The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Cuthbert (medieval)
Chapel
The first approx. 3m of height of the rectangular building is of 12thc. masonry for the most part. The E and W windows, now blocked, can be seen. Floors have been inserted and partitions made over centuries. It is still easy to see the ground plan of what may have been the 12thc. church.
Parish church
The church of St Cuthbert’s, Plumbland is situated within the hamlet of Parsonby, in the deanery of Allerdale, Cumberland. The church was rebuilt between 1868 and 1871, incorporating parts of the medieval church. The Romanesque church appears to have been two-celled, with N and S nave doorways, but during the following centuries it was enlarged. The 12thC. chancel arch survives from the medieval church and is the primary re-used Romanesque feature. Although largely intact, it has its been heightened and some of the stonework has been replaced. There are, as well, chequer-decorated voussoirs which have been reused in the vestry fireplace and a coped grave cover kept NW of the church near the gate to the old rectory. Pre-Conquest stones also survive, some reworked in the 13thC.
Parish church
The church has a nave, a chancel and a west tower. It is of ashlar, cobbles and brick and ‘unashamedly exhibits the results of centuries of maintenance by churchwardens and parishioners’ (Pevsner & Neave 1995, 377). If it had been ‘restored’, little of interest would remain from the twelfth century. As it is, the work is various and incomplete: there are columns and capitals from the S doorway, the chancel arch and the S arcade; there is a font with four carved heads on the base; and there are some reset fragments in the nave and chancel S walls.
Sometimes the village is called ‘North Burton’ (Morris 1919,124-5). The ‘Fleming’ element of the place-name derives from the fact that the overlords, the Gant family, came from the neighbourhood of Ghent in Flanders.
Parish church
Dalmeny church is a four-cell building consisting of a west tower, nave, vaulted chancel and vaulted apse. The original west tower seems to have collapsed in the fifteenth century and was subsequently re-built on the same ground plan in 1937, preserving the original sides of the tower arch (capitals and bases) leading into the nave. Four corbels which were found when the tower arch blocking stone was removed have been re-used on the interior of the tower. In 1671, much of the eastern part of the north wall of the nave was taken down to form a new aisle and this area was again altered in 1816. The twelfth-century parts of the church are built from a local sandstone, which on the interior of the church is a soft, light brown, but on the exterior has weathered to a light grey. Both on the interior and on the exterior faces of the walls, the stone is of coursed ashlar and of high quality. In the 18th century, the nave walls were lowered and the chancel walls heightened to form a continuous roof line, but these were put back to their original levels in the restoration work carried out between 1927 and 1937. In addition, some of the windows had had the inner orders taken out to create more light in the 18th century and these windows were restored back to their original form during the restorations. Only one window in the main part of the church is entirely modern, that west of the south entrance, which was inserted in the 18th century to allow light into the gallery (since removed) which had been built at the west end of the nave. In the apse, a tomb niche was inserted into the south interior wall at some point subsequent to the twelfth century.
On the interior, both the chancel arch and the apse arch are elaborately decorated with chevron patterns and there are head corbels carrying both rib vaults, but it is the south exterior entrance which has the most elaborate decoration, though badly weathered. This consists of a doorway with voussoirs carved with various figures and heads, and an upper zone carved with interlacing arcading surmounted by head corbels. In addition, there are three original, heavily decorated windows on the apse, two on the chancel walls and three on the nave walls. Original exterior corbels survive in situ on the chancel, apse and above the south entrance, and there is a 12thc sarcophagus outside the church.
The west tower of the church is thought to have fallen c.1480, at which time the tower arch was filled with rubble. Four romanesque corbels, found when the tower was rebuilt in 1937, were inserted into the west interior wall of the tower above the tower arch. Sometime before 1604 a loft was built into the west end of the nave. Around 1671, part of the north nave wall was taken down to build a north aisle (called the Rosebery aisle), while in 1766 the exterior wall walls of the choir were heightened and the nave walls decreased in height so that the roof continued unbroken across both. Sometime also in the later 18th century, a new window was inserted on the south side of the nave, west of the doorway, to allow light into the loft. In 1816, a gallery was built in the Rosebery aisle and a plaster ceiling in imitation of the stone vaulting in the eastern parts was constructed over the nave (since removed). About the same time, a porch which had been built in front of the south nave doorway, the roofline still in evidence, was taken down, along with the removal of the south chancel doorway. In 1832 a new west belfry was added. Restoration work on the church was finally carried out between 1927 and 1937, at which time the pews and west loft were also removed. A new west tower was also built onto the west end during these restorations after some discussion of the form it should take. Finally, in or before 1948, A.J. Turner undertook a study of masons’ marks in the church.
