The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
"pampisford"
Parish church
Nave with N aisle, chancel, W tower with
Hertfordshire spike. Construction is of flint and pebble with ashlar facings.
The 12thc. S nave doorway, protected by a porch, has a
figural tympanum. Access has not yet been possible,
but Pevsner reports a Norman font.
Parish church, formerly chapel
Great and Little Wymondley are a pair of villages in the arable farmland to the E of Hitchin in North Hertfordshire, on the W side of the A1(M). Great Wymondley, to the N, is now the smaller of the two and St Mary’s church stands at the E end of Church Green in the village centre. It consists of a 12thc nave and apsidal chancel; the latter with pointed lancets indicating a 13thc remodelling. The nave has a timber-framed S porch, and a N vestry, both built in Joseph Clarke’s restoration of 1883-84. The nave was heightened in the 15thc and a parapet added, and the 4-storey W tower dates from the same period. Construction is of flint rubble with limestone dressings. Romanesque sculpture is found on the S nave doorway.and the chancel arch, and there is a late-12thc piscina.
Parish church
The church lies at the NW end of the stone-built village of Thorpe Salvin. The churchyard wall to the SE is built on a stone outcrop. The church itself is of magnesian limestone and consists of chancel with N chapel and S vestry, nave with N aisle, and a W tower. The nave is approximately 4.57m by 10m (15ft x 31ft 6ins) and slightly wider at the W end than at the chancel arch. Until c.1850 the building was a chapel of ease to Laughton en le Morthen, although for convenience it is referred to in this report as a ‘church’. To the NE of the church but not immediately adjacent are the considerable remains of Thorpe Salvin Hall, c. 1570s (Pevsner 1967, 515), last occupied at the very end of the 17thc.
The church was restored in 1892. Borthwick Institute, Fac. 1892/18 includes plans for before and after the proposed work. At this time the eastern parts of the building were dug out of the raised churchyard, and gutters laid: this work was not done around the porch or the tower. A vestry was built on the S side of the chancel, which may not have affected the Romanesque parts (though rubble walling shows on either side of it), but the font was moved from the chancel to a prepared semicircular plinth of two steps at the foot of the tower arch, thus taking it into the area still liable to damp.
Romanesque sculpture remains on the S doorway, the tower arch, chancel arch and N arcade, and on the unusual font.