A MEETING between two old friends has led to a major ecclesiastical discovery which has re-written the history books.

The picture-postcard church in the North Yorkshire village of Scrayingham, between Malton and Stamford Bridge, was long believed to be of medieval origin.

But now it has been found to date from the early Saxon era, hundreds of years earlier, making it one of the oldest standing buildings in the county.

The discovery was made when the Reverend Fran Wakefield, the vicar of St Peter and St Paul, Scrayingham, invited Peter Ryder, an independent buildings specialist who has worked on many old churches, to inspect the building.

She said: "Peter is an old friend, and dropped by one evening last June. As I’d just moved into the area, he was eager to visit the lovely churches to which I had recently been licensed.

"His jaw literally dropped open when he saw the North wall of the church. With its large stones, and characteristic tiny windows, it was so different from the 13th-centuty building he had been led to expect."

Further research confirmed Peter’s first impressions. St Peter and St Paul Scrayingham, although thought to be a medieval building, was actually Saxon in origin.

Mr Ryder said: "The church was originally thought to be a Victorian rebuild of a mediaeval building – it was remodelled and extended in 1853 – but parts of its nave show distinctive Anglo-Saxon features.

"Its walls, although thin, are built of massive blocks of gritstone re-used from some nearby Roman building, and two original windows survive.

"The roof-line of what is called a porticus - a small side-chamber fitted around the junction of the nave and chancel - is exactly paralleled in famously early churches at Escomb and Bywell on the River Tyne."

He added: "Further evidence for an early date comes in part from a carved figure, found by the Victorian restorers and now built into the vestry wall, which looks as if may be of early Saxon date."

The area around Scrayingham is rich in history. There were Roman forts and the major Roman road from York to Malton nearby.

There is also a tradition that King Edwin, the first Christian monarch of Northumbria, baptised by Paulinus at York in 627AD, had his hall at Aldby Park, just across the river.

Mr Ryder added: "Scrayingham, itself perhaps once a monastery, may have been a staging post at which people such as St Cedd stayed on their journeys north towards the early monasteries, such as Lastingham, which were established on the North York Moors."