The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Bartholomew (medieval)
Parish church
Hognaston is a small village in the Derbyshire Dales district of the county, 11 miles NW of Derby and 7 miles SW of Matlock. The church is in the village centre and consists of a nave with a N aisle and a S porch, a chancel roofed with the nave and a W tower, 12thc in its lower parts and 15thc and later above. There is evidence of building in the 12th, 13th and 14thc, but the church was rebuilt by F. J. Robinson in 1879-81. Romanesque features recorderd here are the S doorway with an enigmatic tympanum and beakheads on the jambs, and an arcaded font.
Parish church
The nave has a W bell-cote, a N aisle and a S porch. It is continuous with the 13thc. chancel.
Parish church
The church has a W tower, an aisled nave and a chancel with N chapel. It is a large, heavy building, largely of boulders and ashlar, standing high on a raised walled churchyard in the centre of the village. The nave (without aisles) and the chancel seem to be on the twelfth-century plan.
Aisles were added in the late 12thc., but the arcades were completely rebuilt at the restoration. A watercolour of 1868 (Twycross-Raines 1920, 29) shows the interior before the arcades were substantially rebuilt in 1870-1: they look very plain early pointed; he describes the assortment of piers and arches then existing. In the rebuilding a single design of capital was used throughout.
Inside in the S aisle is a sundial often dated to the early 11thc.. Reset in the same wall is a small figure, called a ‘Roman soldier’. The altarpiece in the N chapel is set with tile mosaic from Meaux, the pieces being brought from Hilston church after the bombing. The effigy in the chapel (in the general view) is of Sir John de Melsa, died 1377.
For our Corpus, there are 11thc. windows, blocked, in the N wall of the chancel; and a third windowhead with sculpture in the S wall of the chancel outside. Chevron voussoirs are reused over the 14thc. priest’s doorway nearby. A reset figure is included, but its date is uncertain. Twycross-Raines says that the chevron voussoirs and the windowhead are not constructed from the same kind of stone as that used in later parts of the pre-restoration building (1920, 30).
Parish church
Nave of three bays from the early 14th century and a long chancel of the 15th century. The W tower design is 15th century but has been rebuilt. Restoration work was done here between 1820 and 1830 by either William or Joseph Fowler. Further restoration of the exterior was done in 1862. In 1882-1883 J. S. Crowther rebuilt the tower and re-roofed the church. The baptismal font here is Romanesque.
Redundant parish church
Of red sandstone rubble, plastered within and without, with tufa dressings. The church is now derelict, although it was scheduled as an ancient monument in 1946. It comprises a 12thc. nave and chancel, both without aisles, and a timber S porch. Romanesque sculpture is found in the S doorway. The plain font is now in the new church, built in 1877 and one mile away.
Parish church, formerly Augustinian house
An Augustinian Priory and Hospital dedicated to St Bartholomew were founded in Smithfield in 1123 by Rahere (d.1145), a courtier of Henry I (c.1068–1135). Nothing now survives of the hospital.
The priory church was cruciform and may have had a tower at the crossing. It had a four-bay, aisled, vaulted, apsidal chancel and a seven-bay apse with three radiating chapels. The transepts were aisleless, but the S had an eastern chapel added in the 13thc. (Webb 1921, II, 5; pls. XLIV and XLVa). The aisled nave was of ten bays. There were galleries above N and S chancel and nave aisles, and a clerestorey.
The first phase of construction, comprising much of the chancel, the galleries, and possibly the clerestorey was carried out under Rahere. A set-back (of c.6.5 cm) visible in the N wall of the chancel appears to mark a halt in construction, and a subsequent error in the alignment of continuing building work (Webb 1921, II, 8).
The crossing, tower, transepts and at least part of the nave were built in the priorship of Rahere's successor, Thomas (d. 1174), between 1144 and 1174. The chancel arcades may have been completed at this time. Additional small bays with carved capitals were inserted into the chancel gallery bays and a clerestorey was built (or rebuilt) above.
The nave was completed in the 13thc. This involved removing and adapting some of the easternmost 12thc. work so only the first bay of the 12thc. N and S arcades survives. 13thc. work intrudes into this. A tower, above what was the first bay of the S nave aisle, was built in 1628.
The base of a 13thc. shaft may be seen on the exterior NW corner of the church where the nave arcade stood. A small section of masonry from the 13thc. N nave wall survives in what is now the church yard, and at the site of the W end traces of 13thc. work may still be seen. These now lie below, and are obscured by, a galleried, half-timbered structure. When the church was completed in the 13thc. it would have been c. 310ft in length. The chancel E chapel, and the crypt beneath, was rebuilt in 1335, increasing the church length to c.349 ft. Webb proposes what he believes to be physical and documentary evidence for at least one W tower (Webb 1921, II, 67).
