Byrness : Description of The Church of St Francis by P F Ryder
The little parish church of Byrness, set beside the A68 just below Catcleugh Reservoir, consists of a nave with a north porch and a small western baptistery, and a short chancel. The church is constructed of squared tooled-and-margined stone of near ashlar quality, with the exception of the north wall of the nave which is of squared but roughly-tooled stone; the roofs are of graduated stone flags. All the gables of the church have a flat slab coping, returned horizontally along the wall face for a short distance.
The porch is set towards the west end of the north wall of the nave; its outer doorway is around-headed arch with imposts and a keystone. The nave has three windows, one on the north to the east of the porch and two on the south; all are round-arched openings with chamfered surrounds, which have had raised imposts and keystones, containing inserted tracery in the form of two trefoil-headed lights with a large quatrefoil in the spandrel; the jambs are formed by single blocks set vertically. In the northern window imposts and keystone have been cut back flush with the surround.
The western baptistery, of similar size and form to the porch, has a single trefoil-headed light on the west; above it the west gable of the nave is capped by a bellcote with a shallow segmental arch and a moulded cornice above, capped by a simple Greek cross finial, similar to those on the north porch and east end of the chancel; there has probably been a similar one on the east end of the nave, but only its broken base remains.
The chancel has a single trefoil-headed light near the west end of its south wall, and an east window of two trefoil-headed lights with a quatrefoil over, under a two-centred pointed arch with a chamfered surround.
Entering the church through the north porch, the inner door has jambs simply cut into the rubble masonry of the wall, but a tooled lintel bearing the incised date ‘1798’; although some accounts refer to the porch as being a later addition, this doorway has the look of always having been an internal feature. Within the main body of the building the walls are bare of plaster, and of roughly shaped and roughly coursed stone. The quite small arch to the baptistery is of two-centred form, with ashlar dressings and a continuous chamfer stopped just above the base of the jambs.
The chancel arch is also two-centred, and of two chamfered orders, the outer continued down the jambs and the inner carried on short shafts with capitals in a style of c. 1200, resting on corbels which spring from the jambs c 1.5 m above the floor. The nave windows have plain semicircular rear arches, but the single-light windows in baptistery and chancel have shouldered rear arches with chamfers to the inner lintel only. The east window has a pointed rear arch. At the north-east corner of the sacristy is a simple stone seat projecting from the wall.
The floors of the church have good-quality 19th century tiles, with steps of black marble beneath the chancel arch and in front of the altar. The five-bay roof of the nave and two-bay one of the chancel all have collar-beam trusses with stub tie-beams and arch braces springing from moulded ashlar corbels with cruciform designs, very like those at Elsdon church. The ends of the stub ties carry inclined panels with various forms of equal-armed cross. The roofs are boarded over at the levels of the collars.
The eastern of the two windows on the south of the nave contains an interesting stained glass window commemorating ‘Men women and children who died during the construction of the reservoir at Catcleugh erected by their fellow workmen and friends 1903’ with a scene of reservoir construction including a narrow-gauge railway.
The font, which stands beneath the baptistery arch, is a small octagonal one; the lower part of the shaft and its moulded base appear of some antiquity (17th century?) but the upper parts are more recent.
The harmonium at the south-east corner of the nave is by the Estey Organ Company of Brattleboro, Vermont, USA.