Skegby
St Andrew

History

Skegby is a small village in the Ashfield district of Nottinghamshire two miles west of Mansfield and a mile north of Sutton-in-Ashfield. The name Skegby has Danish roots meaning ‘the farm or home of the bearded one’. The village sits on both sides of a deep valley close to the source of the River Meden. The church itself is sited in a prominent position to the north on top of a hill overlooking this valley, where the ruins of the medieval manor house of Skegby (chiefly 13th to 14th centuries) and its successor, Skegby Hall, still survive.

The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086) as one of two berewicks (subdivisions) of the important royal manor of Mansfield (the other berewick being Sutton) and thus ancient demesne of the crown. It is also recorded that there were two churches and two priests in the manor. It can be assumed that one church was Mansfield St Peter and St Paul but it is not clear whether the second was at Sutton or at Skegby. It seem likely that this latter already possessed a chapel, probably built of wood, but later rebuilt on a grander scale in stone.

In 1093, William Rufus (William II) granted Mansfield ‘with the chapels in the berewicks belonging to the manor’ to the cathedral of Lincoln. Later confirmations of the king’s grant suggest that the chapel of Skegby was certainly extant by the late twelfth century. In 1288 it was seen as part of the parsonage of the dean of Lincoln at Mansfield and when a dispute broke out in 1331 over claims by dean Anthony Bek, his proctor, John, vicar of Orston, was able to show to the court various instruments issued by the archbishops or the chapter of York confirming that the chapel of Skegby was indeed annexed to Mansfield church. The dean was thus able to take his tithes and the case against him was dismissed.

In 1399 there is mention of John Hertilpole, a king’s clerk, parson of Weston in the Clay (now Weston on Trent) as warden of the free chapel of Skegby. However this is more likely a reference to a chapel at Skegby in the parish of Marnham rather than Skegby in Sutton in Ashfield. Confirmation of this appears to be offered by another document a few years earlier when ‘the manor at Skegby’, together with advowsons of the churches and chapels belonging to the manor, was transferred to feoffees in 1392 for William Danyell. Hertilpole was named as one of them, while the enfeoffer was Reynold of Everingham, lord of Laxton, and other feoffees also bore names more familiar in Marnham parish than in Sutton in Ashfield.

Skegby would remain a small chapelry in a small village until long after the Reformation, being usually served by priests from Mansfield St Peter and St Paul, until transferred by the 18th century to the neighbouring parish of Mansfield Woodhouse (itself once a chapelry of Mansfield St Peter and St Paul). From 1771, Skegby has been an ecclesiastical parish in its own right of around 1400 acres, but there was no resident priest until the appointment of Rev F J Taverner in 1860. The names of some earlier curates are known from the sixteenth century onwards. If the deans of Lincoln continued to draw an income from Skegby until relatively recently (in the 18th century it was worth £13 6s 8d p.a.) they seem to have devolved the advowson (the right to present to the benefice) to the holders of the manor of Skegby from an early date.

The manor had developed from the early 13th century. In 1207 King John granted to Godfrey (sometimes called Geoffrey) Spigurnel, serjeant of his chapel, 5 bovates of land and his mill at Skegby for a fee farm of 20s a year. In 1223 Godfrey was granted more extensive rights in Skegby to hold until King Henry III came of age. But by 1226-7 he held 20 bovates of land and enjoyed the customs and services of the king’s men at Skegby for a yearly rent of 54s 4d; in effect he was now lord of the manor or squire of Skegby, a position held by his descendants until an heiress in the early 14th century took Skegby to her husband Thomas Gobion. One member of the family had certainly played a role in national politics because he was one of those condemning to death Edward II’s favourite, Piers Gaveston in 1312 and also sat in parliament in 1297 and 1316.

In 1335 Thomas Gobion and Elizabeth, his wife, granted their manor of Skegby to Richard de Pensax. In the 15th century century century it again passed by marriage to the Lindleys (originally from Yorkshire). They were to hold it, moving from the medieval manor to the newly built Skegby Hall in the 1720s, until the early 19th century when they were succeeded by distant relatives, the Dodsleys. The Dodsley family finally disposed of their Skegby estate in 1931.The church preserves several memorials to its former manorial lords.

