St James' Church, Great Ormside

St James’ Church stands on a circular mound above the River Eden in the quiet village of Great Ormside, Cumbria. The mound was once a sacred Viking burial ground before the first Christian church was built there. The present nave dates from the late 11th century, with additions made in the 12th and 13th centuries. The west tower was raised in the 14th century and later shortened, leaving visible corbels of its former parapet. A restoration in 1885–86 by C. J. Ferguson rebuilt the north arcade and added tracery to the Hilton Chapel windows. The church is built of local sandstone rubble with slated roofs on the south side and stone flags on the north. Its plan includes a nave, south porch, north chapel, wider chancel, vestry and defensive west tower. The Norman tower has three stages, angular buttresses and narrow lancet windows only on the west and south. Inside, the tower contains two bells and two internal floors reached by a tall round-headed doorway. Between nave and chapel is a two-bay Norman arcade with round arches. The churchyard holds the socket of a 17th-century cross topped by a Jubilee cross added in 1897. In 1823 the Ormside bowl, an Anglo-Saxon vessel from the 7th or 8th century, was found here and is now in the Yorkshire Museum. A Viking warrior’s burial with sword was uncovered in 1898, and the sword is displayed in Carlisle’s Tullie House Museum. The church’s interior features a Norman font on a 19th-century base and a 14th-century hagioscope between chapel and chancel.