The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Margaret (medieval)
Parish church
East Tilbury is on the N bank of the Thames, alongside a reach of the river known as the Lower Hope. Alongside the river at this point is the Coalhouse Fort, a coastal defence dating from 1861-74 in its present form, and from this a road runs inland to East Tilbury, with the church less than half a mile from the coast. It is a fascinating if not a beautiful building, consisting of a 13thc chancel with stepped E lancets, a nave with a N aisle containing a N porch, and the remains of an arcade visible on the S wall. On the N arcade wall a blocked round-headed window above pier 1 confirms that the aisle is a later addition. At the W end of the former S aisle an arch leads to the lower storey of the former tower, destroyed by the Dutch fleet in 1667. The arcade was blocked and the S aisle removed after this. The ground storey of the tower is now a vestry, but in 1917 another tower was begun by men of the London Electrical Engineers using heavy blocks of Kentish Rag taken from the Coalhouse Fort. In 2015 a timber kitchen extension was built on the W front, and in the course of this work the remains of a 13thc W doorway with dogtooth ornament were discovered and conserved. From the exterior the building is dominated by the enormous tiled roof that covers the nave and N aisle.
Parish church
The church was restored in the 19thc., leaving few traces of the
medieval structure. Two windows and a buttress on the N side are of 12thc.
date. The church contains a Romanesque font.
Parish church
St John's is an aisleless church of c.1100 or slightly earlier, originally with an apse but now with a square-ended chancel, nave and W tower. There is herringbone masonry in the fabric, and N and S nave doorways of c.1100, the latter under a medieval timber porch. There is a blocked 12thc. window in the S nave wall at the W end. The S chancel doorway is plain but later 12thc., and there is a contemporary composition of two round-headed lancets with an oculus above in the chancel E wall. The W tower is late 14thc.
Parish church
Margaret Roding is a village in the Uttlesford district of central W Essex; one of 8 settlements sharing the suffix, believed to have its origin in an Anglo-Saxon community led by one Hroda, which settled the area in the 6thc. The River Roding, a tributary of the Thames, runs through the area, and a Roman road linking London and Great Dunmow runs 2 miles to the W of Margaret Roding. The village is 7 miles NW of Chelmsford, the county town, and consists of a few dwellings and the church on the A1060 Chelmsford to Bishop's Stortford road, with the church off the road in the village centre.
St Margaret's consists of a chancel and a nave with a N vestry accessed from the interior by the N doorway. Construction is of flint with freestone dressings. The nave is 12thc, as indicated by the round-headed lancets in the N (3 windows), S (2) and W (1) walls; the S doorway and the chip-carved quoins at the SE and SW angles of the nave. There is a bellcote over the W gable, and this and the vestry date from 1855. The chancel dates from the 14thc, and is unusual in having no windows on the N side. Romanesque features described here are the S nave doorway, S windows and chip-carved quoins.
Parish church
The village of Mapledurham in the Hundred of Langtree sits in the extreme S of Oxfordshire on the banks of the Thames between Pangbourne to the W and Reading to the E, with the Chiltern scarp behind. The layout, with its scattered farmsteads and cottages, retains the character of a rural medieval community, centred round manor house, church and (functioning) mill. It is still largely an estate village with a working farm at its heart. The church of St Margaret of Antioch is found at the end of a narrow cul-de-sac, charmingly situated alongside the redbrick, Tudor Mapledurham House, on a narrow stretch of the river. It now consists of nave, N and S aisles, W tower, N vestry and N porch. The exterior is of flint with stone dressings. The tower is faced with a bold chequer pattern in brick and flint. Pevsner dates a blocked arch at the W end of the S wall to the 13th century, but the rest of the structure is later medieval and the whole was essentially re-created by William Butterfield in 1863. The only Romanesque feature is the font which seems to predate the present church.
Parish church
St Margaret's has a clerestoreyed and aisled nave with five-bay
arcades and a wooden W
gallery housing the organ. The arcades are largely 14thc., but the reused E respond and bays 4 and 5 of the S
arcade are 13thc. with stiff-leaf capitals. The S doorway is under a
porch. The chancel is 14thc.,
and has a N vestry at the E end. The W tower dates
from c.1300, and has a broach spire with three rows of lucarnes. The
church is largely faced in ashlar, the chancel and
clerestorey in a warm yellow stone, the tower in red
ironstone. The aisles are rubble faced. The church was restored by R. C. Hussey
in 1840. The fabric, then, is almost entirely Decorated, but St Margaret's
boasts an important 12thc. font, unusual in being supported by atlantes.
Parish church
Wellington is a village 5 miles N of Hereford on the W side of the main A49 road linking Hereford and Leominster. The main village street follows the line of the Wellington Brook, a W-E tributary of the Lugg, and the church stands on its N side. It has a chancel, 12thc in origin; a 12thc nave with a 14thc S porch and a late-medieval N aisle, the E bay of whic is a transeptal chapel. The W tower is of c.1200 in its lower stages, but the tower arch is certainly 13thc, having a deeply chamfered pointed arch. The chancel was restored by Nicholson in 1883-84, and the tower by Bettington and Son in 1912. There is little here that can be called Romanesque sculpture. The N and S nave doorways and the S chancel doorway are recorded here.
Parish church
The compact hamlet of Queen Charlton, hardly more than a cluster around the village green of manor house, manor farm, church and a few handsome dwellings, lies at the head of a narrow valley leading down to the Avon at Keynsham, Somerset, 2 miles to the NE. The valley was doubtless the route of the historical communication between Queen Charlton and the wider world (specifically, Keynsham Abbey). Geologically, Queen Charlton rests on the limestone of the Lower Lias (Blue and White Lias). The regal distinction of this village commemorates the gift of the property by King Henry VIII to Catherine Parr (Ekwall, 1960, 96). The church has late 12thc. origins and was altered in the 13thc and 15thc with a 19thc restoration. It consists of nave and N porch, central tower, N transept, chancel and remains of a S chapel. The central tower has Romanesque openings with Romanesque sculptural elements in the crossing. The font is also Romanesque. (Note: a Romanesque doorway is in the wall of the lane to the W of the church (see separate entry: St Margaret, Queen Charlton, resited doorway, Somerset - CRSBI).
Parish church
Nidd is a village 3 miles N of Harrogate, sited by a river of the same name. The present church was built in 1866 by Healey. However, it incorporates material from an old church on the same site. Lunn, 1870, 47, describes it, saying ‘the original chancel arch was Norman, but too decayed to be preserved’. He says the old church 'had nave and chancel with a western double bell-cot erected about 1750, and a south porch'. He mentions that the E window, the font and 'a few fragments' were retained for the new building. The outer entrance to the porch may have 13th century parts (Pevsner 1967, 378)
A painting of the old church is on the N wall, reproduced in Butler 1997, 9/10. The photograph shows a small building of nave and chancel with a simple porch and W bell-cote. The present church has a nave with S porch, N aisle; chancel and organ chamber; W tower.
There is a simple font still in use and a broken water stoup in the tower.
Parish church
St Margaret's has a large, squarish nave of alternate limestone and ironstone courses, dating from the rebuilding of 1827-28 by Charles Squirhill. This replaced an aisled 13thc. nave, and the W responds of the arcades still remain, along with the S doorway under a medieval porch. Also from the medieval church are the small, square chancel (13thc.) and the W tower (13thc. in its lowest parts). There are vestries to N and S of the chancel, the S a modern addition. Inside the nave the church retains its W gallery, with an organ in the centre and benches to either side. The font may, at a pinch, be 12thc., but is more probably 13thc.