The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Peter (medieval)
Parish church
The small town of Portishead occupies a strategic position on the S side of the mouth of the river Avon, and once enjoyed a trading importance subsidiary to Bristol, 8 mi away to the East. Now in North Somerset, Portishead was part of the County of Avon between 1974 and 1996. The town church of St Peter is in a surprisingly quiet area, surrounded by an airy rural atmosphere: no wonder local people refer to it as the ‘village’. The church has Romanesque origins but was rebuilt in the 14thc and 15thc in Perpendicular style. It was altered and extended to the east in 1878-9 using old materials and features. The font is Romanesque; there is also a possible early altar slab.
Parish church
The small settlement of Staple Fitzpaine is sited near where a road (unclassified but well-used) running roughly NNW/SSE between Taunton to Chard crosses a stream running WSW/ENE down from the Blackdown Hills. The former mill using that watercourse is sited a very short distance NW of the crossroads at the village centre. Crossing the Taunton-Chard road at that crossroads, a lane runs roughly SW-NE, parallel to the stream, along the S side of the shallow valley from Staple Hill towards lower ground to the NE and major communication lines of road and rail.
Emphasising the political standing of the Count of Mortain, the parish still includes (at its SE corner) his castle, Castle Neroche. By area, the parish is the second largest in the county, but by demography it is diminutive, probably having changed very little over time. Staple Fitzpaine has its own manor-house, adjacent on the N side of St Peter’s church. Resting on the large block of Blue Lias which stretches from here NE far into the central area of the county, the village has a good source of favoured building-stone. Inevitably, the area is almost entirely agricultural in character.
The church, which consists of a W tower, a nave with N and S aisles, a S porch, avestry and a chancel is Norman in origin but has been largely rebuilt. The Romanesque S doorway has been reset in the S aisle.
Parish church
Nunney lies 3 miles W of Frome, Somerset. The ‘island of nuns’, in a pleasant shallow valley at the E end of the Mendips, lies to the SE of several local limestone quarries. A Cistercian nunnery was established in 1162. There is a 14thc castle and other evidence of previous importance. The church of All Saints (formerly St Peter) is built of coursed and squared Doulting rubble with ashlar dressings, and has a cruciform plan with a W tower, aisled nave, S porch and chancel. The Romanesque elements comprise the tub font and a possible sculpture of uncertain date in the N arcade.
The parish of Shepton Montague, Somerset, is sited midway between Wincanton, Bruton and Castle Cary. It comprises the hamlets of Higher and Lower Shepton in the west, Knowle in the centre, and Stoney Stoke, formerly Stoke Holloway, in the east. Much of the northern and part of the southern boundaries of the main part of the parish follow streams which flow into the river Brue. The church comprised a nave, 13thc chancel, and S porch tower. It suffered a very damaging fire in 1964 and the present reconstruction dates from 1965-6, incorporating the original nave and Perp. tower. The 12thc sculptural fragments now attached to the exterior of the E wall were discovered embedded in the 13thc chancel remains during building work.
Chapel
The chapel stands in the churchyard of St Peter's, Prestbury, to the SE of the church. It is a simple two-cell stone building dating in its present form from 1747, in which year it was restored by Sir William Meredith of Henbury. It incorporates on its west facade 12thc. sculpture in the form of a doorway and a row of figures above, but the rest of the building is 18thc. work. The original chapel is assumed to have been built as the parish church in the 12thc., and when its successor, the present parish church, was begun in the 1220s or 1230s, it was retained as an oratory. By 1592, when it was sketched by Randle Holmes, it was ruinous and roofless. An inscription on the W gable records the restoration of 1747 in exchange for which the Merediths were granted rights of burial inside it.
Ruined parish church
All that survives of the old church at Peterhead is the chancel arch, part of the chancel and a west tower with the west wall of the nave attached. Of these, only the chancel arch and associated chancel walls appear to be of medieval date and are arguably Romanesque. The nave, itself, no longer exists, but it appears to have been long and narrow, with "an aisle on the north side" (Scottish Notes and Queries. 1889), which may mean either an aisle along the north side of the nave, in the usual sense, or an extension built outwards from the north side, as is common in post-Reformation churches in Scotland, where such additions are also called aisles. A town plan of 1739, by John Jaffray and R. Cooper, has a rough drawing of the church next to the 'Kirk-burn', which shows the south side of the church, with its west tower, nave and lower chancel intact. The centre of the parish of medieval Peterhead was at Peterugie/Inverugie Petri and the first post-Reformation minister of the church was Gilbert Chisholm, last prior of Deer Abbey, who held charge of Peterugie, Deer, Foveran, and Longley until 1569. In 1560, Queen Mary of Scotland had appointed Robert Keith as Commedator of Deer and in 1587, King James VI of Scotland raised this same Robert to a peerage, with the Deer Abbey lands as his temporal lordship. In 1593, there were just 14 feus in the parish, but with the development of the harbour, the town grew quickly. The parish was split into two about 1620, a second church being built in Longside (about 7 miles west of Peterhead town centre). In 1637, William Keith, Earl Marischal, obtained a new charter of the Deer Abbey lands, which included the tithes of the parish of Peterhead and the parsonage of the church there. George Moir was the last minister to serve the Old Church, before moving into a new church on a different site in 1770. Within thirty years this second church had become ruinous and was taken down. It's successor, built in 1804-6, survives.
Parish church
Woolley is a village about six miles S of Wakefield, and the church lies to the W of the village. The building consists of a chancel of three bays with chapels to N and S, an aisled nave of four bays, a S porch and a W tower. The church was extensively restored in 1871. Nikolaus Pevsner (1967), 558, describes the church as ‘Perpendicular throughout’; Ryder (1993), 180, thinks the nave walls may date to the 12thc. Romanesque sculpture is found on a reset tympanum, a reset shaft and a font.
Parish church
The church is essentially 13thc. and comprises nave, with a N transept and S transept tower, S aisle and S and W porches, and chancel (with 14thc. additions) with a N vestry. The S aisle, vestry and W porch are 16thc. The entire church was restored by William White (1873-89). The font is the only surviving 12thc feature.
Parish church
The 12thc fabric includes an aisleless nave, N doorway with tympanum, chancel arch and font. There is considerable herringbone masonry in the N and S walls of the nave (GL13/30). The chancel was entirely rebuilt in the 13thc, and a S transept added in c.1300. The blocked S doorway (GL13/30) probably replaces an earlier doorway in the same position.
Parish church
South Weald is a village within the borough of Brentwood, 2 miles W of the town centre. It is surrounded by farmland and includes Weald Country Park to the N of the village. South Weald is built on a netwerk of minor roads in the vee between the A12 and the M25, with the church in the centre of the village. The present S aisle was the medieval nave and chancel: with no division between the two, and a tower at the W end and a S porch. This was a 12thc structure, as indicated by the S doorway. A N aisle was added in the 13thc, and the tower was built in the 15thc. In 1868 S. S. Teulon replaced the aisle with a new nave and a chancel with a N organ room, turning the original nave into a S aisle, refaced the medival walls and restored the tower. Then in 2010 a multi-purpose hall, the Belli Centre, was completed on the N side of the church, attached to the nave by the N dooway. The only Romanesque feature recorded here is the S doorway.