The church is dedicated to St. Cuthbert and stands in a churchyard containing three massive yew trees, which are more than 700 years old,(see below) and may well have been used for the making of longbows before guns came.

Bishop Nicholas Ridley was keen on archery, which was compulsory school sport in the days of Henry VIII.

One, recorded by John Hodgson, requested prayers for the soul of Nicholas Ridley, who died in the fifteenth century (1490).

Anthony Hedley of Chesterholm, friend of Hodgson, who died 17 January 1835, having caught a fatal chill in going out to supervise an excavation at Vindolanda fort.

The yew tree in the churchyard would be young when a later Nicholas Ridley died as a martyr, and the forefathers of men who sleep beneath its shade may well have cut their bows from it to draw at the Battle of Flodden.