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- 1. St Peter, Bromyard, Herefordshire, England
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Originally Minster, now parish church The building is cruciform, with a chancel, nave, transepts and a crossing tower; this last added in the 14thc. The church is essentially late Romanesque but much altered and restored in later times. The S aisle is an addition of c.1190 and the N aisle is early 13thc. The chancel was entirely rebuilt in the 14thc. The three Romanesque doorways predate these alterations and were re-set into the aisles and chancel. Duncumb (1812, 89) states that the fabric was 'completely repaired' in 1806. Williams (1987, pl. 2) illustrates an important 18thc. print showing the church from the SW but does not reveal its source. The font bowl predates the present church.
- 2. St Peter, Peterchurch, Herefordshire, England
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Parish church Peterchurch is a large village in the Golden Valley, built along the road from Hay-on-Wye to Hereford and Ross-on-Wye (the B4348) on the E side of the river. The church stands just off the main street, alongside the river. St Peter’s was originally a Norman church with an apsidal E end, a central tower and no transepts, but in the 13thc. the tower was removed and a new one built at the W end. An unusually tall and slender recessed stone spire was added c.1320, but the top two-thirds of it were removed by W.E. Anderson and E. A. Roiser of Cheltenham in 1947-49 when it became unsafe. Funds were collected for its rebuilding, but there was never enough and in the meantime the stump of the old spire also became unsafe. When Pevsner saw it, the stump of the spire remained, with large lucarnes. In the early 1970s a decision was made to replace the spire with a fibreglass copy, 186 feet high. The new spire was installed in large sections, using a crane and the original weathercock was mounted on the top. This later fell off in a gale. What remains, then, is a church with four compartments: apse, chancel, tower bay and nave, and a W tower with a spire. The 12thc. apse is semicircular in plan with a semi-dome vault and three lancets with decorated heads and an ornamental external stringcourse. The chancel has round-headed lancets in the N and S walls. The tower bay originally had two round-headed lancets on each lateral wall, but the W ones on each side were replaced with larger, two-light windows in the 15thc. The nave retains one 12thc. lancet on the S and three on the N. The N nave doorway is 13thc., under a porch of 1867-70 in a 14thc. style; the S is 12thc., without a porch. The tower dates from the 13thc. to the early 14thc., and has diagonal W buttresses. Inside there is no tower arch; simply a 13thc. doorway into it from the nave. In addition to the repairs to the spire noted above, the church underwent a restoration in 1867-70 by T. E. Williams of London, involving reseating and repairs including the rebuilding of the S nave wall and the porch. Romanesque sculpture is found on the two original tower arches, the apse arch, the apse windows and stringcourse, the N nave doorway and the font.
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