St Bartholomew's Church, Ruswarp

St Bartholomew's Church is a redundant Anglican church in Ruswarp, a village in North Yorkshire, in England.

Ruswarp was long in the parish of St Mary's Church, Whitby, and in the mid-19th century, serviced in the village were held at Ruswarp Hall. A purpose-built church was designed by Charles Noel Armfield, and is the first building he designed alone. It is in the late 13th-century Gothic style, built at a cost of £3,052, and it was consecrated in 1869. Most of the internal fittings were replaced in the early 20th century by ones designed by Robert Thompson. A narthex was added in 1990, containing a parish room, kitchen and toilet.^[1][2]

By 2016, congregations at the church had fallen to fewer than ten worshippers, and services were being held monthly.^[3] The church closed in 2020, and was grade II listed the following year, after a campaign by the Victorian Society.^[4] In 2022, it was converted into two flats, with the internal fittings being moved elsewhere, but the stained glass windows retained.^[5]

The church is built of Grosmont sandstone, and has a Welsh slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles. It consists of a nave, a south porch, a south Lady chapel, a chancel with an apse, and a southeast steeple. The steeple has a tower with five stages, angle buttresses, a semicircular stair turret, external steps with a wrought iron balustrade leading to the vestry, lancet windows, clock faces, a dentilled string course, and paired louvred bell openings. The tower is surmounted by an octagonal broach spire with pyramidal pinnacles on the corners, two tiers of gabled lucarnes, a band of triangular openings, and a weathercock. ^[2][6]