An inquest of 1460 into a dispute amongst the Bride family of Skegby provides the first mention of the chapel’s dedication to St Andrew. Robert Bride accused his uncle John Bride, archdeacon of Derby (1431-73) of ill-treating his own father, John (d. 1460), mother and himself. An inquisition was held to clear the archdeacon’s name in the chapel of St Andrews.

But other documentary details about Skegby before the Reformation are scarce.

Conversely, the physical evidence for its medieval history is impressive. The church of St Andrew’s consists of a chancel, nave, aisles, south porch, and western tower. It was rebuilt in the 13th century century during the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272). The north aisle was added at this point and new windows inserted. The tower was built over a bay of the west end of the nave arcade. Sir Stephen Glynne, who visited Skegby on 11 November 1867, considered the tower ‘of late and debased character, probably constructed about 1600’ with a ‘plain parapet and 8 small pinnacles’ and ‘belfry windows of 2 obtuse lights’.

The present clerestoried north aisle, south porch and organ-chamber date from restoration in 1870. A small Norman chancel arch was removed at this time and a more modern imitation placed in its stead. Glynne’s notes are again informative about the appearance of the old chancel before restoration:

‘The Chancel arch is a very rude and early Norman one – semicircular, with plain soffit on imposts. Part of the rood screen remains. The Chancel has been restored, and the roof is covered with new slates. It has a Perpr East window of 3 lights – those N and S – are of 2 lights, square headed.’

Just over a hundred years later the whole chancel had to be totally rebuilt again because of subsidence caused by coal mining. The south arcade dates from c.1250 and has three bays. There is a piscina niche which comes from the same date.

Glynne also provides a good description of the nave before restoration:

‘The nave has an arcade of 3 pointed arches on octagonal columns which have a kind of ball or glove in the capitals. The nave is very dark and contains some old seats with rude poppy head bench ends – On the N. is a Perpr window of 3 lights containing some fair pieces of old stained glass. And one with 2 lights ogeed. It seems that the nave was once longer – as there is some indication of an arch near the West, which makes an additional bay. Perhaps it was destroyed by the fall of the original tower … The roof of the nave is low pitched – the tie beams are moulded, with roses on them, and above is some pierced tracery … The nave is of considerable width.’

At the west end of the church are two stone effigies. They would have originally have been placed in a recumbent position but are now standing erect. The male effigy is shown with a hunter’s horn which hangs from his right side. He is thought to be a forester or another official of Sherwood Forest. The costume of both figures points to a date in the early 14th century. They have traditionally been identified as effigies of Edmund Spigurnel (d. 1296), lord of Skegby and his wife. However Edmund had been knighted and it is unlikely that he would wish to be commemorated in the garb of a forester. A plausible alternative was suggested some years ago by Dr David Crook. He made a case for William of Dogmerfield, bailiff of Sherwood forest between 1291 and 1331, whose relative Robert of Dogmerfield was assessed at the largest amount for any inhabitant in Skegby in 1332 when the first serious national tax assessment was made by Edward III.

Evidence also survives for several other medieval burials. The figure of a kneeling priest can be found in the south aisle wall, resting on another stone decorated with nail-heads and bearing the remains of an inscription (Pro anima ejus … Pater noster … For his soul … Our Father …). The dress and style of the priest might suggest a 13th century date, or even possibly earlier. When Sir Stephen Glynne visited in 1867 this figure was built ‘into the exterior surface of the S wall of the nave … on a bracket which has nail headed moulding’. There was ‘also another figure, with an inscription PATAR . CIO. DIO. With a horizontal moulding diapered with square flowers’.  They (or parts of them, since the second figure now seems to be missing) were placed in their present position on the inner wall of the south aisle at the time of the 1870 restoration. These observations appear to prove that the figure of the priest and its accompanying inscription did not originally form a single memorial as displayed now.

More certainly, in other parts of the walling there are now fewer than 13 incised slabs dating from the 12th century and 13th century, once marking graves of relatively well-to-do people or clergy buried in the church. They are decorated with emblems including the chalice, sword, shears and crosses in many different forms. One of them might be the foliated cross slab Glynne noted in the churchyard, while he spotted some others in the old south porch, evidence for re-use during earlier building campaigns, but most now probably owe their current position to that of 1870.

