The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
"Ampney St Peter"
Parish church
Ampney St Peter is a village in the Cotswolds, 4 miles E of Cirencester. The church was largely rebuilt by G.G. Scott in 1878, when 'the whole building was taken down, except for the tower', and the S wall, which was virtually rebuilt. The chancel was rebuilt on its old site, and the stairs to the rood loft preserved. The old porch was removed from S side and an entrance formed at the W end. Romanesque features include a Transitional Romanesque chancel arch. An earlier Romanesque doorway was inserted in the N nave wall. A Sheila na gig carving, of unconfirmed Romanesque or possibly Anglo-Saxon date, is mounted on the wall N of the font. The Norman doorway was stated to be 11thc work in 1881. [Gloucester Notes and Queries, 1881, 235.]
Parish church
This small church is now isolated from the present-day village of Ampney St Mary. Local lore states that the medieval village was burned down during an outbreak of the plague and that the settlement moved to the hamlet of Ashbrook. The church was unused from 1879 until 1913, when it was restored. The building is of rubble stone with quoins, a stone slate roof, and a bellcote at the E end of the nave. It has an early 12thc unaisled nave with 12thc N and 13thc S doorways, a 13thc chancel, and a S porch. Above the blocked N doorway is a Romanesque carved lintel. In the S wall of the chancel there is a 12thc (according to Verey, 88) carved stone slab, reused as the lintel of a 13thc doorway. The font is Romanesque with an unusual square lead drain.
Parish church
A cruciform church with an aisleless nave retaining Saxon features, a late-12thc chancel, late-13thc N and S transepts, S porch, 15thc W tower and 19thc N vestry. In the centre of the N nave wall is one small undecorated Early Romanesque window and part of one now blocked (photographed but not described as features). A fine quality 12thc pillar piscina is in the SE corner of the chancel, and a 12thc font is in the W tower. The only other Romanesque sculpture is found on the Transitional chancel arch.
Parish church
Riccall is a village about 3.5 miles N of Selby and 9 miles S of York. The church of St Mary lies to the centre of the village and is built of local Magnesian limestone. The building consists of a late 13thc chancel; nave with clerestory and 15thc battlements; late 12thc and early 13thc nave arcades; N and S chapels off the chancel, and a Norman W tower with bell-openings of c.1170-90. Between 1862 and 1877 the church was restored by John Loughborough Pearson, who rebuilt and heightened the tower, rebuilt the roofs and, significantly, rebuilt thye porch and the S aisle wall. During this rebuilding the S doorway was not taken down but left in place, propped up (see photograph).
The church is known for its ‘Yorkshire School’ doorway, c.1150-60. The doorway is thought to have been reset twice, first when a S aisle was made in the late 12thc or early 13thc (see off-centre round-headed slit window at W end of S aisle), and again when the aisle was widened to the present limits in the 15thc. At the second rebuilding if not before, the original sequence of voussoirs was lost, as is clear from the disruption of the conventional order of Adam, Eve and the serpent in the tree (order one, voussoirs 4, 5 and 2); there are other discrepancies. Between voussoirs 6 and 7 of the first order is a triangle of mortar causing a slight pointedness in the arch.