St Bartholomew's Church, Newington Bagpath

St Bartholomew's Church stands at Newington Bagpath, a hamlet in the valleys south of Kingscote in the South Cotswolds. It is a small church of Norman foundation, with a chancel rebuilt by the Victorian architect S S Teulon in 1858, and it stands near the earthwork of a Norman castle. It closed in 1978 and is now privately owned, so it is seen from outside. It is listed Grade II.

History

The church was founded in the Norman period and keeps some fifteenth-century work; the listing gives it a west tower, nave, south porch and chancel. In 1858 the architect Samuel Sanders Teulon rebuilt the chancel, and he is said to have fitted the interior too, with a reredos, choir stalls with poppyhead ends and tiles.

Closure

When Historic England surveyed St Bartholomew's in March 1986 it was unused and boarded up. A local news report of April 2024 (Punchline Gloucester) gives the rest: closed to worshippers in 1978, deconsecrated in 1990 and passed to a private owner, with the gravestones moved in the 1990s. A plan to make it a one-bedroom house was dropped because the plot, surrounded by private farmland, is hard to reach, and a permission to convert it granted in 2013 lapsed unused in 2016. In 2024 the church was on the market again. Cotswold District Council's planning register shows listed building consent for repairs to the tower and to the nave and chancel roofs (25/04049/LBC) and, in 2026, a further application for structural work on the nave walls and roof (26/00640/LBC). What the building will become is not settled.

The castle mound

About 180m south-west of the hamlet is a motte, the mound of an early Norman castle, scheduled as an ancient monument. It is about 40m across and 1.5m high, with a ditch on its north, south and west sides, and it sits at the top of a steep slope above Hay Bottom. Historic England groups it with other medieval earthworks round Kingscote, among them a second motte, a chapel and a pillow mound for rabbits.

What to see

From the lane you see a modest church of rubble stone. The west tower is of two stages, roughcast, under a pyramidal roof with a weathercock, with two small arched lights high on its west side. The south porch has a pointed arch with an image niche over it, and Teulon's chancel, in coursed stone, has three large pointed windows. The interior cannot be seen.

Visiting

The church is private and closed, and the plot is surrounded by private farmland, so look from the lane or the public footpath and do not go into the churchyard. The motte is on farmland too; it is seen from the path.

Getting there

Newington Bagpath is reached by narrow lanes off the A4135 west of Tetbury. The easiest way is on foot: the Kingscote, Ozleworth and Lasborough walk, from the Hunters Hall Inn at Kingscote, passes both the mound and the church near the end, 7.5 miles (11.9km) round. The inn lists a car park, and walkers report parking there; it is a pub car park, so ask at the bar.

Nearby

The same walk passes Lasborough Park, James Wyatt's Gothic house of 1794, and St Nicholas at Ozleworth, a Norman church with a six-sided tower that is open every day. East towards Tetbury, Beverston Castle is a medieval castle inside a private house, and for another medieval motte in the Cotswolds, see the castle mound at Upper Slaughter. For food, the Hunters Hall Inn is at the start of the walk.