page_title: Bentham, North Yorkshire
section_title: St John the Baptist Church
hierarchical_section_title: Bentham, North Yorkshire / Churches / St John the Baptist Church
caption_attribution_description: English: St. John the Baptist, Low Bentham
context_page_description: Bentham is a civil parish in the Craven district of North Yorkshire, England, with a population of 3,027 at the 2011 Census. The parish includes the small town of High Bentham, occasionally known as Higher Bentham or just Bentham, and the older adjacent village of Low Bentham.
  The town lies on the River Wenning, just west of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and on the northern edge of the Forest of Bowland. The original centre of the town lay in Low Bentham, but a market was granted to High Bentham in the 14th century, and it became a centre for weaving from the 18th century, particularly after weavers in the town discovered how to weave hosepipes from flax.
context_section_description: St John the Baptist Church is one of the oldest churches in the area, and was noted in the Domesday Book in 1086. During restoration work in the 19th century, a Saxon cross was discovered in the wall of the tower, and blackened stones in the tower wall are evidence that it was almost totally destroyed by fire after the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. The church contains a display of Tudor glass, which is similar to some of the glass in York Minster. The present building was built in the 1870s by Richard Norman Shaw, and includes an ancient coffin slab dating from about 1340; the Kirkbeck Stone dating from the 17th century; a 15th-century bell hanging in the porch; and a reredos in Caen stone with marble panels. The church reputedly has the heaviest peal of six bells in Yorkshire, and together weigh 7,500 pounds (3,400 kg). The old organ, which is no longer playable, was built by William Hill of London as a "house organ" for Walker Joy, a prosperous oil merchant in Leeds; his brother designed a hydraulic engine to pump the bellows, making it the first ever to be blown by mechanical power. The churchyard contains a memorial to Robert Poole, a gravedigger, consisting of a sculptured shovel leaning against a tree trunk. It is a grade II* listed building.
caption: St John the Baptist church
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