The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Peter and St Paul (medieval)
Parish church
Aston Rowant is 5 miles S of Thame, in the far E of Oxfordshire, near the Buckinghamshire border and the edge of the Chilterns. The large church is of flint with stone dressings, comprising a chancel, nave with chapels on N and S sides, a S porch and a W tower. The N and S walls of the nave date from the 11thc. or early 12thc., when it was probably a two-cell structure. In the S wall of the nave there is a round-headed Romanesque window in its original position, just above and W of a 13thc. doorway. In the N wall of the N aisle is a similar window and a plain Romanesque doorway, both moved from their original position in 1874 when that part of the N nave wall was demolished. They are now in their equivalent positions in the new wall of the N aisle, and directly opposite the round-headed window and later S doorway.
Parish church
Ingoldmells is a seaside resort in the East Lindsey district, immediately N of Skegness and 19 miles E of Horncastle. The church is on the former high street, well inland from the coast. It is a large parish church with an early 13thc., six-bay nave and a 14thc. S porch. The lower part of the W tower is early 14thc. and the upper part is c. 15thc./16thc. The chancel was torn down in 1706 due to its decrepit state and an incumbent who cared not for the expense of repairing it. There are three Romanesque coped grave covers set into the floor.
Parish church
The church has a 13thc. chancel as shown by a small lancet in the N wall, now opening into the N chapel. There is a S chapel too, and both now give onto a wide, approximately square nave. This had aisles originally but after a storm in 1821 they were removed and the present nave created. The windows in the side walls are large and pointed with gothick Y-tracery. The wooden gallery at the west end dates from 1924. The nave has N and S doorways; the S of c.1200 under a porch, the N slightly later, single-order, continuous, pointed and chamfered and completely plain. This now gives access to an L-shaped suite of modern vestries and offices that surrounds the NW angle of the nave, abutting the N wall of the west tower. The tower arch from the nave is of c.1200, and the tower itself is very tall and of four slightly stepped storeys with a blocked c.1200 window in the S wall of the third storey. The fourth storey is Perpendicular with transomed bell-openings and battlements. The Romanesque features described here are the S doorway and the tower arch.
Parish church
The church comprises chancel, nave, N and S aisles, S porch, and W tower. Little of the original 12thc. structure survives. The S aisle and W tower are 15thc. and much of the rest of the material is 19thc. The church was restored in 1858, 1865 and also in 1881-2 by Otho D. Peter (Pevsner 1989, 492; Historic England listing: 1104945). 12thc. sculpture is found on the reset S doorway, and on two reset fragments in the S porch.
Parish church
Alphamstone is a village in the Braintreee district of north Essex, a mile W of the river Stour, which forms the boundary with Suffolk. The nearest town of any size is Sudbury (Suffolk), 4 miles to the N.
The church consists of a 12thc nave, altered c.1300 and in the 16thc and restoredby Sir Arthur Blomfield in the 19thc. It has a 3-bay S aisle of c.1300, and a timber bell-turret with a pyramid roof over the W gable. There are porches to the N and S doorways. The chancel, also of c.1300, is 3 bays long. The nave is rendered, the N and E chancel walls ore of knapped flint, and the S chancel wall of brick. The chancel was in the course of restoration in 1902, when the Essex Archaeological Society paid a visit, and at that time dedication of the church was unknown.
The only Romanesque feature is a Purbeck marble font.
Parish church
Although Church Hanborough is only 7 miles N of Oxford, it remains a small village off the beaten track. It represents the original Hanborough and now carries the prefix ‘Church’ to distinguish it from its larger neighbour, Long Hanborough, which has developed into a dormitory village for Oxford.
