Charles Bateman (1863-1947) and his father, also an architect, lived in Rectory Lane at Birnam and Millbrick, which they had themselves designed and built. They are buried in the family plot near the gate in Castle Bromwich graveyard.

A small stone chapel had been built at Castle Bromwich by the 12th century. This was greatly extended with the addition of a large timber building during the 15th century. Then between 1726 and 1730 the timber-framed church was entirely encased in brick in a Renaissance style. Above the north and south doors inside the church is an inscription stating the dates when the church had been ‘rebuilt’. It was therefore assumed in later years that the old church had been demolished and that nothing remained of the earlier buildings.

In 1893 Charles Bateman was commissioned to carry out restoration work on Castle Bromwich church. The uneven damaged floor of stone flags was to be replaced with encaustic tiles, a central heating system was to be installed with pipes and radiators and a figure of Christ ascending in glory was to replace the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments and the Creed in the east window.

(The same year Lord Bradford ordered a sixth bell to be hung in the tower to commemorate the wedding of the Duke of York, who would later become King George V and Princess Mary of Teck, a close friend of Lady Bradford. Charles Carr of Smethwick was employed to cast the bell and to fit a new bell frame to accommodate it.)

Before starting work, Bateman decided to make a thorough investigation of the church and to draw up an architectural plan of the building.

There were peculiarities that had puzzled Bateman about the layout of the church. The architect is thought to have been Thomas White of Worcester. He was a pupil of Christopher Wren and well knew the rules of the Renaissance style. And yet the columns of the arcade separating the side aisles from the nave are not aligned with the window piers. Nor are the arches between the columns of classical proportions. These are not mistakes that would have been made by an architect such as Thomas White. Furthermore, the chancel was very large for an 18th-century church when chancels built at that time were often small apsidal additions.

Bateman made a large number of drawings of both the exterior and interior of the building. He also decided to climb up into the church loft to inspect the construction of the roof. High up in the ceiling near the south door is a small trapdoor some 10 metres above the floor. Pushing open the trapdoor, Bateman shone his oil light into the roof-space, and found more than he could have suspected and the answer to his questions about the church’s design.

Here were the slender Georgian roof beams that he had expected to see, but further away in the gloom Bateman could make out a massive structure of large timber beams and trusses and supports that could only be of a medieval date.

Bateman returned to the roof space again and again in the coming weeks making precise drawings of the whole construction, drawings which still exist. The structure appeared to date from the middle of the 15th century. Near the east end some infilling still remained of wattle and daub, showing where the original end wall of the old church was. The Georgian church was longer than its medieval predecessor. At the east end there was a length of wooden moulding indicating the chancel arch with evidence of medieval paintwork. Bateman was probably the first person to have seen the sight since the roof had been ceiled in 1731.

The discovery of the medieval roof led the architect then to suspect that the Georgian columns inside the church might conceal medieval timber uprights. He removed part of the wooden cladding on one of the columns in the north aisle and found that beneath the 18th-century plaster there were indeed pillars made from the trunks of enormous ancient oaks that had held up the roof since the 15th century.

Bateman made many architect’s drawings of the building and drew a view of the church conjecturing how it must have looked when it was built around 1450, probably during the reign of Henry VI. He had discovered a unique church building, a timber-framed church encased in 18th brick, and the only one of its kind in the country.

Bateman’s investigations did not end there. Remarkably there was more to be revealed.

A drawing of Castle Bromwich Hall and church had been made by Henry Beighton for William Dugdale’s ‘Antiquities of Warwickshire’ which was published in 1730. By that date the hall had probably been rebuilt, but the church would not be finished until 1731. Beighton shows the church rebuilt in brick in Renaissance style, but the chancel is shown made of stone. The chancel is actually built of brick. The local architect suspected that behind the brick might be the Norman stone chapel which had also been encased in brick as had the medieval timber church.

He removed some of the wooden panelling in the chancel to reveal a part of the church that was even older than the rest. Behind the woodwork was a stone wall, part of the original Norman chapel which had been built over 700 years earlier in the early 12th century.

The Georgian church was, in fact, a church within a church and was far older than anyone had ever expected.