Benchmark - St Cuthbert - Shustoke, Warwickshire - European Historic Survey Stones, Monuments and Benchmarks on Waymarking.com

A cut benchmark on the south west corner of St Cuthbert's church tower.

"The parish church of ST. CUTHBERT consists of a chancel with a north organchamber, nave, south porch, and west tower with a spire.

The church was erected in the time of Edward II, according to Dugdale on the evidence of a figure in a north window of John, Lord Mowbray, who was probably a benefactor of the new church.

The top stage of the tower (resembling that at Sheldon dated 1461) and the spire were added in the second half of the 15th century.

The building was restored in 1873 at a cost of £3,000 when the chancel and porch were rebuilt. Lightning in 1886 destroyed the roofs and internal fittings and restoration in 1887 cost £6,000. Out of many Dugdale monuments mentioned in Dugdale, only that of the antiquary himself survives. A sketch of the church made in 1854 shows the building much as it is now except for the east window, which was a large round-headed light, and the angle buttresses, which were shallow and wide instead of diagonal.

The chancel (about 33½ ft. by 18 ft.) has a modern east window of three lights and tracery. In the north wall is a window of two pointed lights and plain spandrel in a two-centred head. The hollow-chamfered rear-arch and two little carved human heads in the hollows at the tops of the splays are ancient. West of the window is a modern recess for the Dugdale monument and west of that an arch to the organ-chamber. In the south wall are two modern similar windows, a priest's pointed doorway and a restored low-side lancet at the west end. The original piscina and credence has been reset: it is of twin trefoiled arches to the single recess and a quatrefoil piercing in a two-centred main head formed by a hood-mould, the jambs and dividing shafts being moulded. In the west half is a quatrefoil basin. In the north wall is a partly ancient locker with rebated jambs and lintel. The roof is of trussed rafter type.

The modern pointed chancel arch is of two chamfered orders, the inner carried on corbels carved as crowned heads. The nave (about 55 ft. by 30 ft.) has three pointed windows in the north wall of two chamfered orders, the outer orders with the hood-moulds being 14th-century, the rest modern. The eastern is of three lights and net tracery, the second of two trefoiled lights, and the third of two plain lights, both with plain spandrels. The north doorway between the second and third is blocked; it is of an ovolo-moulded order with a pointed head and a hood-mould with ball-flower stops. The eastern south window is like that opposite but higher in the wall. The other two are each of two trefoiled ogee-headed lights and tracery: all have old outer orders and hood-moulds. The pointed south doorway, also original, is of two ovolo-moulded orders with defaced head-stops to the hood-mould. The walls are of ashlar, modern inside and old outside, with plinths of two splayed courses: they drop to lower levels westward so that only the top course is seen above ground in the west wall. The buttresses divide the walls into three bays, those at the west angles being diagonal. High up on the south-east buttress is scratched a mass-dial; another is half covered by the west wall of the modern porch. The modern roof is divided into five bays by arched trusses.

The west tower (about 10 ft. square inside) is of three stages divided by plain set-backs and with a chamfered plinth. At the west angles are diagonal buttresses finishing with four or five short stages at the top of the second main stage. The two lower stages are of 14th-century ashlar. In the east wall is a modern pointed doorway to the nave. The west window of one chamfered order is of two pointed lights and a plain spandrel. In the second stage is a plain loop in each outer wall."

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