The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
"wragby"
Parish church
Wragby is a small village about 4 miles ESE of Wakefield. Its church is at the entrance to the grounds of Nostell Priory. The building of coursed squared sandstone consists of an aisled chancel, an aisled nave, a S porch, a W tower, and a vestry. The church was built in the 1520s-1530s, although the W end of the nave and the tower may be slightly earlier; the vestry was added in 1825. Romanesque sculpture is found on a font and a reset slab, neither of which is thought to be part of any earlier medieval church on the site.
Country House
The present Nostell Priory, an 18thc country house in the care of the National Trust, was built on the site of a medieval Augustinian priory, of which nothing is now visible.
According to Pevsner 'Of the Augustinian priory...nothing is preserved', although his footnote reads 'Mr Pace [George Pace senior] tells me that many stones, carved and moulded, are stored in outbuildings.' Some stones were seen in 1989 by Kit Galbraith ‘in the cowshed near the entrance gate’. Currently, loose carved stones are stored in the stables and in the cellars of the house. Some of these may be from the estate, others collected by Charles Winn in the early 19thc. Nothing of 12thc date has been found in recent years in excavation in the stables area.
Selected stones that might be from the Romanesque period are described in this report. Seven items were identified. Items 1 and 2 were in the stable block. Items 3 to 7 had been brought in from outside near the gate prior to our visit in 2010 and had dry moss still attached. These were stored in a cellar of the house.
Site lost
'The [medieval] church of St Nicholas, Auburn, was taken down about 1590 because it stood very near the sea and was rebuilt inland on Auburn Common'. This church in turn became unfit for public use and it was demolished in 1731. The location of the still visible mound and wall foundations is indicated by the provided grid reference. The site of the medieval church is lost to the sea (VCHER II, 207).
'Auburn, or Aborn, was formerly a chapelry in the parish of Fraisthorpe but the village has been reduced, by the enroachments of the German ocean, to one farm, of about 200 acres of land, and a cottage... on the 25th of September, 1731, a faculty was granted to take down the Chapel of Auburn, when it was likely to share the fate of the rest of the village.' The curacy of Auburn was annexed to that of Fraisthorpe. (Sheahan and Whellan 1856, II, 463).
Parish church
This is primarily a 13th-century church with a W tower, nave with a N aisle and four-bay arcade, and a 14th-century chancel which was restored in the post-medieval period with brick. The tower was restored in 1886 and again in 1959. A Romanesque pillar piscina stands in the W tower.
Parish church
Hagworthingham is a village in the East Lindsey district of the county, 5 mile E of Horncastle and 14 miles W of the coast at Skegness. The church is of greenstone and consists of a nave with a S aisle and S porch, and a chancel with a S organ chamber. It hasd a W tower (described in Pevsner (1964), but this collapsed in 1972. The herringbone masonry in the N wall of the nave suggests an 11th/12th c. date for the original stone construction of this church. The S arcade dates from the 13th c. and the chancel and S aisle from 1859 when James Fowler rebuilt them. There is a monolithic fragment of a shaft and capital, presumably a pillar piscina, which may be late 11th or early 12th c. in date.
Parish church
St Edmund's is a small Victorian church on a little hill, presumably the site of the medieval church. It is about a mile from the sea. The parish includes the Auburn farm, the only remains of the village by the ‘eel burn’ which was washed away into the North Sea (map of 1716, VCHER II, 199, 200). For Auburn’s 12thc patterned cylindrical font, see Wragby (YW).
In the S wall near the porch is a blocked doorway, narrow and round-headed; it is not mentioned by Pevsner and Neave. It has a narrow plain continuous angle moulding, but the stones seem too large to be 12thc.
Pevsner & Neave (1995, 426) mention that there is a remnant of a 13thc round pier and moulded capital in nave S wall; these are not Romanesque. The plain cylindrical font is also said to be 13thc, but there is no reason it could not be 12thc.
There is said to be a pre-Reformation altar stone (VCHER II 207), but this is not visible. It has been laid in the pavement somewhere near the present altar; however the area is now carpeted.
Parish church
The church has a chancel, nave with S aisle and a W tower, and it has been much altered and repaired over the centuries (Pevsner & Neave 1995, 381). Only the fine font survives from the 12th century.
Parish church
The church, as most descriptions mention, is approached from the S through a tunnel of yew trees. 'The body of the church is Norman, as shown by the corners of the nave and a blocked S window visible from the aisle' (Pevsner & Neave 1995, 365). Morris 1919, 122, notes the blocked window, and corbels above the arcade.
There is a west tower, an aisled nave, and a chancel, which is not large. The arcades are similarly pointed throughout, giving unity to the interior. The lighting from clerestory windows is also good. Against this setting, the various items of the 18th-century woodwork also look well. In the E bay of the N aisle are notable tombs (under restoration in 2004). The church was not restored in one great Victorian sweep, but has been improved on by patrons in the 18th century, and the Rev. Robert Wilberforce, son of the reformer, in the mid 19th. Some of the stonework has been made good with a fine cement-like filler, although in places this is coming loose.
There is a font with arcading; much of what must have been a round-headed chancel arch remains (but how much is uncertain), and a few corbels are seen from the S aisle. Some of these features have been retooled or even more severely reworked.