Horncastle’s oldest standing building,
dating back to the 13th Century

The Parish Church of Saint Mary’s is built of local green sand-stone, likely to be obtained from Holbeck Quarries which is a few miles to the north of Horncastle. It is unknown when the first church was built in the place, however there was a Priest called William that was appointed to the Parish of Horncastle between 1153 and 1169.

The first record of local appropriation is in 1306 when Bishop Halton of Carlisle started a suit for the appropriation of Saint Mary’s Horncastle and in 1313 the Pope agreed to allow the church revenues of Horncastle to be appropriated to the See of Carlisle.

From this, the title Rector (meaning ‘ruler’, and the original term for a Parish Priest) of Saint Mary’s Church Horncastle is replaced by the term Vicar around 1400, because as the greater tithes had been appropriated by the Bishop of Carlisle, he became the Lay Rector and appointed a Vicar to serve the church for payment of which the Vicar received the lesser tithes. However, in 1468, the Vicar of Horncastle struggled collecting lesser tithes, which led to an agreement between the Bishop of Carlisle and Lincoln to re-settle the Rectory of Horncastle on the Vicar John Eston.

Early days, the church was close to the people in an ecclesiastical sense and also in their everyday working lives. The church promoted charitable and trademens’ Guilds which were closely associated with the Parish Church. There is evidence of two Guilds that were associated with Saint Mary’s Church, them being called the Guild of Saint Catherine, and the Guild of Saint Barnabas and Saint Lawrence.

The current structure of the church is mainly the result of it being rebuilt and restored majorly three different times throughout the past 200 years. The oldest remaining part of the church is the heavy west tower arch of the Early English period that was built during the late 12th or early 13th century.