After the Reformation written records are a little more helpful. Registers survive from 1569 onwards. One of the first named curates, Richard Baguley, was excommunicated in 1575 though for what offence is unknown. In 1598 Richard Griffin had to do penance in church for calling the then squire Francis Lindley a ‘whore master’. From the same period there is a surviving Elizabethan chalice dating from 1571 together with a pewter flagon and pewter plates.

In 1634, the churchwardens presented their curate, William Westaby, for omitting to wear a surplice when reading divine service and refraining from using the cross in baptism. Just over a century later, in 1739 the churchwardens again presented their priest, the Rev Thomas Ashcroft, for ‘neglect of his ministerial office in not giving the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper three times in the year’. Archbishop Herring’s visitation in 1743 noted that Skegby ‘was rather more neglected than most contemporary Nottinghamshire parishes and the people were rather more heathenish’!

It may have been this relative neglect over generations that had allowed dissent to prosper in Skegby, which has a distinguished record in the early days of Quakerism, thanks especially to the activities of Elizabeth Hooton.  She and her husband had moved to the village in the 1630s and were initially attracted by early Baptists. But in 1647 George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, visited Skegby where he met Elizabeth. Finding that they shared many similar views, Elizabeth now began her career as a Quaker evangelist, preaching at first in and around Skegby but then much more widely, at Derby for instance, and elsewhere for which she was for a time imprisoned in Lincoln castle. Eventually she even accompanied Fox to the American colonies on two occasions before her death in Jamaica in 1672. In 1669, Francis Chapman, perpetual curate of Mansfield Woodhouse (and thus too of Skegby), reported to an inquiry by the archbishop of Canterbury into dissenting sects, ‘At Skegby alsoe, there is a conventicle of Quakers at the house of Elizabeth Hatton, widow; but I cannot learn who they that frequent them, they being all of other towns’. He reported other evidence of serious dissent even in the squire’s family: ‘In the same town of Skegby, alsoe, there is another conventicle, reputed Anabaptists and fifth monarchy men held at Mr. [Mrs.] Lyndley’s (excommunicate also) though I know neither their speakers or hearers.’ A special meeting house for the Quakers at Skegby was constructed later in the 17th century or early 18th century.

When Archbishop Drummond carried out his visitation in 1764 he was informed by James Lynam (who had been curate at Skegby since 1737, acting for the Rev William Clarke, Rector of West Hallam, Derbys., 1736-87, and perpetual curate of Mansfield Woodhouse and Skegby in the same period) that he preached there ‘every other Sunday only in the afternoon except three Sundays in the year when the sacrament is administered, upon which days I read prayers, preach and administer the sacrament and likewise read prayers in the afternoon’. Since receiving the archbishop’s articles (announcing the purpose and form of the visitation) Lynam had also given notice to his parishioners ‘that I would explain the catechism every other Sunday in the afternoon and I believe that since that no young person tho’ of the age of 30 or 40 but what has attended. My design is to continue the practice this and every summer as above as long as the young people will come, it is what I have often attempted tho’ with very unpleasing success’.

One of the problems facing any curate of Skegby was that there was no parsonage house in the parish so those serving the church were not resident. James Lynam, for instance, rented a house in Mansfield Woodhouse receiving from the Rev William Clarke, whose curate he was there too, £30 a year and surplice dues for serving both his cures in 1764. Clarke’s successor, the Rev William Goodacre was a little more generous and by 1832 was paying his curate, J R Unwin, £60 p.a. for help in his three cures of Mansfield Woodhouse, Sutton in Ashfield and Skegby. Other clergy holding services at Skegby lived in Mansfield, Sutton, Teversal and so on. Conditions finally improved after 1860 when the Rev F J Taverner became the first vicar of Skegby. The vicarage house, a substantial stone building near the church, was built in 1873 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, but also fell victim of subsidence becoming so damaged that it had to be demolished in the late 1960s. Taverner’s successor, the Rev H J Stamper, vicar from 1892 to 1937, had also served previously as curate, so that he spent an unsurpassed 56 years in the parish.

