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- 1. St John the Baptist, Armitage, Staffordshire, England
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Parish church Armitage is in central south Staffordshire, to the E of Cannock Chase and 2 miles SE of Rugeley. The village is built along the A513 road from Rugeley to Handsacre, and the latter and Armitage now form a continuous conurbation. This road follows the line of the River Trent, and St John's is built on a sandstone outcrop overlooking the river.
- 2. 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.
- 3. St Mary, Swynnerton, Staffordshire, England
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Parish church Swynnerton is an attractive village on a low hill just 6 miles S of Newcastle-under-Lyme. It is centred on the church and the hall just to the S, the latter standing in Swynnerton Park. A view of the hall from the SW, published in 1821, shows the church in the background (William Salt Library SV X 59b). St Mary's has an aisled and clerestoried nave, a chancel with a S chapel (the Lady Chapel, now a vestry) and a W tower. The nave is 12thc. in origin, and of large, irregular ashlar blocks. It retains a round-headed W window and a W doorway to the tower. The tower itself is also 12thc. in its lower parts, including another W doorway (which Pevsner suggests is re-set here), but in the 14thc. diagonal buttresses were added and the upper stage rebuilt in more regular ashlar. Drawings of 1838 and 1841 (William Salt Library SV X 59a and 60) show the parapet with urns at the corners. The form of the five-bay nave arcades and a dogtooth stringcourse at the top of the nave walls indicate that the aisles were added in the 13thc. The clerestory has quatrefoil openings of the same period. The E bay of the each nave aisle has been enlarged to form a chapel; the S Perpendicular and battlemented, the N 13thc. in style but perhaps 19thc. (it does not appear in the 1838 drawing noted above). There is a 13thc. S doorway under a porch. The chancel arch is 13thc., with nailhead on moulded capitals and detached en-delit shafts, and the chancel is of the same date. The details of the S chancel chapel indicate that it was added in the early 14thc. Beneath it is the Fitzherbert family vault. Romanesque sculpture, elaborate for the county, appears on the two W doorways.
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