A NEW book on small places of worship has picked St Leonard’s, Chapel-le-Dale, as one of Britain’s finest examples.

Sitting high in the Dales, north of Ingleton, the beautiful church began life as a chapel of ease for isolated farming folk in the 17th Century.

It also served as a graveyard for the Settle to Carlisle railway workers and their families who lived in a nearby shanty town, while building the Ribblehead Viaduct and nearby Blea Moor tunnel.

A stone memorial to those workers is held within the church.

Rev Nick Trenholme, team vicar for Ingleton and Chapel-le-Dale said he was delighted St Leonard’s was featured in the new guide, called Tiny Churches.

“St Leonards has a very special place in the hearts of many people and gives great ministry to locals and visitors, due to its connections with the viaduct and the fact it’s nestled between Whernside and Ingleborough,” he said.

“Somebody once wrote there are ‘as many natural wonders as can scarce be found in any dale in England’”.

Chapel-le-Dale has its own quirky micro-climate with a deep-clefted riverbed that barely sees sunlight and an abundance of mosses.

“The churchyard is an area of Special Scientific Interest and we often have experts coming up to study the flora and fauna,” Rev Trenholme said.

The late Bill Mitchell, in his book, Thunder in the Mountains, wrote about the men who built the 24 arch Ribblehead Viaduct, including Job Hirst, who oversaw the earlier stages of the project, and who is buried at St Leonard’s.

The churchyard includes a memorial to the more than 200 men, women and children who died in the 1870s during the construction of the Settle Carlisle railway.

A boggart is said to live in Hurtle Pot, behind the church, while in the old woodland, trees and stone are lagged with moss.

Only two gravestones with Settle-Carlisle associations are at the church - one which commemorates James Mather, the proprietor of a beerhouse called the “Welcome Home”, situated at Batty Wife Hole, the largest of the shanties built around Ribblehead during its construction , and the other to Job Hirst, who died after being set upon by thieves on his way back from Ingleton to collect money for the wages of his employees.