wooden ceiling. The original slope of the gable end and the earlier roof can still be easily traced on the east face of the ‘arch’. There is a fragment of coping, with dogtooth, indicating
the points where the slopes arose. Nearly all the mouldings, the high altar and the south and east walls of the chancel were whitewashed; some parts of it were nearly an eighth of an inch thick; some mouldings were coloured dark brown.

At the south end of the ‘arch’ near the top there is a window jamb of a different sort, a fragment of Abbot Richard de Nottingham's clerestory. On the part of the north wall attached to the east wall is the jamb of one of the lower windows of the same date as the east window. The wall probably had five such windows, one for each bay. In an angle on each side of the ‘arch’ is a cut-away four foot vaulting-shaft, apparently for the insertion of an image and its niche. All the windowsill has disappeared; the present wall is a Victorian insertion with the purpose of keeping animals out of the site of the ruin.

There is a tradition that as long as the ‘arch’ stands, the inhabitants of Dale are exempt from paying tithes; consequently, in about 1839 it was repaired and strengthened out of the highway rates by the Lord Stanhope who died in 1857. There is no reason why the inhabitants of Dale should have paid tithes to any ecclesiastical body, so this tradition is a little puzzling. Perhaps a more likely explanation for the survival of the ‘arch’ lies in the recent discovery of a letter by a Lord Stanhope in response to a request from somebody to remove stone from the site: help yourself, said Lord Stanhope, only leave the arch, because my mother likes it.

There is in existence a good photograph of the ‘arch’ with scaffolding up, taken from field side in 1934. It resembles one kept in Derby Museum. The ‘arch’ was extensively repaired in 2009 funded mostly by English Heritage, with a respectable contribution from the owners. It was found to be in a fairly precarious state, with holes right through the stonework; it is now in excellent condition and safe for a couple more centuries.

In front of the ‘arch’, on the west side, is an unusually large altar base which once had a painted wooden reredos. It is three foot ten inches from the east wall ‘arch’, and it is 12 feet long, and three feet six inches wide with stone bases of the reredos at each end. The first excavator, Sir William St John Hope, noted that it was two feet lower than it should have been. No interments were found by the high altar, but others were found when Hope ran a drain across the chancel and the chapels.


The church’s chancel was 93 feet long and 28 foot six inches wide. It had five bays, with five windows on each side: on the south side one is in the easternmost bay and four are shared with the side chapel, St Margaret’s chapel. Almost all of the north wall has disappeared, except at the west end, which had a well-moulded plinth. The south side had an arcade of four richly moulded arches with clustered pillars and sculptured capitals, filled in