St Alban's church is the most ancient building in the village, the outside is totally different to how it looked in medieval times, it was reconstructed in the mid 19th century (click here to see how the original church looked). In Pevsner's Buildings of England book there is no real discussion of the interior, but there can be little doubt that the arches of the arcade shown on the right and the chancel arch below are old and are mist likely part of the medieval church. The church was clearly rebuilt on the old foundations and so is the same basic shape and the interior arches would have most likely still been in good condition and hence reused in-situ. The arches appear to be 14th century.

Similar can be said about the font, any self respecting Victorian achitect would not have created so plain a design. Yet it is known that such plain fonts are quite common in the East Riding and are, again, of the 14th century.

The wall monuments are very interesting. George Fenby Fisher is also named on the village war memorial, click here to find out more about him.

The oldest memorial are all to the clearly prosperous Topham family, Matthew Topham was the Vicar of St Alban's from 1754 until his death in 1775; the other two memorials are to two of his sons, Henry and Matthew. Click here to find out more about the Topham family.

The other interesting memorial at the bottom of this page is to John Molyneux Crockett.

So St Alban's is an important link to the past of our village, imagine all the people, our predecessors, that have entered this ancient building.

John Molyneux Crockett shows that clergymen in the 19th century had to be fairly mobile. he was born in Staffordshire (probably in Wolverhampton, which is of curious interest to me). His first job was in Tatenhill, near Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire (which is where he is in 1851). It is uncertain where he was in 1861 but had moved to Withernwick by 1863. In 1851 he is noted as being a widower, so Maria was his second wife.

Click here for more census details of John Molyneux Crockett and his family.



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