Parish Church of St Michael

There are some interesting bits of history in this church dating right back to the Roman period. In the doorway of the church is a stone which commemorates the re-building of the nearby fort of Verterae in AD197 after it was destroyed some years earlier. This was discovered in the church graveyard in an excavation in 1880.

Close to the entrance there is also a copy of the Brough Stone which was also discovered during the excavations. The Brough Stone is a tombstone dating back to the 3rd century, which has a Greek inscription on it and commemorates a boy called Hermes from Syria, where Greek was spoken during the Roman period. The stone likely came from the nearby Roman fort and Hermes may have been a soldier or military servant.

The translation reads:

'Should any traveller chance to see sixteen-year-old Hermes of Commagene, foredoomed by fate to the grave, let him speak as follows: "My greetings to you, boy, fast though you passed your mortal life; for you flew to the land of the Cimmerian-speaking folk." And you won't be wrong, for he was a good, chaste-living boy.'

Other interesting features in the church include medieval stained glass; a 17th century pulpit, dated 1625, which looks immaculate for it's age and is cut from a single piece of stone; and a memorial to Gabriel Vincent, steward to Lady Anne Clifford who inherited Brough castle in 1643 and visited between 1660 and 1666.

One of the most notable parts of the church however, are the bells dating back to the 16th century which are among the heaviest 'ring of four' in the world and weigh over 2.2 tonnes. The magnificent tenor bell was cast around 1500, roughly the same time the church tower was re-built by Thomas Blenkinsop. The remaining three bells were cast at different intervals: one in 1687, another by John Warner & Sons in 1880, and the third by James Barwell in 1887. In 2023, a Heritage Lottery Fund helped to clean and repair the bells and the wooden tower they were housed in, and they are now in use for the first time since the 1950s.

This is an unassuming, peaceful place, but the history of it is fascinating. A visit to the nearby Brough Castle is a must and there is plenty more history to discover there too.