The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
All sites
Church (ruin)
Only the W end of the church and a short section of the adjacent N and S walls still stand. A rectangular splayed window, probably late medieval, survives in the S wall and this incorporates a 12thc. voussoir. The ruin is on a small hill and stands a few metres NE of a souterrain.
Parish church
Ackworth is a village situated about 2 miles S of Ponteftact in the Wakefield district of West Yorkshire. The church of St Cuthbert stands at the top of a rise at the junction between High and Low Ackworth. It has an exceptionally large churchyard, with many yew trees. The present structure is mostly C19th with a Perp. W tower and S porch. Pevsner (1967, 70), describes this as being ‘of 1855’, restored after a fire in 1852. The only Romanesque sculpture present is a font which may originally have been of C12th date, but has been re-tooled and re-shaped.
Parish church
St Mary's is built of red sandstone ashlar. It has a four-bay aisled nave with a clerestorey; the aisles extending W alongside the tower, and the present clerestorey a rebuilding of 1879. The arcade piers are mid 13thc., but they have been heightened, and the capitals are late 19thc., part of Paley and Austin's restoration of 1897-98, although one of the originals survives as a loose stone in the S aisle. The W tower is also 13thc. in its lower parts. It was once over 100 feet tall, but the top of it fell in 1757 and was rebuilt shortly afterwards by William Baker. The chancel arch is 14thc., but the long chancel itself is Perpendicular, articulated inside with colossal four-centred wall arcading. It has a N chapel added after the nave aisles, and the N aisle E window survives, with its tracery but lacking its glazing, inside the church (something similar took place at Bunbury). The grandest monument is a large 17thc. chest tomb with recumbent figures of Sir Richard and Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham in the S aisle. More interesting is the wall tomb in the N aisle, with an alabaster effigy of Sir William Mainwaring (d.1399). The figural but mutilated font is Romanesque, as are a series of important carved stones, some figural, at present at the E end of the S aisle, behind the Wilbraham tomb.
Parish church
The church consists of W tower, nave and chancel, the latter two rebuilt in 1819 in Georgian style, but the original doorway was saved and inserted as S doorway of the nave. The W tower includes a S doorway with a lintel made from an Anglo-Saxon carved cross or gravestone, the most important pre-Conquest sculpture in the region. This is not described here, but photographs are included.
Parish church
The former Augustinian friary is now a Church of Ireland parish church. The font is the only possibly Romanesque feature.
Graveyard
Cross head leaning against the W wall of the old graveyard.
Parish church
Adderley is an agricultural village in the NE of Shropshire, and one of the largest parishes in the county. The village is slightly over 3 miles N of Market Drayton. The village extends along the A 529 from Market Drayton to Audlem (Cheshire) with the church at the northern end. The church is mainly of 1801, and is cruciform in plan with a 17thc N transept and an 18thc. tower. The only Romanesque feature is the late 11thc. to early 12thc. font which is located to the to left of the S doorway. The chancel and transepts are in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust; the rest being in use by the parish.
Parish church
Addington is a village towards the N of central Buckinghamshire, 4½ miles SE of Buckingham to the S of the main road to Aylesbury. The village stands on rising land on the N bank of Claydon Brook, and consists of little more than Addington Manor and its grounds, with the church on their western edge. St Mary’s consists of a W tower, a nave with N and S aisles extending westwards alongside the tower, and a S porch, and a chancel with a N vestry. The tower is 13thc in its lower stages, and an upper bell-storey was added in the 15thc. Aisles were added to the nave in the 14thc, and the 3-bay arcades (continuously moulded without capitals or imposts) and chancel arch are of this period. The remainder of the church belongs to the restoration of 1856-58 by the diocesan architect, G. E. Street. He demolished the old chancel, aisles, porch and clerestory (traceried oculi said to copy the old designs) leaving only the tower, nave arcades and chancel arch. He then built a completely new chancel and vestry, and rebuilt the aisles, porch and clerestory to the original dimensions, reusing the old materials. He also reinstalled the 12thc pillar piscina in the chancel, and this is the only Romanesque feature described here.
Parish church
The church has a rectangular nave and chancel, with a bellcote of 1839 above the W gable. There are square traceried windows on the S side, and the E wall has been rebuilt, but otherwise the whole is substantially 12thc. The church is built in local sandstone and stands in a large churchyard overlooking suburban Leeds on one side and fields and woodland on the other.
Romanesque sculpture is concentrated in the S doorway, the corbel tables to N and S and on the chancel arch, but there are also decorated window heads and an unusual array of corbel-like heads on the W gable. The remains of a plain font are near the SW gate. The top of a pillar piscina, which had been re-set outside the chancel doorway, was stolen in 2002.