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- 1. All Saints, Chebsey, Staffordshire, England
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Parish church Chebsey is a village on the river Sow, 5 miles upstream from the centre of Stafford. All Saints has a spacious nave with no clerestory and S aisle, a chancel and W tower with a modern vestry on the S side of it. Nave and chancel are 12thc.; visible in the two 12thc. N nave doorways (one now blocked and neither with a porch), the flat buttress on the N nave wall, and the tiny round-headed lancets on the N walls of the nave and chancel. The S aisle was added in the mid-13thc., and the chancel arch remodelled at the same time. Both this and the four-bay S arcade have pointed, double chamfered arches and moulded capitals. The S doorway, under a porch, is also 13thc. The W tower is 15thc. with diagonal buttresses, a SE stair turret and a battlemented parapet with pinnacles. Construction is of reddish sandstone, much renewed especially in the S aisle wall. The 12thc. doorways and windows are very plain, but the interior niche left by the blocking of the eastern doorway now contains loose 12thc. stones carved with foliage in relief. There are two 19thc. S views in the William Salt Library, Stafford, SV III 74 and 75a, but they add little to our knowledge of the building.
- 2. St James, Longdon, Staffordshire, England
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Parish church The nave has no aisles but broad transepts at its E end. The N transept is of 1870 by A. Hartshorne; 13thc. in its details, but with a single opening to the nave consisting of shafted piers carrying a heavy joist. The S transept is of two pointed bays, and was built by John Stoneywall, later Abbot of Pershore, around 1500. The nave roof is modern and fitted with skylights. The nave E wall has the remains of wallpainting at the top. There are N and S nave doorways; the S under a porch and the N now giving access to a vestry. The chancel arch is 12thc. work, and the chancel is 13th-14thc., with simple lancets at the W end and Y-traceried window further E. The E window has reticulated tracery of the early 14thc. The W tower is 14thc., with diagonal buttresses at the W end and reticulated bell-openings. The parapet, with battlements and crocketed pinnacles at the angles, may be a later addition. Construction is of red sandstone ashlar throughout. The S transept has battlements. There are drawings of the church in the William Salt Library, dating from 1769 to 1841 (SV VII 35a, 35b, 36, 37a) and one of the S doorway of 1843 (SV VII 38). All show the church much as it is today. In the same collection are drawings of the font, of 1842 (A. E. Everitt - SV VII 42) and 1843 (J. C. Buckler - SV VII 41). Romanesque features are the chancel arch, the bowl of the font, and the two nave doorways. The N doorway was not accessible when the church was recorded.
- 3. St Nicholas, Mavesyn Ridware, Staffordshire, England
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Parish church The church and the manor house alongside it were foundedc.1140 by Hugo Malvoisin, also founder of Blithbury Priory. All that remains of the medieval manor house is the timber-framed gatehouse ofc.1400. By the end of the middle ages, the church had a nave with N and S aisles and a S porch, a chancel and a W tower. In 1782 it was described as 'very damp and ruinous', and was taken down and rebuilt except for the N aisle and the tower. The present eccentric confection is the result. The church as it stands today has a broad, brick nave with a W doorway, a coved plaster ceiling, and small polygonal apse at its east, both dating from 1782. On the N side of the nave, and at a slightly lower level, is the Trinity aisle, or Cawarden Chapel, separated from the nave by a 14thc. arcade of three bays. The aisle is older than this, retaining 13thc. lancets in its E, W and N walls. In the chapel are collected a large number of memorials of the Mavesyn, Cawarden and Chadwick families, including two 13thc. effigies of knights. There are also contains hatchments and reliefs, largely retrospective and dating from around the time of the 18thc. rebuilding. The Perpendicular W tower (actually NW of the nave) is the only other medieval fabric, and both this and the N aisle are of grey ashlar. Romanesque interest centres on the foliage-ornamented font.
- 4. St Chad, Stafford, Staffordshire, England
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Parish church St Chad's is on Greengate Street, one of Stafford's main shopping streets running S from the market square. Its W front is entirely the work of George Gilbert Scott (1873-74), but this conceals a church that is substantially 12thc. and considerably larger than expected. It is cruciform with a crossing tower and aisles to the nave. The aisles have four-bay arcades carried on heavy cylindrical piers with scallop capitals and chevron decoration on the two eastern arches of each arcade. Above the E respond capitals and pier 1 capitals on the nave faces of both arcade walls are attached half-shafts rising to clerestory sill level, with plain cuboidal blocks where capitals and bases would be expected. The W responds of the arcades are of a later date than the rest, suggesting that the nave might originally have extended further W, but the vicissitudes undergone by the façade (see below) make this by no means certain. Above the arcades are round-headed clerestory windows; originally 12thc. but entirely remade. The aisles are entirely Scott's work. The only nave doorway is at the W. The crossing tower was rebuilt in the 14thc. and restored by Robert Griffiths of Stafford in 1884, and all four crossing arch heads are 14thc., although the beautifully carved 12thc. W arch was retained, the new W crossing arch being constructed immediately to the E of it. In the detailed descriptions below, the 12thc. arch is called the chancel arch. The N arch was rebuilt in the 19thc, incorporating 12thc. carved capitals and imposts discovered in the restoration. The E arch has 12thc. embrasures, capitals and imposts supporting the 14thc. archivolts above. The S arch appears to be entirely 14thc. work, but it is largely concealed by the organ. The N transept is by Griffiths (1886) and now houses the Jevons Memorial Chapel, furnished in 1937. The S transept was not rebuilt until 1953-55 and houses the organ with a vestry behind it. The chancel is now of three bays, with 12thc. windows in the two western bays, original on the N side, and 12thc. interior wall arcading in these bays on the N and S sides. The exterior chancel stringcourse also stops at the end of bay two, indicating that the 12thc. chancel was a bay shorter than the present one. It may have ended in an apse.
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