Until the late 18th century Skegby remained a small village. The 1743 visitation mentions 64 families but no school or almshouse. In 1764 there was still no school ‘except that a woman or two occasionally teaches the young children’. Of 64 families, of which two were dissenters, one was a Quaker family, the other a Methodist and his wife who had recently moved in, while ‘William Townrow’s wife was a Papist which I never heard of before now’ (James Lynam). But the meeting house for Quakers that had existed probably since the late 17th century had closed a year previously and ‘is now converted into a dwelling-house’. Methodism, however, was to thrive in Skegby and by the mid-19th century had a much larger following than the Anglican church.

A small colliery was sunk locally in the late 18th century and the population increased modestly. By 1832 it stood at 832 and in 1851 at the time of the Religious Census, 865. Somewhat unusually by 1869 it had fallen back to 805 but then with limestone quarries, a new colliery opened in 1873 and the development of neighbouring Stanton Hill there was a surge – 1894, 3000+, 1901, 3867, 1911, 5,057 and by the 1980s 13,500. As already noted, there were some serious consequences for the church of this industrial growth as coal mining led to subsidence, intensified by sand-cracks in the underlying limestone.

The extensive restoration in 1870 cost £1,500 and did away with much of the old medieval fabric as comparison with Glynne’s notes of 1867 show. A north aisle was added alongside an organ chamber and vestry. The nave was heightened by the addition of a clerestory of six lights on each side. The south porch was also rebuilt, and as noted above many medieval grave-slabs which must have been located within the church were now mostly placed in the exterior walls of the church.

The north aisle supported
by props (1906)

By 1905 several years of coal extraction beneath the church had resulted in the tower sinking 5-6 inches and serious cracks appearing in the north aisle. Restoration work started on 28 August with the removal of the upper section of the tower. The north aisle, which had been added in 1870, was supported with timber props. A sketch published in March 1906 shows the props and also reveals that most of the tower had been taken down by this time.

The Nottingham Evening Post provided a progress report in May 1906:

‘... the tower of the ancient building has been re-constructed, and is now complete, with the exception of the fixing of the pinnacles. The north aisle, which is kept up by stout wooden props and beams both inside and outside, has now to be dealt with, and the work will probably occupy some months.’

At the time of Bishop Hoskyns’ visitation in January 1911 the vicar was the long-serving H. J. Stamper. The net annual value of the benefice was £274. The church could accommodate 268 worshippers and there were 290 on the books for the Day school. 210 attended the Sunday School and there were 143 baptisms and 9 confirmations in the year ending 30 September 1912. This represented some recovery from the position in the mid-19th century when at the 1851 Religious Census noted only 50 as usually attending the single afternoon service and there is no mention of a Sunday School. In contrast, in the local Wesleyan Methodist church, which had been established in 1844, attendance in 1851 in the morning was 40 and in the evening no fewer than 128, while their Sunday School attracted 88 on the day of the census and had over 100 pupils on its books.

In 1923 a war memorial to the fallen of the First World War in the shape of a stone cross was erected in front of the south porch. It was unveiled on 11 November 1923 by G. G. Bonser of Sutton-in-Ashfield.

By October 1955 subsidence was again a major issue. The Nottingham Evening Post reported that cracks had appeared in the paths to the west of the church and 'stone fabric framing the east window was the next to go, swiftly to be followed by the cracking of the stain-glassed panels. Large cracks appeared over the chancel arch and the tower arch.'

The roof was completely repaired in 1969.

By 1984 mining subsidence had damaged the chancel to such a degree that the National Coal Board had it demolished and rebuilt. Regrettably, lack of available finance for archaeological excavation meant only a watching-brief could be undertaken. Four brick tombs were uncovered at the east end of the chancel but the work on site seriously damaged the archaeology.

In 2021 a project was launched to improve facilities at the church with plans to upgrade the heating system using green energy, make the tower safe, re-order the vestry to create a meeting room, level the church floor, replace the seating and build a new extension at the west end of the north aisle replacing the boiler house with a kitchen, additional storage and modern toilets.