The legacy the Delaval family left after centuries of association with the place which bears their name lies all around the area in which their great hall is set.

The family's greatest monument, as we saw last week, is Seaton Delaval Hall. They also made their mark in nearby Holywell Dene and Seaton Sluice.

But their most enduring memorial is what must be one of the smallest churches in the North-East.

Tucked away to the side of the hall is the Church of Our Lady, built by the Delavals and consecrated in 1102 by Bishop of Durham Ralph Flambard.

What was the private place of worship for the family is now the parish church and, tiny though it is, the building is a repository for many a story.

While the building recently celebrated its 900th anniversary, the north wall of the church has an Anglo-Saxon style window and the masonry in the lower part of the wall is typically of that date.

Robert Delaval was baptised in the church on June 22, 1263, and Henry Delaval on January 12, 1343.

Mystery surrounds the identities of a knight and his lady, whose chest tombs were placed in the church in the 13th Century.

They could be either Sir Eustace Delaval, who died in 1258 and his wife Constance de Baliol, or Sir Henry Delaval, who died in 1271, and his wife Mary de Biddleston.

For 400 years the Delavals were buried in the church crypt, with the last internment in 1796.

At the end of the 19th Century the crypt was opened and a record made of the six coffins which could be identified.

Plates from two of the caskets are mounted on the church walls.

Among the occupants of the vault, now bricked up, are Sir Frances Delaval and Admiral George Delaval, the builder of Seaton Delaval Hall, who died near the house after falling from his horse.

The base of an obelisk marks the spot.

But the puzzle which exercises Martin Green, archivist for the Friends of the Church of Our Lady, concerns the corpse of a man in the crypt who is not a Delaval.

Sir Alexander Ruthven was buried in the vault in 1722.

Also in the crypt is Lord John Delaval's mistress Elizabeth Hicks, who was 16 when the relationship began and who died in her 20s in 1796.

"Inquiries about Sir Alexander have drawn a blank," says Martin. "It is not known where he came from or why he was in the area."

One theory is that he was a lover of one of the Delaval ladies.

But Martin inclines to the belief that Sir Alexander was a Jacobite, who may still have been in hiding after the 1715 uprising which cost the Earl of Derwentwater, from Dilston in Northumberland, his head.

Several of the leading Northumbrian families had Jacobite sympathies and may have sheltered a fugitive.

Then there is the recent discovery that a stained glass window thought to show the Black Prince in fact shows anything but.

The window was bought by Sir Jacob Astley, later Lord Hastings, in the 1840s from the Coliseum, a pleasure pavilion in London which burned down.

He apparently believed that the figure in the window was the Black Prince, with whom the Astleys had fought at the Battle of Crecy in 1346.

But now the window has been found to be a copy of the original in Great Malvern Priory and is of Arthur, the eldest son of Henry VII, who married Catherine of Aragon in 1501.

A year later he was dead, opening the way for his brother to become Henry VIII.

Of more recent vintage is the case of the church's 15th century Bishop's Chair which went missing in 1991.

The following Christmas Eve a stranger left a message for the vicar with a proposition for the return of the chair and instructions to ring a number and ask for Mr Smith.

A policeman, posing as the vicar, rang the number and a sum of £200 was negotiated for the recovery of the chair.

According to Martin, a meeting was arranged and a policeman, dressed in cassock and dog collar and holding a bible, waited inside the church while officers took up positions nearby.

A van drew up and the chair was unloaded. As the man was hustled away by officers, he was heard to say: "Ye knaa, ye canna even trust vicars these days."

The use of the name Church of Our Lady is rare in the Church of England.

It seems that it may have escaped attention during the Reformation because it was then a private chapel.

It kept its title and no change was made when it became the parish church in 1891.

"For more than 900 years, this little church has stood, largely unchanged, quietly watching the world pass by," says Martin.

The church, which is off the A190 next to Seaton Delaval Hall, is open from 2pm-5pm on Easter Sunday and Monday and from 2pm-5pm from May to September on Wednesdays and Sundays and May and August Bank Holidays.

Page 2: Delavals' drive for progress