The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Oswald (medieval)
Parish church
The village of Shipton Oliffe lies 6 miles ESE of Cheltenham. The church, which is situated in the centre of the village on sloping ground, is built of coursed limestone rubble. The building consists of a chancel, a nave with a S chapel, a S porch and a W bellcote. The church was restored in 1903-4 to designs by H. A. Prothero and G. H. Phillott. The Romanesque features comprise the N nave doorway and the chancel arch.
Parish church
Horton-in-Ribblesdale is a village in the far west of North Yorkshire. It is famous today as a starting-point of the ‘three peaks’ walk, and for having a station on the Settle to Carlisle railway.
The church is at the southern end of the village, and has nave, chancel and aisles under a single roof, together with a buttressed western tower. The fabric is of roughly-coursed stone of various sources including the local Silurian slate and Carboniferous Limestone.
Major restoration of the church in 1823-25, when the N aisle was rebuilt. In 1879-80 the aisles were roofed in one span with the nave (Horton Group, 1981, 52-3). Raine (1873) gives the ‘modern ascription’ as ‘St Oswald or St Thomas’; Lawton says ‘St Oswald or St Thomas a Becket’. Borthwick Institute card index says ‘formerly St Thomas a Becket’, probably sourcing this in Parish Register transcripts.
The Romanesque material includes a doorway, nave arcades, and a font.
Parish church
The VCHER IV describes the village as lying ‘on the Jurassic hills’, that is, on the limestone outcrop at the foot of the Wolds which, from Market Weighton southwards, forms a low but noticeable line of hills to the west of the chalk escarpment. Limestone was still quarried near the village in the 19th century. The church is in West End, close to the Park; the market was on the main road. Hotham Hall is just in North Cave parish.
The church has a chancel, nave with north chapel, west tower, vestry and porch. The nave was widened to the N but no arcade was built. The tower is ashlar-faced, the remainder of small limestone rubble. The VCHER IV, 121, says the ‘late twelfth-century church, though small, was characterized by workmanship of high quality’. If the church is small, then the broad tower is even more striking.
There is a faculty dated 1904, but the precise extent of the work is uncertain. ‘A major restoration and rebuilding was undertaken in 1904, when the chancel, much of the nave, the northern extensions, the porch and the upper stage of the tower were rebuilt’ (VCHER IV, 122).
Twelfth-century features are the lower parts of the W tower with W doorway; the inner face of the S doorway, and the tower arch.
Redundant parish church
Kirk Sandall is about 3 miles NE of Doncaster; the site is not to be confused with Sandal Magna, near Wakefield. The compact medieval church, of Magnesian limestone and cobbles, lies alongside a canal and the river Don. There are fields nearby but the approach is through an industrial estate and the site of the former Pilkington glassworks, which itself had replaced the old village (Holland 1999, 94-5).
The church has a small chancel with a larger 16thc N chapel and a two-bay nave with late 12thc to early 13thc arcades; the S porch is Victorian, from a restoration in the 1860s. The satisfying pyramidal roof on the tower over the W bay of the S aisle replaced the upper stage of a pinnacled tower of c. 1828 in 1935-1937; at the same time a vestry was added to the N aisle (Pevsner 1967, 292-3).
There is a mixed fabric of cobbles, limestone rubble and ashlar even in the later 12thc work. The grave-slab against the W wall in the N aisle is said to have the remains of a floriated cross but that is too damp and efflorescing to discern (Barnes 2001, 3). Remains relevant to this Corpus are the S doorway, a slit window at each end of the S aisle, the two arcades, a piscina and a plain cylindrical font.