St Bartholomew in the Trees, the Blind Range Rover and Nottingham

Parish Church of St Batholomew - Maltby

We recently spent some time discussing, or more precisely trying to remember, why the church at Maltby - St Bartholomew's, as it were - ended up on our Conisbrough itinerary. We think it was because we had planned to hit it on our way north to York, on what turned out to be rental-car-snafu day, and it was sort of on the way to the Castle if we were going in that direction, and it just kind of stayed on a list.

Months later, subject to the absurdities of travel blogging nearly a year after the fact, neither of us can be quite sure why we stopped here on the way to Nottingham, but that's the current theory. It has a Saxon tower, and it must have been that feature that landed the place on a list now long lost.

And again, it was just as well we caught the thing heading south, rather than the way north. Had we bothered to look at the church's website - and virtually all active churches, as well as plenty of redundant ones, have websites - we would have found easy directions to the place, but instead we plotted it on a Google map and kind of winged it, in the fairly busy town of Maltby, laced with tourist-befuddling roads and skimpy street signage.

We ended up driving down an alley and turning nose-to-nose up against a broad community garden, the church lurking 100 yards away in the trees on the far side. It made no sense to either of us that the good parishioners of Maltby would traipse across a community garden every Sunday for services, so we pulled out of the alley and tried again.

We eventually found what we believed to be the right road leading to the church, and parked our little Ford at the top, in front of a sad looking Range Rover, missing its headlights and listing with melancholy over a patch of engine oil on the street, and walked down the alley.

The Sad Range Rover and its puddle.

We passed the White Swan, a seventeenth century pub and inn that appeared to be for sale.

Fancy a pint? Meet you at the White Swan...or, maybe not.

It was still for sale when we looked this past May, and frankly we can't tell if it's been re-opened yet or not.

There were a couple of locals chatting in front of a cottage at the bottom of the alley, one of them jumping into his car to leave. We asked the other if this was the proper way to the church.

"It is," he replied somewhat stiffly. "Why do you want to go to the church?"

Well, I stammered, surprised by an otherwise perfectly reasonable question, we're a couple of tourists and we like to photograph old English churches and churchyards. It sounded funny as I said it, and maybe not too persuasive, but my American accent probably validated the story. Why else would a couple of Americans be here? I was ready to show him our Nikons if he pressed us further, as silly as that would have been, but he didn't.

Would you like to see the inside?

Yes indeed.

My wife's the church warden - I'll fetch her and she can open the church for you.

Her name was Pam - we sadly didn't get her husband's name - and she came and opened the church for us. The church is largely Victorian, built on the site of a medieval church and including various memorials from earlier times,

Early 18th century memorial - Parish Church of St Bartholomew - Maltby

Parish Church of St Batholomew - Maltby

Parish Church of St Batholomew - Maltby

and yes, the tower is obviously much older than the rest of the structure.

Saxon tower - Parish Church of St Batholomew - Maltby

Pam was gracious and more than a little flattered that someone had come all the way from the States to see and photograph their humble little church; which, of course, wasn't exactly the case, she should have been flattered that it ended up on a list, and we can only be glad that she isn't quizzing us now as to why, because (as we admitted earlier) we really don't know why.

Her husband explained a bit about the post-war renovations that the church had undergone,


including some workman finding bones beneath the structure while they were working on modernizing the heating system; medieval burials, undoubtedly. Saxon? Norman? No one knew.

Bathed in yellow light, cast against the now-fading evening light outside, the church, while not itself particularly historic, beamed with a weird kind of haunting glow.

Parish Church of St Bartholomew - Maltby

The churchyard, set in a tight and darkened grove of trees, was especially atmospheric.

Churchyard - Parish Church of St Bartholomew, Maltby

The church sits in a little valley bisected by a stream, and evidently there was a prolonged disagreement in medieval times between neighboring parishes which side the church should sit on, presumably in a time when the stream was more of an obstacle to cross (we barely noticed it). Anyway, they settled on that side of the stream, and no one knows why.

Another local, an older gentleman wearing a beret, came strolling across the church grounds with his two dogs as we were leaving the church. The churchwarden's husband promptly asked us to not let the dogs in, but one of them snuck in anyway and we spent a minute or two chasing him around the empty pews. We chatted a bit with the older gentleman as we shot the churchyard, telling him we really enjoyed visiting the old churches. "You've certainly come to the right country," he said.

Getting out of Maltby wasn't much easier than getting around it, and we were both pretty whipped. We found our way back to the A1 and made for Nottingham.

There was a wedding reception in full throttle at the Bestwood Lodge when we pulled in, and we had to settle for a parking space some distance from the hotel itself. We spent a night at this place last year, and we liked it - the site dates to the fourteenth century when a hunting lodge was first constructed for King Edward III, although the current structure is Victorian. The place is surrounded by forest land - and no, not Sherwood Forest, which is most commonly associated with Nottingham.

We lugged the bags past the flashing lights and pounding dance music exploding from one of the side bars, and came up to the front desk. To our dismay, we learned that they had moved our reservation to one of the "back rooms", presumably to accommodate wedding guests reconsidering their plan to weave home after the gala. I was too tired to argue with the front desk girl. I think Sharon wanted to make a bit of a stink, but I figured we were only there for two nights. So what.

The room was actually a bit of a disappointment, a healthy hike from the only hotel entrance, a bit cramped and at least a travel-site star less than the one we had in 2012. I suppose we had grown a little picky about hotel rooms by this time; the place wasn't exactly cheap, and since they had downgraded our room, we wondered if they should have offered us a partial refund. They didn't, and it's too late to ask now. 

We got up there, dumped some bags and trudged back to the car for more, past the lights and music and wobbly reception guests.

The bar in the main hotel room was open, though, so after squeezing our stuff into the room we went downstairs, ordered a couple of ciders and sandwiches, and ate dinner in the fading summer twilight outside on the terrace.

The reception was just barely within earshot, and from time to time one of the tanked-up guests would stagger across the grass nearby, but other than that we had the terrace quietly to ourselves, a bit of unwind-time we both needed.

Our plan for the next day was to meet our friends from Past Hauntings at a heritage site in Derbyshire, maybe 14 miles away, around late morning. That meant we could sleep in.