The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Margaret (medieval)
Parish church
Syleham is 6 miles E of Diss; the church standing alongside the river
Waveney which forms the Norfolk border. The land is largely arable country of
low hills, but cattle graze in the pastures by the river. The church stands
alone, the rest of the village standing on a low hill 0.7 miles to the SE. St Margaret's has a nave, chancel and round W
tower. At the W angles of the nave the quoins are
large and irregular, suggesting an 11thc. origin. The nave is low now, but a
mark on the tower shows that the roof was once more steeply pitched. The
lowering may date from the 15thc., when the nave windows were renewed and the S
doorway and its porch added. The 13thc. N doorway is
blocked. The nave is of flint, but the eastern bays on
both sides have been rebuilt using red brick and flint. On the S this
bay projects slightly from the line of the nave wall,
and it is possible that chapels have been removed at some time. To the same
campaign belong the brick buttresses on the S side of the nave. Inside, there
is a blocked N rood stair; the tower arch is small and
plain, and the chancel arch is 15thc. work. The
chancel was not rebuilt with the nave, and is
considerably higher and out of scale with the nave. It
is of flint and dates from the early 13thc., to judge from two plain lancets on
the N side, but the S windows were replaced in the 14thc. and 15thc. The E
window is 19thc. The flint tower is of two storeys; the upper 14thc. and
decorated with chequer patterns in light and dark flints. The battlemented
parapet is of brick. As is commonly the case, the lower storey is difficult to
date; Mortlock and Pevsner both say Norman, Mortlock also detecting earlier
masonry at the base. A stone on the S wall of the nave records that the roof
leads were repaired in 1737. The present timber roof is 19thc. The font is
small, plain and octagonal, possibly 14thc. according to Mortlock. It stands on
a much earlier base with angle
volutes; probably part of the inverted bowl of a 12thc. font.
This is the only Romanesque sculpture on the
site.
Parish church
St Margarets is in the SW of the county, 10 miles SW of Hereford, between the Golden Valley to the E and the Black Mountains to the W. The church stands alongside Tanhouse farm in an otherwise secluded position. It consists of a chancel and nave with a SW porch and a weatherboarded W bell turret capped by a pyramid roof. The chancel arch is 12thc (the only feature recorded here) and other diagnostic features are late medieval at the earliest. The church was restored by E. H. Lingen Barker in 1901-02, and the porch is of 1924. The most spectacular and surprising feature is a wooden rood screen with loft, carved with finely executed foliage ornament and dateable to c.1500.
Parish church
A modern building comprising chancel, nave and west tower, in brick and tile, built 1956-7. It replaced the church by J. L. Pearson of 1861-2, which had suffered bomb-damage in 1941; that church had replaced the medieval building.
The present church, inspired by the Danish Romanesque (Pevsner & Neave 1995, 472), has reused what remained of the Norman S doorway as reused by Pearson.
Parish church, formerly chapel
Barking lies in the angle between the N bank of the Thames and the E bank of the River Roding, and was centred on its abbey in the middle ages. St Margaret’s is the parish church and stands within the former abbey precincts, SE of the demolished abbey church. Construction is largely of rag and flint except for the tower, of Reigate stone. It consists of a chancel with 2-bay aisles, the N aisle housing the organ. The nave has 4-bay aisles and a clerestory, with a W tower in a 5th bay at the W end. On the N side is a 2nd aisle running alongside the tower and extending to the N of the N chancel aisle. This end of the aisle was built in the 16thc using debris from the abbey, and its 2-bay arcade piers and capitals are abbey spolia. The remainder of the building is largely 13thc and 15thc. On the S side is the Church Centre, with a café linked to the church itself. This was added by K. C. White and Partners in 1991.
Benedictine house, former
A simple three-cell building of nave, chancel
and semicircular apse without tower or belfry. There is
a chancel arch and the remains of an apse arch.
Construction is of herringbone and rubble masonry with
brick repairs. The nave has been heightened, and the upper levels are of small,
uneven ashlar blocks. Brick buttresses have been added to the N side of the
nave, and a large brick doorway on the S must date from its conversion to a
barn.
Castle chapel
The chapel is historically described as being dedicated to St.Margaret, queen of Scotland, who died in 1093. The structure is built as a slightly irregular rectangle on plan; internally it consists of a barrel-vaulted nave and a semi-domed apsidal sanctuary which is slightly out of line with the nave. There is a decorated chancel arch between the two chambers. Sometime after 1573, the rock around three sides of the chapel was quarried away and these walls underpinned. After the Cromwellian seige, the chapel lost its identity and was put to secular use. By the 1840s, when the chapel was rediscovered, the building had been divided by another floor and was being used as a powder magazine. Subsequent to this, the chapel was restored and the later floor removed. On the north side of the eastern chancel, there is evidence of a doorway which went through the wall, but this was later blocked on the exterior of the chapel to form a locker/cupboard. It has been suggested that the chapel is all that remains of a larger building. The only decoration surviving is on the chancel arch.
Parish church
Drayton, Norfolk (as opposed to settlements of the same name in Berkshire, Somerset, Oxfordshire and elsewhere) lies about 4mi NW of Norwich. St Margaret's church was almost completely rebuilt over the course of the 19thc, including the W tower, nave, N aisle and chancel, although the 15thc porch escaped intact. The only Romanesque feature is its remodelled font.