The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Peter (medieval)
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.
Parish church
The red brick church, built in 1780 but restored and enlarged in 1861, contains a carved Romanesque font.
Parish church
Higham on the Hill is a village in the Hinckley and Bosworth district of SW Leicestershire, adjacent to the Warwickshire border and 2.5 miles NW of Hinckley. It consists now of a Norman W tower to which was added a nave by Henry Couchman of Warwickshire in 1791, a S aisle and porch by Ewan Christian in 1854 and a chancel by R. Jennings in 1870. It is clear from a large blocked arch in the W wall of the tower that this was originally central. It is an elaborate structure with corbel tables on all four faces, bell-openings and wall arcading.
Parish church
Wrockwardine is a village in the E of the county (now part of the Unitary Authority of Telford and Wrekin), 4 miles W of the centre of Telford. St Peter's is a large sandstone church in the village centre, and is a cruciform building with a crossing tower and N and S chapels to the chancel. Of this, the crossing, transepts and E section of the nave are late-12thc; the chancel is 13thc; the W section of the nave is early-14thc, and the N and S chapels are both 14thc too, the S later than the N. The upper storey of the tower is 13thc work with plate tracery bell openings. The church was restored in 1854 and again in the 1880s. Romanesque work described here are the N and S transept doorways and the crossing arches.