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Anne T visited on 5th Oct 2014 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 5 I found details of this beautiful little church on the Darlington Borough Council Website, under their Scheduled Monuments list. Low Dinsdale is situated in a bend of the River Tees south east of Darlington. The church was originally built of pink sandstone, with modern work in red sandstone, which gives it a warm, welcoming appearance. The history sheet published by the church says that “Dinsdale Church was built in the year AD 638 ... the building consisted of a sanctuary, chancel and one long aisle.” The church of St. John the Baptist sits on an ancient site and houses fragments of pre-Conquest sculptured stones, including two cross-heads, the lower part of a cross-shaft, and half of a hog-back stone. The lower part of the cross-shaft sits in the churchyard, near an impressively large pre-conquest stone coffin. At the time of our visit, the eastern wall of the porch which houses the Anglo Saxon cross fragments had been taken down in preparation for the building of a toilet. The fragments currently sit on pews inside the church, which is kept locked. The church warden lives locally and an appointment to view can be arranged by telephoning in advance. In conversation with the church warden, he told me that attendance at services runs to 8 or 9 people. The church warden helped me to turn the stones around to see the carvings. On one fragment, two horsemen on side that had previously been mortared into the porch wall. They had found some bones and had an archaeologist (who had been to Bosnia for war grave forensic identification) come and examine the bones and tell them what illnesses these people had. He thought they were from Newcastle University.

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