St Bridget's Church, Brigham

St Bridget’s Church stands in the small village of Brigham in Cumbria. It is an active Anglican parish church built mainly of sandstone with a slate roof. The building began in the late 11th century and was enlarged in the 12th and 13th centuries. A chantry aisle was added around 1323 for the rector Thomas de Burgh. In the 19th century William Butterfield restored the church, adding windows and the saddleback tower roof. Fletcher Christian, famous for the Bounty mutiny, was baptised here in 1764. The church mixes Norman, Gothic and Gothic Revival styles. Outside, a three-storey tower with a saddleback roof rises at the west end. Inside, painted timber roofs cover the nave and chancel. Carved stones include an Anglo-Danish cross-socket and fragments from before the Norman period. A recess in the south aisle holds the tomb of Thomas de Burgh, who died in 1348. The east window shows the Ascension in stained glass by Alexander Gibbs, a memorial to the vicar John Wordsworth. The churchyard contains a 1684 sundial on a red sandstone shaft. Many gravestones date from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Among them is the table tomb of Fletcher Christian’s father Charles. The church also houses a two-manual organ built in 1895 by W. Hill and Son.