The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Mary Magdalene (medieval)
Parish church
Rothwell is a small village in the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, 9 miles N of Market Rasen and 2.5 miles SE of Caistor. The church is reached by a narrow path leading off School Lane, which runs S from the village centre. It has a late-11thc W tower of coursed rubble, a nave with 3-bay aisles added in the mid-12thc, and a chancel, which was restored in 1892 by J. D. Sedding.
Parish church
The village of Stocklinch Magdalene lies 3.5 mi NE of Ilminster, and is one of Somerset's nine Thankful Villages in which all the men who served in WW1 came home (and again in WW2). The church of St Mary Magdalene dates from the 13thc. and is Grade I listed. It has a chancel and nave with bellcote and porch. The only early feature is a font which may or may not be Romanesque.
Note: there is also a church of St Mary the Virgin in Stocklinch Ottersey which also contains an early font (see https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=914 ). The two parishes were combined into one benefice in 1931 when the total population was only 123; this church is now redundant.
Parish church
Withiel Florey lies 7 miles NE of Dulverton in west Somerset, within the modern Exmoor National Park. The church is in an isolated position with Castle Hill Farm the only nearby building. The churchyard looks like a naturally defensive position, and its rounded shape suggests the possibility of an earthwork or even a repurposed Celtic site. The church of St Mary Magdalene consists of a W tower, nave with S porch and chancel. The church was nearly demolished in 1959 but was fortunately saved for posterity and re-opened in 1961. Although the present building has 12thc origins, the only surviving Romanesque element is the font.
Parish church
The manorial hamlet of Great Elm lies at about 100m OD on the L bank of Mells Stream just several kilometres downstream from Mells, among the hills of the E Mendips as they decline to the E. Less dominated than is Mells by limestone aggregate quarries because at their E limit, Great Elm occupies the N side of the Mells Stream valley just W of the large town of Frome. The church, which is built of random rubble, consists of a W tower, a nave with a S porch, a N transept and a chancel. Romanesque features recorded here are the blocked Norman doorway, partly obscured by the N transept, and the font.
Ruined parish church
Swinton is a small town north-east of Sheffield. The church is a large 19thc building surrounded by a churchyard and an open grassland, the Vicarage Field, to the north. Sculptural remains of the Romanesque chapel of St Mary Magdalene, which was formerly located on the site of the present church hall before being dismantled in 1815, were retained after the fire of 1897 and re-erected to the NE of the new church: they consist of jambs, capitals and voussoirs of the S doorway, and remains of the chancel arch. However, over the years their deterioration caused some of the carved stones to be moved in a storeroom in 1950, while uncarved stones were buried in the Vicarage Field.
Architect Edmund Isle Hubbard had produced plans for the enlargment of the E end before the fire. Some papers regarding the rebuilt chapel, the chapel yard and the new church (1817 CD.81) have been transferred to the Sheffield Diocesan Registry. Some watercolours of Swinton chapel before 1815 survive. An engraving of the doorway was published by James Storer (1817, vol. 6). The reconstructed arches appear on postcards of c.1900-1905.
Parish church
Only remnants of the N wall to the chancel of the 12thc church survive, together with a possible N doorway to the nave, and the font. The present building consists of a chancel, extended in the 13thc and rebuilt in the 15thc and 19thc; a 13thc nave; a late-14thc S porch and W tower; and an early 15thc S chapel with a 2-bay arcade into the nave.
Parish church
The medieval church, dedicated to St Mary Magdalene, fell into disrepair, and the parishoners used the church of Carnaby until a new church was built in the 18th century. In 1893-4, the present church of St Magnus replaced it, being built slightly to the N of the previous one. The modern centre of the settlement, the West Hill estate, has the daughter church of St Mark on Bessingby Gate (VCHER II, 19-21). The 19th-century church of St Magnus contains ‘a rather good old Norm. font’ (Morris 1919, 64).
Parish church
In the mid-C12th the Borough of Woodstock was founded by the king, and it is presumed that the present church was established at this time. It was created within the parish of Bladon as a chapel of ease. It is known that a S aisle was added in the C13th, and a bell tower, mentioned in 1279, stood on the N side of the church. This was rebuilt or raised in the C15th, but taken down as unsafe in the C18th. A new tower and N aisle were built in the classical style by John Yenn in 1784-6. The medieval church was almost completely rebuilt by A.W. Blomfield in 1878. Today the S doorway, richly decorated with two continuous orders of chevron, is the only Romanesque survival.
Parish church
Little Hereford is a village in the N of the county, half a mile from the Worcestershire border and a mile from the Shropshire border. The closest town is Tenbury Wells, 2 miles to the E, and Leominster is 6 miles to the S. The village stands on either side of the A456 that links Kidderminster to the main Ludlow to Leominster road. The River Teme flows past the southern edge of the village. St Mary's is at this southern edge, close to the river, and is dominated by its massive 13thc W tower. It has a large 13thc chancel, remodelled in the 14thc and a 12thc nave with a single surviving N window. An interesting survival is the arrangements for the rood altar, with a niche above the chancel arch and the remains of an entrance on the nave wall to the S. The only Romanesque feature here is the plain font.
Parish church
The church has a nave with N and S aisles; the N arcade dating from the 13thc., but the S from the late 12thc. There is a 16thc. clerestorey on the S side only. Both arcades are unusual in having an E bay that is lower than the others, and on the south the first pier from the east is actually a section of wall containing a 14thc. niche towards the main vessel. Pevsner has argued that the eastern bay was originally the arch to a chapel, and thus that pier 1 marked the division between the nave and the chancel in the 12thc. Sculptural interest in the S arcade centres on the chamfer stops of the piers, carved with foliage motifs and heads. The present chancel has no masonry arch to it, but a timber arch supported on 19thc corbels. There is a N chapel, now housing the organ, and its arch and the chancel windows are of the early 14thc. The tower stands at the NW of the nave, and was rebuilt in 1707. It seems clear, therefore, that a 12thc aisleless church of nave and chancel was given a S aisle and chancel chapel at the end of the 12thc, and a N aisle and chapel in the 13thc. Early in the following century a new chancel was added, with N chapels, and the former chancel incorporated into the nave. The church was 'thoroughly' restored in 1862 (Duncumb (1897), 47).
The church contains a well-known font, carved by sculptors of the Herefordshire School, and three unpublished carved fragments, one reused as a window sill and two loose. A very short distance to the W of the church stood a castle (see VII).