North Stoke

From the Bath Chronicle of Thu 17-Jan-1856 p3: “Yesterday, a man, named Isaac Hicks, was charged at the County Magistrates’ Office with breaking into the church at Northstoke, and stealing a prayer-book, a candlestick, the cloth of the communion table, and a hood, the property of the Rev. Henry Morduant Fletcher and the parishioners.”

From the Bath Chronicle of Thu 25-Nov-1858 p8: “Numerous alterations in the districts of the various Courts in England and Wales will be made on and after the 1st of Jan., 1859. Her Majesty has been pleased, by Order in Council, to direct that, from that period, the parishes of Kelston and Northstoke now in the district of the County of Gloucestershire, holden at Bristol,  . . . shall be in the district of the County Court of Somersetshire, holden at Bath; . . .”

In December 1863 there was a public meeting convened at the Guildhall, Bath in opposition to church rates. For Northstoke £10 7s. 6d. had been collected in church rates but only 18s. had been spent on the church (Bath Chronicle Thu 3-Dec-1863 p8).

From The Bath Weekly Chronicle and Herald of Sat 24 Jul-1937 p10 entitled ‘A Stroll to North Stoke’: “To enter the church you have to climb up three flights of stone steps. . . I found from a book dealing with researches, that a farm house immediately below the church had, until 1838, a very fine monastic barn, the estate being, previous to the Reformation, the property of Bath Abbey. The house is built on the ruins of what must have been a large Roman villa. Many architectural fragments have been found of exceptionally elegant characters. The church was probably built on a portion of those ruins, a Roman tile having been discovered in the walls. The porch has an ancient sun-dial; a few similar examples exist elsewhere, notably one in the same position at Newton St. Loe. The western tower, which took the place of a Norman predecessor, was erected in 1731. The nave apparently dates from the time of Archbishop Laud, although the timber roof is about the date of Henry VII. An arch dividing the nave from the chancel is of a very early type, rudely pointed and is built obliquely to the north-east. The steps of the rood loft and the doorway were discovered during a restoration under the supervision of the late Major Davis.”

Rambles About Bath by R E Peach (6th edition 1876) p248 is rather unflattering: “Northstoke is a straggling village of antique farm-houses, picturesque in the highest degree. The Church, of Norman foundation, is situated on a gentle eminence, and is remarkable for its utter want of beauty. A heavy square nondescript tower, having “William Britton, churchwarden, 1731,” legibly engraven thereon, seems to have been built after his own design; it is thirty feet high.”