The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Mary Magdalene (medieval)
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).
Parish church
East Ham, in the London Borough of Newham, is 2 miles N of the Thames and the Royal Albert Dock. Its High Street runs parallel to the A13, and immediately N of it, and the rubble-built church, surrounded by a large cemetery that is now designated as a nature reserve stands on the N side of the High Street. It is an imposing building with a tall, spacious nave, a chancel with the remains of intersecting arcading on the side walls, no chancel arch but a 12thc apse arch and a semicircular apse. On the S wall of the chancel are 2 low side windows, the westernmost equipped with a wooden shutter. There is a W tower, variously dated between the 13thc and the 16thc, and the 12thc W doorway to the nave is inside the tower. On the S side of the nave is a 12thc doorway protected by a porch. The church was dilapidated by the end of the 19thc, but was restored in 1891-96. Further restoration work took place in 1930 and more recently after in was damaged in the 2nd World War. Romanesque features described here are the W and S nave doorways, the chancel blind arcading, the apse arch and a corbel reset above the piscina on the S wall of the apse.
Parish church
Waltham on the Wolds is a small village in the Melton district of NE Leicestershire, 5 miles NE of Melton Mowbray. The church stands on the High Street in the village centre and is built of coursed and squared limestone. It consists of a chancel with a N vestry, central tower, transepts, aisled nave and a S porch. The doorways indicate a 12thc nave to which aisles were added c.1300. The chancel was remodelled at this time too, and so were the transepts. The nave clerestorey and the tower belong to the 15thc. The church was restored by Rev. G. E. Gillett in the 1830s, then in 1850 a complete restoration was undertaked by G. G. Scott. The richly carved font is 13thc in form but largely Romanesque in its details, and other features described here are the much restored N, S, and reset vestry doorways. In 2016 a new guidebook was produced (Alexander (2016) and before it was complete, new works were begun that necessitated the inclusion of an addendum explaining what had been done. The work took place between April and September of that year and included the installation of a toilet at the W end of the N nave aisle, along with a servery for catering. The font was moved from its traditional position inside the W doorway to the E end of the N aisle, and the step for the celebrant to stand on while baptising was discarded. In the course of these works it was found that the nave floor was rotten and the PCC decided to replace it with polished Ancaster slabs. It was decided at the same time to remove all the pews permanently to allow the nave to be used for more social purposes; a decision that some of the parishoners found inappropriate.
Parish church
Duns Tew is a village about nine miles S of Banbury and 15 miles N of Oxford. The church lies to the centre of the village and consists of a coursed squared marlstone and limestone structure of a chancel, a nave with N aisle, a NE vestry, a S porch and a W tower. The church was largely rebuilt in 1862 by George Gilbert Scott, but the building retains the reset S doorway, the font and some late medieval features.