St Martin's Church, Bowness-on-Windermere

St Martin’s Church stands in the centre of Bowness-on-Windermere, a town on the eastern shore of Windermere in Cumbria. It is an active Anglican parish church built of slate rubble with sandstone dressings and a lead roof. The church has a nave and chancel with aisles, a clerestory, a south porch, a northeast chapel and a west tower. A church has stood on the site since at least 1203, becoming a parish in 1348. After a fire in 1480 only the font, tower base and one door survived, and a new church was consecrated in 1483. The church is worth visiting for its long history and the many people who shaped it. In 1870 Lancaster architects Paley and Austin restored the building, raising the tower and uncovering painted inscriptions under whitewash. Local industrialist Henry Schneider supported the work, and artist Henry Hughes painted murals and restored the east window. In 1911 W. L. Dolman added a vestry, later turned into a First World War memorial chapel. The church holds stained glass from the 13th to the 20th century, including pieces by Ward and Hughes and Shrigley and Hunt. Inside, the white-plastered walls and tapered piers give an unusual appearance. The 12th-century font has carved heads at its corners, and a 17th-century wooden statue of Saint Martin and a beggar stands at the tower base. The east window contains medieval glass depicting the Crucifixion and saints, with a coat of arms of George Washington’s ancestor. The organ was built in 1922 and restored in 1999, and there is a ring of eight bells cast in 1872. In the churchyard a tomb remembers Rasselas Belfield, a freed slave buried in 1822.