The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Martin (medieval)
Ruined church
Wharram Percy is a deserted medieval village, about 1 mile S of Wharram-le-Street, laying on the W flank of a characteristic little Wolds valley, not in the valley bottom but on a higher shelf or plateau; the church and a few post-medieval dwellings were in the valley bottom. The whole area has been the subject of much archaeological investigation.
The church is a roofless structure consolidated by English Heritage and its preceding government departments. Archaeological excavations brought to light a small pre-Romanesque two-cell church was found; that is now outlined by plain slabs in the floor of the nave and chancel (Bell, Beresford 1987, figs. 1 and 7). According to the excavation report (Bell, Beresford, et al. 1987, 4) the building stone used was probably the Lower Calcareous Grit, which is obtainable within some 5 miles of the village.
The church is largely of this local stone, with occasional use of chalk in-filling and in the interior face of the walls (for example, the E wall of nave). The building consists of the chancel, nave, half the tower of a medieval building and a S porch; the 12thc structure also had an apse. The 12thc church had at least three phases (Stocker and Everson 2012, 240-41). There was an attempt to build a W tower in the usual position, but this may have found unconsolidated subsoil, and eventually it was built straddling the W wall of the nave. In the late 12thc the tower was finished for the time being and a S aisle was added, with a new doorway. There were many later medieval alterations. The W wall of the tower collapsed in 1959 shortly after the church entered public ownership. The Victorian vicarage (excavated) was N of the church; the medieval one was up-slope to the W. The S side of the burial ground has not been excavated. To the S also lies a reconstruction of the former mill-pond, later a village pond (map, Bell, Beresford et al. 1987, 3). Various factors led to depopulation, and the last church service was held in 1949.
A small amount of sculpture was found in excavations at one of the two manor houses, that material, along with some excavated pieces from the church, is kept in an English Heritage store at Helmsley; a little of this material may be relevant. During the excavations a small stone of to the church of the late 10th to 11thc was also found, and perhaps it would have belonged to a private manorial chapel.
Of interest to our corpus are the blocked late 12thc S arcade, the parts of the late 12thc S doorway reset from the S aisle wall, and the remnant of the tower. On the S wall of the nave is a window where chevron voussoirs and capitals have been re-used.
Ruined church
The ruins of the church are situated to the E of the town, in the area called the Nungait. Only the nave now survives, but originally the church consisted of a rectangular two-chambered structure, excavations revealing that there was a squared chancel east of the nave. Surviving evidence shows that the nave was vaulted, but it is thought that the vault was added, along with the exterior buttressing, in the 13th century. The side walls of the nave have large, single-splayed, rounded windows without decoration. However, the original chancel arch does survive, as does one voussoir re-used in the N interior wall.
Benedictine house, former
After the suppression of Battle Abbey in 1538, the church and most of
the monastic buildings were demolished. Today, only the Great Gate, abbot's
lodgings, guest range and dorter survive above ground level, but the footings
of other buildings have been exposed. The Abbey, situated on sloping land on the site of the battlefield where
William of Normandy defeated King Harold in 1066, had a standard Benedictine
layout. The church, erectedc.1070-1094, had a short choir terminating
in an ambulatory with three radial chapels, followed by a broad crossing tower, single-bay transept
arms with apsidal chapels, and an aisled nave of seven bays. It has been suggested (Hare 1985, 20) that this was the
first English church to have an ambulatory with radiating chapels. In the late
13thc. the choir was greatly enlarged and some time later the S transept apse
was replaced, but otherwise the late 11thc. building seems to have survived
more or less intact until 1538. The cloister was located to the south of the church but, beginning with
the chapter-house, the claustral buildings were entirely rebuilt on a larger
scale in the 13thc. The 11thc and 12thc. claustral
buildings were small, but it is known that Abbot Walter de Luci (1139-71) began
to rebuilt the cloister walks 'with pavement and columns of marble, polished and smooth', and had planned a
lavatorium before death interrupted his scheme. The abbot's lodgings in the
west range were converted into a country house after the Dissolution and are
now Battle Abbey School. At right angles to that are the remains of the guest
range, which was rebuilt after the Dissolution but demolished in the mid-18thc.
The 13thc. dorter, on the E side of the cloister, was unroofedc.1800.
Nothing of the infirmary, which possibly lay on E side of the cloister,
survives. The townspeople, who worshipped in the nave, entered the precinct
through the Great Gate, located to the NW of the church and rebuilt in the
14thc. The 16thc. 'courthouse' to E of the gatehouse seems to have replaced an
earlier almonry. The only Romanesque carvings to survive in situ are three early capitals
which belonged to buildings incorporated within the E and W sides of the Great
Gate, and two capitals on the W façade of the abbey church. Loose
fragments retrieved during the excavations of the 1930s, 1978-80 and 1999 are
stored at Dover Castle (Kent), Fort Brockhurst (Hampshire), Fort Cumberland
(Hampshire) and Battle Abbey (see separate site entries). Several published
fragments could not be located for Corpus recording (summer 1999).
Redundant parish church
Standing about a mile from the centre of the present town, only the chancel of the once larger medieval church remains. The earliest section may have been built before the church was given to Lanercost Priory in 1169, this part extended eastward in the late-12thc./early-13thc. By the late-17thc. it had already been proposed that a church might be erected in the town, itself, and in 1702/1704 the bishop of Carlisle wrote that the church was in a bad state. In 1788/9, most of the old church was torn down, with the exception of the chancel, which then became a mortuary chapel. The new parish church was created by enlarging the hospital (almshouses) chapel, which was in the centre of the town. A west porch was added to the old chancel in 1861, and further repairs were carried out in the 1890s and in 1987. In 1978, the old church was made redundant. A few medieval grave covers also survive.
Parish church
Situated adjacent to Lyndon Hall in an idyllic churchyard, the small church of St. Martin found its full form in the late 13th/early 14th c. based on the existing two bays of the nave arcade and the chancel arch. The plain S doorway with its pointed arch and single order is of the early 13th c. though the S porch itself is new, likely of late 19th/early 20th c. date. The chancel, nave and W tower were extensively rebuilt in 1865-66 by T. G. Jackson. Of the Romanesque period there is the font and a loose fragment of a cross-head.