Parish church
Situated 2 miles from the port at Blyth, Bedlington became an industrial town from the 1730s onwards. The ironworks closed in 1867 but the coal mines continued in use until the 1970s.
Before this Bedlington was the capital of Bedlingtonshire, a small estate some ten miles north of Newcastle; it was part of the patrimony of St Cuthbert, the Liberty of the bishopric of Durham, over which the bishop ruled as secular lord, and had passed to the see between 900 and 915. It was a resting-place of the body of St Cuthbert on 1069, when the community of St Cuthbert was fleeing from William I's harrying of the North.
The church stands towards the E of the town centre, on the road to Blyth. It consists of a nave with a N aisle and a S chapel, a W tower, and a chancel. The medieval church was rebuilt in 1743 and again in the mid-19thc, and the W tower dates from 1868. The N aisle was added in 1912 when vestries were added and the nave windows replaced. The late-12thc chancel arch has survived all of this, and is described below.
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
Kirkby Ireleth is sited on the peninsula of Furness, in southern Cumbria. The site of the church is listed variously by modern authors as ‘Kirkby Ireleth’, ‘Kirkby-in-Furness’ and ‘Beckside’. It has been dedicated to St Cuthbert since at least the 15thc., but there is some evidence that in the 14thc. it was dedicated to St Mary. The church consists of a nave with S porch, chancel, large north aisle and west tower, the latter built in 1829. Restorations were carried out in 1881, 1884 and 1904. The only surviving Romanesque carving is found on the S doorway of the nave, although the western part of the chancel, with its restored N window and blocked S window, as well as some walling of the nave are also believed to date from the 12thc.
Parish church, formerly Augustinian house
The church consists of a nave with N and S aisles; two transepts with a
long Lady Chapel attached to the south transept; two W towers; and N and S nave
doorways under porches. The cloister lay to the N of the nave, and there are
further doorways into its S range from the N aisle. Vestigial remains of other
monastic buildings are lying to the N. Nothing remains of the chancel. The
eastern bay of the nave is assumed to date from shortly after the priory
received a grant from its founder, William de Lovetot, in 1130. It was not
completed until the last quarter of the century. It has three storeys: a
ten-bay arcade; a gallery with alternating wide and narrow openings, the wide
openings placed above the arcade bays; and a clerestorey with no passage, its
windows positioned above the nave piers. This odd arrangement allows the heads
of the main gallery arches to impinge on the clerestorey zone, rising between
the windows. In about 1200 the Romanesque choir was replaced and in 1240 the
Lady Chapel was built. This fell into disrepair at the Dissolution and stood,
ruinous and detached, until its restoration by Breakspear in 1922. In 1929 he
joined it to the nave by means of a S transept, which he reconstructed from the
evidence available. The N transept dates from 1935, and the E end is by
Laurence King (1966-74). The Romanesque features are the nave and the lower
portion of the towers. Despite the rebuidling of the walls of the aisles in the
19thc. all the doors appear to be in their original settings. The exterior
string courses, corbel tables and aisle windows are all 19thc. replacements, and
the exterior of the south transept is entirely 20thc.
Church
Aldingham is located on the E coast of the Furness peninsula in southern Cumbria. The church consists of a rectangular chancel, aisled nave, and W tower. The earliest surviving part of the church is the south arcade of the nave. There is also a loose waterleaf capital. The present chancel may date from about 1300, with some modifications made to it in later centuries. The W tower is thought to have been constructed in the 14thc. and added to in the 15thc. The S aisle appears to have been rebuilt in the 14thc., while the N nave aisle was built in 1845-6. There is also a modern vestry built onto the N side of the church.
Site of former monastery
Located about 2 miles from present-day Melrose, the medieval site of Old Melrose is a raised peninsula on a bend of the River Tweed. No medieval buildings survive on the site. After the Reformation, the lands of Old Melrose appear to have been granted to Robert Ormestoun, who built a house on it. A later house, called Old Melrose House, has been built in the area of Chapel Knoll with a walled garden next to it. There is also a 19thc summer house, which was built at the tip of the peninsula.