STARING into Staindrop churchyard from the stone side of a cottage is a human face with a badly weathered nose. Opposite, over the road, jutting out of a wall is a human limb – perhaps a leg; possibly an arm.

For a couple of weeks now, Memories has been trying to find out what terrible calamity these strange stones commemorate.

“In my teens in the late 1950s, travelling to work from Barnard Castle to Darlington, I often noticed the two stoneworks,” says Charles Lilley. “My father was born in the village, living in the old Beadle's House on North Green until his marriage. He mentioned to me the facial image and also the sculptured limb – I think it is an arm.

“His belief was that they commemorated an individual who fell from the church tower, followed by his faithful dog, and that there was a further sculptured stone of that dog nearby, which I have never seen.”

This story has come to us from several other people, as well. They say that a stonemason was working on scaffolding around the church tower when he tumbled to his death. His pet hound, loyal to the end, also took the plunge into the hereafter, hard on his heels.

Says Charles: “I don’t know whether this is true, but my father was never a man to invent such myths, and I can only surmise that the tale was either correct or it was a repetition of some schoolteachers' stories.”

A visitor to St Mary’s Church at the east end of Staindrop must leave with the impression that his blink-of-an-eye life could end at any unforeseen moment.

On the porch is an 18th Century sundial which says: “Man fleeth as a shadow.”

On the tower is a worrying piece of advice put up when the clock was installed in 1896: “Watch therefore: for you know not what hour your Lord doth come.”

And on Joseph Dodds’ headstone, one of the closest to our mysterious face, is a frightening rhyme. Mr Dodds led a “peaceful, temperate and useful life” which was terminated abruptly on April 16, 1823. The rhyme says:

“Swift flew the appointed messenger of death

And in a moment stopp’d the mortal breath.

Art thou prepared if suddenly you die

Tis mercy’s call – o list unto the cry.”

Staindropshire came into the possession of the Neville family, who came to live in Raby Castle, in the early 13th Century, although the church itself is said to date back to Anglo-Saxon times 1,200 years ago.

One of the first Nevilles to make a name for himself was Ralph, who was so loyal to Richard II that the king rewarded him in 1397 by making him the Earl of Westmoreland. However, loyalty rarely lasted in those days, and less than two years later, Ralph assisted Henry Bolingbroke’s invasion and his overthrowing of Richard II. The new king, Henry IV, made Ralph his enforcer in the north, keeping the Scots in their place and the treacherous Lord Percy, Earl of Northumberland, in his – in 1403, Ralph and his 800-strong army drove Northumberland back to Warkworth Castle.

But in May 1405, naughty Northumberland heard that Ralph was staying with his friend, Sir Ralph Eure, in Witton Castle, near Witton-le-Wear, and launched a surprise attack.

Forewarned, Ralph escaped.

He rallied, used clever trickery to capture Northumberland’s co-conspirator, Richard Scrope, the Archbishop of York, whom he executed. This ended the rebellion, and Henry IV rewarded Ralph by giving him most of Northumberland’s confiscated lands.

In 1408, Thomas Langley, the Bishop of Durham, granted Ralph a licence to build a college in the churchyard at Staindrop. Within two years, the college had a master, six clerks and six “decayed gentlemen”, and Ralph had extended the church to accommodate them all.

He also enlarged the church so that, when the messenger of death called for him, he could be placed in a large tomb in the chancel.

The messenger stopped Ralph’s mortal breath on October 21, 1425, and he was entombed beneath what is said to be the finest medieval monument in the north of England. It is topped with an effigy of Ralph, wearing his finest suit of armour, flanked by his two wives – Margaret Stafford and Joan Beauford – who between them bore him at least 23 children.

The college, which was to the north of the church, was demolished in the 16th Century, but Ralph’s splendid alabaster tomb can still be seen in the church, his identical wives wearing their hair coiled around their eyes in the style of Princess Leia.

The £1 guide to the church – “the cathedral of the dale” – doesn’t mention the Star Wars star, but it does point out the mysterious face and the strange limb in the walls outside.

It says: “On leaving the churchyard, a head carved in stone may be observed in the gable wall of the house near the small gate. There is also a stone shaped like a leg in the garden wall of the house across the road. These stones were probably pillaged from the college, which was demolished in the reign of Edward VI.”

So perhaps no stonemason, one moment safe on his scaffold the next plummeting unexpectedly to his death, and no loyal dog taking a blind leap of faith. But it is a nice story...