Christ Church, Great Ayton

{{Short description|Church in North Yorkshire, England}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2025}}

{{Use British English|date=March 2025}}

File:Christ Church, Great Ayton - geograph.org.uk - 2690638.jpg

Christ Church is the parish church of Great Ayton, a village in North Yorkshire, in England.

From the Saxon period to the early 19th century, All Saints' Church, Great Ayton was the local parish church. Between 1876 and 1877, a replacement was built on a new site, with All Saints becoming a mortuary chapel.{{cite book |last1=Page |first1=William |title=A History of the County of York North Riding: Volume 2 |date=1923 |publisher=Victoria County History |location=London |url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/north/vol2/pp225-231#h3-s3 |access-date=29 October 2024}} It was designed by John Ross and Robert Lamb,{{NHLE |desc=Christ Church |num=1150639 |access-date=29 October 2024}} in a 14th-century Gothic style. Nikolaus Pevsner describes the building as "restless composition, and an uninteresting interior".{{cite book| last1 =Grenville| first1 =Jane| last2 = Pevsner | first2 = Nikolaus | author2-link = Nikolaus Pevsner | series= The Buildings of England| title =Yorkshire: The North Riding| publisher =Yale University Press | year =2023 | orig-year=1966 |location =New Haven and London | isbn =978-0-300-25903-2 }} It was grade II listed in 1966.

The church is built of sandstone with a Welsh slate roof, and is in Decorated style. It has a cruciform plan, consisting of a nave, a west narthex, north and south aisles, a south porch, a north transept steeple, and a chancel. The steeple has a tower with two stages, angle buttresses, traceried bell openings, and a broach spire with bands of red sandstone and lucarnes. Inside are preserved three pre-Conquest stones, brought from All Saints.