The 12thc church probably comprised a chancel flanked by short chapels and a long aisled nave. Evidence for it being all one build comes from the steep pitch of the original nave roof, still visible on the W wall, which was high enough to enable the building of contemporary side aisles. Apart from alterations to windows in subsequent centuries, most of the Romanesque shell remains. The earliest change was to the chancel, rebuilt and extended in the early 13thc. Subsequently aisles were heightened and the W tower built. The interior is now mainly Perpendicular, as is the present tower with a tall spire. The clerestory was built in the 16thc., together with a lower pitched roof to the nave. Romanesque features all relate to its outer shell: the N doorway with a combined lintel-tympanum depicting St Peter, the S doorway with a simple tympanum that was cut into when a Tudor door was inserted, a plain chancel doorway and two round-headed lancet windows.
Parish church
Chiselborough is 6 miles NE of Crewkerne. The place-name is derived from the Saxon ‘cisel’ [= gravel, shingle] and ‘beorg’ [= hill] so it may be construed as Saxon for ‘Sandy Hill’. The settlement occupies a narrow NW/SE valley running up into the limestone hills composed of the famous Hamstone. The photograph taken from Ham Hill, the site of the quarries, shows the NW end of the village projecting onto lower ground between Gawler’s and Balham Hills. The church (whose steeple is visible in the photograph) is almost the last building in the NW direction. The church has 12thc origins with a 17thc chancel; a rebuilding of the nave took place in 1842. The building features a 3-cell plan of a 2-bay chancel, a crossing tower with a spire, and a 5-bay nave with matching N and S porches. Construction is of Hamstone coursed rubble in the tower, cut and squared in the chancel and ashlar in the nave.
The W crossing arch is a structure of 1911 incorporating three re-used 12thc elements that were found buried in the walls. Further re-used Romanesque features are two heads fixed to the E wall of the chancel.
Parish church
Stondon Massey is a village in the Brentwood district of W Essex, 4 miles N of Brentwood and 9 miles SW of Chelmsford. The village extends for 1½ miles along a minor road, with the church at its northern extremity. St Peter and St Paul has a chancel with a N organ vestry and a nave with a N transeptal mortuary chapel. There is a S porch to the nave, and the N doorway is now the entrance from the nave interior to a lavatory. A weatherboarded bell turret over the W bay of the nave is topped with a shingled broach spire. Construction is of mixed flint, rubble and tile, and all rendered except at the W end. The church was restored in 1849-51, when the S porch and N vestry were added. The vestry was rebuilt in 1873-74 anf the organ chamber and the mortuary chapel added. The new toilet building dates from the 1990s. Recorded here are the two Romanesque nave doorways.
Parish church
Stowe Nine Churches is made up of Church Stowe and Upper Stowe (formerly Great and Little Stowe). St Michael's has a nave, chancel and W tower. There are aisles extending from the W wall of the tower to the E wall of the chancel. Inside, this curious arrangement resolves to nave aisles with three-bay arcades and two-bay chancel chapels on either side. All the arcading appears to be 19thc. In the chancel, the N chapel contains a Purbeck tomb, reputedly of Sir Gerard de l'Isle (d.1287), and the S the tomb of Lady Elizabeth Carey (d.1630), with an effigy made by Nicholas Stone ten years earlier. A vestry has been added to the N chancel chapel. In the nave there are N and S doorways, the S under a porch, the N blocked and overgrown. Battlements have been added to the nave, but no clerestorey. The original nave has the tall proportions of the 11thc., and the tower arch is certainly of this period or earlier. The tower has part of an Anglo-Saxon cross shaft built into an exterior angle, and more pieces are inside the church. Also in the tower is a small round-headed W window, splayed towards the exterior. Unfortunately it is covered with render and the stonework cannot be seen, although it has been examined in the past (Taylor and Taylor). It has no buttresses and has been considerably heightened, with a late-medieval bell-storey and a battlement. The core of this too is Anglo-Saxon. The rest of the church is faced with coursed stones. There was a restoration c.1860 described as 'very drastic' (Taylor and Taylor, 96). Features here described are the 12thc. doorway reset in the N aisle and the chancel arch.
Augustinian house, former
Single-aisled church and monastic buildings with cloister. In the S wall of the nave are a plain round-headed doorway with a single square order and a window with two plain chamfered orders externally. The church has no Romanesque sculpture.