The S apsidal chapel (dedicated to St Stephen) survived until 1879, The N chapel (dedicated to St Bartholomew) was rebuilt at the end of the 14thc., but to the W of the original N chapel, although the N chapel entrance may still be seen. The E chapel (Lady Chapel) was rebuilt in 1335. Excavations carried out in 1913 revealed the original 12thc. apsidal E chapel (Lady Chapel) and showed that the S chapel originally had two apses. The N chapel would presumably have been the same (Webb 1921, II, 4; 5; 95).
In the early 15thc., the easternmost piers of the chancel apse were demolished and a straight E wall inserted in front of piers 2 and 7. The floor of the chancel was raised at this time. The clerestory was rebuilt, as was the cloister. Settlement of the NE pier of the crossing meant that the N and W arches also had to be rebuilt at this time. The arch capitals and corbels were replaced as was the base of the NE pier.
After 1505, the then prior (William Bolton) built a residence at the E end of the church, building a square E end in the S ambulatory and annexing the S gallery for his private use as a chapel, building an oriel window in the second bay.
The nave was dismantled after the priory was dissolved in 1539 and the chancel retained for parish use. The N gallery above the chancel was used as a schoolroom from the later 16thc. The N transept and chancel chapels were probably demolished at this time (RCHME, 123). The S transept survived, and was in use as a vestry in the second half of the 19thc.
The E chapel (Lady Chapel) became a house and later a lace factory and N and S galleries and many of the remaining priory buildings were also adapted into residences or workplaces. A smithy occupied the N transept until the late 19thc. and the S gallery, from the 17thc. to 1830 was a Non-Conformists' meeting house. A fire in 1830 severely damaged the S side of the church, and discoloured burnt stone is visible on the S face of the 12thc. stonework in the S gallery.
Two major restorations were carried out in the 19thc. The first in 1863 by Hayter Lewis and William Slater and the second, begun in 1884, by Aston Webb. The first restoration lowered the floor to its original level and reconstructed the two apse piers, removed in the early 15thc. According to a groundplan of the church drawn by Aston Webb, they also rebuilt much of the fabric of the piers in N and S aisles (Webb 1921, II, pl.XVI; 14). Aston Webb rebuilt the arcading at gallery and clerestorey level at the E end of the apse (using some original material) the Lady Chapel, and the sanctuary arch. The S end of the S transept was rebuilt in 1891 and the N transept in 1893 (Webb 1921, II, 14). The porch and facade are also by Aston Webb and date to1893.
Of the 12thc. features much of the original apsidal chancel survives, along with the crossing, part of the S transept, the first bay of N and S nave arcades and the S nave doorway to the cloister. Romanesque sculpture is found throughout the church and on a large number of loose fragments held in the S aisle gallery.
The earliest parts of the church are of ragstone, with ashlar dressings. Later additions are in brick and dressed flint rubble.
Redundant parish church
Yeovilton is a village in the South Somerset district of the county, 1 miE of the Roman town of Lindinis (Ilchester) and 5 mi N of Yeovil. It lies on the N bank of the River Yeo, close to the route of the Fosse Way. The church of St Bartholomew was formerly the parish church, but fell into disrepair and was made redundant in 1988. It was bought by the Royal Navy for £1 in 1992 and on the 11th November of the following year it reopened as the Fleet Air Arm Memorial church. It dates largely from the 14th-15thc and consists of a nave and chancel with a later S chapel, a N porch and a W tower. Construction is of local lias, cut, squared and coursed, with hamstone dressings. It was restored in 1877. Romanesque features described here are a window head reset in the N porch, the remains of an arch set as a frieze below the S chapel window, a corbel reset to the W of the S chancel doorway, and the main altar slab.
Parish church
The church tops the NE side of Churchdown or Chosen Hill, an outlier of the Cotswold escarpment that reaches 511 ft or 155 m above sea level. The hill is NE of Gloucester and W of the M5. The village of Churchdown lies to the NE of the hill, largely in the plain. There are two modern churches (St Andrew and St John) serving the village; the medieval church on the hill nevertheless has regular services and an active graveyard. There are banks of an Iron Age fort adjacent, and the church itself is believed to have been partly constructed on an artificial mound. Stone used is largely ashlar limestone, but several other types can be seen in the walls.
The building comprises a chancel, a nave with S arcade and N porch (no longer in use as the entrance), and a post-medieval W tower (for a plan, see Smithe 1888-9, plate XVII, before p. 274). Only the nave, N porch and S aisle are related to the 12thc church.
There are remains of at least one Romanesque doorway visible as reset voussoirs and capitals, and there is a Transitional S arcade. Verey et al. (2002) describes the arcade and the N porch as 13thc.