
The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland

St Mary or St Michael (medieval)
Parish church
Kington is a small market town in the west of the county, 13 miles W of Leominster and less than 2 miles from the Welsh border. Since it is on the Welsh side of Offa’s Dyke it must formerly have been in Wales. It is on the river Arrow and overlooked by Hergest Ridge. The church is in the centre of town and has a complex layout and building history. It apparently began life as a rectangular Norman nave with a chancel. To the S of the E end of the nave, detached from it and on a slightly different axis was a free standing tower of the later 12thc. The chancel was lengthened in the 13thc, and aisles were added c.1300, connecting the tower to the S aisle. In the late 14thc a chapel was added on the S side of the chancel, and in the 19thc the N aisle was widened and a second aisle added on the N side, along with N and S porches. The tower had a timber double broach spire added at some time; it was rebuilt in1794. The only Romanesque features are the N tower arch linking it to the S aisle and the font. The arch is treated as a tower arch here, although it was presumably an external doorway originally.