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I Location

II General Description

Simple aisleless church with Romanesque nave and chancel, and a late medieval tower. There are two small, plain, round-headed windows in the nave, one on the chancel, and a blocked Romanesque doorway, plain with chamfered imposts, in the N nave wall. The chancel and nave N wall are built of coursed rubble of a local sandstone, with put-log type holes around.On the interior, on the N and S chancel walls, are two round-headed, blind arcades of four bays, supported on plain conical corbels; they are probably 19thc. rather than Romanesque in date, but so heavily whitewashed that one cannot be certain either way. The interior is heavily painted in white throughout. Romanesque sculpture is found on a capital in the fragmentary chancel arch, and on a reset stone in the later SE buttress of the nave. The S wall of the nave, rebuilt in the late 18thc. or early 19thc. when changes were made to the chancel arch, is of grey ashlar.

III Exterior Features

3. Exterior Decoration

d. Miscellaneous

(i) Fragment

In the later SE buttress of the nave, approximately 3.7 m above ground level, is a reset roughly rectangular panel, disappearing into the fabric of the S wall and badly broken and repaired at the bottom R corner. Decorated with chip-carved saltire crosses.

IV Interior Features

1. Arches

1. Chancel arch/Apse arches

(i) Chancel arch

Except for the springing blocks, the arch is missing. The responds are essentially of one order, but on the W face, on the N side only, there is a nook shaft and capital in a recess, forming a local second order.

Dimensions

First order

Shared. Much obscured by panelling. Plain jambs and plain chamfered impost blocks. On the S side, W face, the impost block terminates at a stop-chamfer. Springing blocks plain on E face, chamfered on W.

Second order, W face

N side only. Nook shaft on deep conical base; the shaft is so badly damaged that it is uncertain whether it is round or polygonal, but possibly with four visible sides. Damaged capital with plain necking and three scallops, the central one larger than the others. Possibly some indication of impost block in continuation of that of first order, but unlikely; too heavily whitewashed to be certain.

VII History

Originally a chapel of nearby Leek Wootton church, which was held by Kenilworth Priory. Ashow became independent in the time of Bishop Geoffrey Muschamp (1198-1208), but Kenilworth continued to hold the advowson.

VIII Comments/Opinions

A photograph taken before 1958, when the match board ceiling was removed, shows a depressed round-headed chancel arch. According to Clark, this was a 19thc. lath and plaster arch incorporating fragments of a wattle and daub structure 'which had been constructed 400 years previously'.

IX Bibliography