The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
"Bury St Edmunds"
Parish church
Drinkstone is a village in the Mid Suffolk district of the county, 7 miles E of Bury St Edmunds, to the S of the A14. The village is surrounded by arable farmland, and the church is at its centre. It is substantially a building of c.1330-50 consisting of an aisled nave with a clerestory and chancel. These are of flint rubble with ashlar dressings, and a brick W tower was added in 1694. The church was restored in 1866-67. Incorporated in the later medieval fabric are several Romanesque voussoirs: mostly in the arcade plinths although one is in the N aisle wall.
Parish church
Beyton lies less than five miles E of the centre of Bury St Edmunds,
just S of the A14. The village lies in arable farmland, and the church is 0.4
miles W of the hall site. All Saints has a round (actually oval) W tower, a
nave with a N aisle added and a chancel. A parish room
and vestry annexe was added on the S side of the
chancel in 1973. Construction is of flint throughout.
The tower has a plinth course and big radial
buttresses have been added at the NW and SW. The lower W window is 15thc. as is
the tower arch, and the plain parapet is an addition of 1780, with brick
bell-openings. There are signs of render on the tower but not the parapet or
the buttresses. The windows on the S side of the nave are 15thc., and there is
a 14thc. S doorway under a 15thc. porch. The
three-bay N aisle was added in the 1853-54, and a
12thc. doorway re-set in its outer wall. This has no porch and is now partly obscured by a shrub. The
chancel arch is 19thc. too, and while the western part
of the chancel is 14thc. it was extended eastwards in
1884-85, with an E window by Sir Arthur Blomfield. The 19thc. aisle and
chancel extension both have windows in a 15thc.
Perpendicular style. The 1853-54 rebuild was by John Johnson of Bury St
Edmunds. There was an earlier restoration by Howe, Mortimer and Azelwood in
1834-35 when a gallery was added at the W end of the
nave. The only Romanesque feature is the re-set N
doorway.
Chapel
Harlowbury is on the E edge of the former parish of Harlow, now Old Harlow, itself at the NE edge of the New Town conurbation. The chapel is alongside Harlowbury Manor, originally built by the Abbot of Bury using timbers felled in 1220-25. The present manor how encases the medieval one and dates from c.1860. The chapel is a single cell gabled building of flint rubble with clunch and brick dressings. It is dateable to the 12thc by plain lancet windows: 1 in the E gable, 3 in the W and 2 in the S wall, flanking a late-12thc doorway. Brick buttresses are a later addition; diagonal at the angles and regular on the side walls. The only Romanesque feature described here is the N doorway.
Parish church
This lofty cruciform church has its tower attached to the S transept. The tower dates from 1738 and was built by George Portwood. The N arcade of the nave and the chancel are 13thc and the clerestory was added around 1450. A major restoration was done in 1873-74 by G. G. Scott. The S doorway of the nave and the S arcade are Romanesque.
Parish church
The church consists of an early 14thc chancel, a nave with just a S aisle and, at the western end, a Romanesque round tower which rises to terminate in a late 14thc octagon. The S aisle was added in the 13thc. The Romanesque N doorway is simple and elegant, almost without ornament and relatively tall and narrow. The ironwork of the present wooden door dates from the 12thc. Three Romanesque colonnette fragments are reset in the N wall of the 14thc chancel.
Parish church
Whepstead stands on a low hill in the largely arable farmland of W Suffolk, some four miles S of the centre of Bury St Edmunds. The village is small, consisting of a few houses with outlying farms along the B1066 and its side roads; the church is on one of these minor roads W of the village centre. St Petronilla's has a nave, chancel and W tower. All windows of the nave and chancel are Y- or intersecting tracery ofc.1300, or other early 14thc. forms. The N and S nave doorways are 13thc.; the S under a knapped flint 19thc. porch, and the N now giving access from the church to a vestry. The nave is broad and bright, with a chancel arch having 12thc. jambs and a round head decorated with 19thc. neo-Romanesque chevron. There is a S rood stair set in the E reveal of the easternmost nave window. A scar on the E wall of the tower shows that the nave was originally taller. The 15thc. tower arch is tall and four-centred and a wooden gallery has been erected halfway up it. The tower is 15thc. too, and was repaired in 1582 (date on buttress). It has very broad E buttresses with a stair turret set in the angle of the SE buttress, diagonal W buttresses and an embattled parapet. It was apparently taller when built, and certainly had a spire but a storm in 1658 brought the spire down, and the battlements postdate that collapse. The church is entirely mortar rendered except for the S porch, the chancel E wall and the parapet of the tower, all of flint. The only Romanesque sculpture is found on the chancel arch.
Parish church
Hepworth is midway between Bury St Edmunds and Diss, approximately 9 miles from each. The land here is low and rolling and given over to arable cultivation. There are common lands to the NW and SE of the village, which consists largely of houses and farm buildings around a junction of minor roads, with the church, rectory and Grange Farm at the eastern edge. St Peter's was burnt down in 1898 when its thatch caught fire, and only the tower, the walls and the porch survived the blaze. It was rebuilt by J. S. Corder of Ipswich. It is a church of the 13thc. and later, consisting of a nave, chancel and W tower, all of flint. The nave is tall with high 15thc. windows to N and S, and its roof has been raised. The N and S doorways are 14thc.; the S under a flint porch, which is, almost entirely 19thc. work. The nave wall behind and to the W of the S porch has a large brick repair in the shape of an arch, suggesting that the doorway and porch were once further W. Inside is the blocked N entrance to a rood loft. The chancel, almost as high as the nave, is early-14thc., with reticulated E, N and S windows and a contemporary S doorway and piscina. The tower has diagonal buttresses with flushwork at the top, a late 13thc. W doorway and tower arch and a 19thc. W window. The upper part has been rebuilt and the structure strengthened with iron clamps; this work dated to 1677 by ironwork on the W face. More clamps were added at a lower level in 1828. The bell-openings are of brick and date from the 17thc. restoration. The parapet is plain and the pyramid roof is fitted with a W dormer. Inside the church are two loose stones, a capital and a voussoir, from a 12thc. doorway.
Parish church
Moreton is a village in SW Essex, 6 miles E of Harlow and 10 miles W of Chelmsford. It stands on the line of the Roman road from London to Bury St Edmund’s, in arable farmland. The church and Hall are outside the main village centre to the east. St Mary’s consists of a chancel, a nave with N and S porches, the former now converted into a vestry, and a brick W tower. Nave and chancel are 13thc, the tower was built in 1787, the S porch in the 15thc and the N in the 19thc. The church was restored in 1864-69. The only 12thc feature is the Purbeck font.
Parish church
Alphamstone is a village in the Braintreee district of north Essex, a mile W of the river Stour, which forms the boundary with Suffolk. The nearest town of any size is Sudbury (Suffolk), 4 miles to the N.
The church consists of a 12thc nave, altered c.1300 and in the 16thc and restoredby Sir Arthur Blomfield in the 19thc. It has a 3-bay S aisle of c.1300, and a timber bell-turret with a pyramid roof over the W gable. There are porches to the N and S doorways. The chancel, also of c.1300, is 3 bays long. The nave is rendered, the N and E chancel walls ore of knapped flint, and the S chancel wall of brick. The chancel was in the course of restoration in 1902, when the Essex Archaeological Society paid a visit, and at that time dedication of the church was unknown.
The only Romanesque feature is a Purbeck marble font.
Parish church
The parish church of Minto was moved to its present site in 1830-31, when the design was carried out by William Playfair. A number of carved stones from the old church site are deposited inside the tower.