St Denis, Kirkby la Thorpe, Lincolnshire

I Location

Site Location: Kirkby la Thorpe
National Grid Reference: TF 099 461
County: traditional: Lincolnshire
now: Lincolnshire
Diocese: medieval: Lincoln
now: Lincoln
Dedication: medieval: not confirmed
now (or name of monument): St Denis
Type of building/monument: Parish church

II General Description

: Exterior, general view of church

Church consists of a short, two-stage W tower, nave with a N aisle only, and chancel. Nave arcade of c. 1200; windows N aisle and W window of tower are early 14thc. while the chancel was completely rebuilt in 1854. C. H. Fowler did some restoration work here in 1911. That work may have entailed the Romanesque S doorway, which is heavily restored.

III Exterior Features

1. Doorways

(i) Nave, S doorway

: Exterior, nave, S porch, S doorway

: Exterior, nave, S porch, S doorway, detail: L capital

: Exterior, nave, S porch, S doorway, detail: label, L side

Round-headed with tympanum, two orders.

First order: chamfered jamb with chamfer stops at top; tympanum is monolithic piece of stone. No lintel. There is a roll across the bottom of the tympanum and a sunk relief, semi-circle in the main field. Continuous impost is chamfered with roll between quirks on face.

Second order: No bases for the en delit, detached, white-washed nook-shafts. Scalloped capitals with roll mould necking. Impost as in fFirst order and is of same piece stone as capitals. Arch plain. The label is chamfered top and bottom with roll billet on chamfers; plain face.

Dimensions

h. of opening	1.875 m
w. of opening	0.965 m

VII History

Domesday Book records that the king owned one half the church here and the Bishop of Durham had possession of the other half in 1086. While the Domesday Survey is the first documentary evidence for the church, there is a fragment of an Anglo-Saxon coffin built into the W face of the W tower. Everson and Stocker have suggested that such sculptural evidence may refer to the potentially high status of such church sites in the pre-Conquest period.

VIII Comments/Opinions

Much of this doorway is restored. The crisp voussoirs are clearly new and the lack of bases on the nook-shafts address their resetting here. However the capitals with their continuous imposts and the label, hidden behind the trusses of the porch roof, appear to be good 12thc. material. It should be noted that on the Ordnance Survey map the town name is given as Kirkby la Thorpe; at the church, however, the village name is spelled Kirkby Laythorpe; this most likely derives from the area just S of the village, called Laythorpe, an area which Domesday Book presents as a distinct jurisdiction.

IX Bibliography

Domesday Book: Lincolnshire. 1,1; 3,37.
P. Everson and D. Stocker, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture. Vol. 5, Lincolnshire. London 1999, 74, 191 (fig. 9, ill. 219).
N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire. London 1990, 416.