left uncovered.
In the churchyard is the lower part of an old cross and by the side of the road, crossing the stream below the church, is a disused pack horse bridge, which is 600 years old.