The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Peter (medieval)
Parish church
Spexhall is in NE Suffolk, two miles north of Halesworth. The Roman road called Stone Street (now the A144) runs from north to south through the parish along a high plateau from Bungay to Halesworth. The village centre is simply a few houses and the church at the junction of two lanes, 0.6 mile west of the Roman road, and from this point the land falls away to the SW towards Wissett, where a valley runs SE to join the river Blyth at Halesworth. Spexhall Hall stands 0.7 mile north of the church and Spexhall Manor 0.6 mile south of it.
St Peter’s has a nave with a south porch, a chancel of the same width and height as the nave, and round west tower. The nave is of flint and rubble with a slate roof. It is 12thc, with walls thicker at the bottom and a blocked early-12thc north doorway. The south doorway is 14thc under a 15thc porch of knapped flint with flushwork panels on the buttresses. This porch was restored in 1733. The nave windows are 15thc. The chancel is also of flint, but of a different build from the nave, and probably early 14thc in date. It has a tile roof. Its south doorway is early 14thc and its windows 15thc. Unlike the nave it is buttressed, with a flying buttress over the priest’s doorway. The east wall was rebuilt in 1713 in brick with a diaper pattern of lattice, but the east window dates from the 19thc, its 1713 predecessor having been condemned by the incumbent Charles Craven (1847-77) as “of mean structure of two lights” and replaced in Victorian Perpendicular. The interior of nave and chancel form a single space with no chancel arch. There is a rood stair at the NE corner of the nave and nave and chancel piscinas, both on the south wall and both with cusped heads of c1300. The tower fell down in 1725 and was not replaced until 1911, with funding from the Calverts of Spexhall manor and the parishioners. When the foundations of the fallen tower were uncovered in 1911, they were declared to be Saxon, but this is no guarantee of a pre-Conquest date. The present tower has a circular bell-stair at the SE, its windows are plain lancets and it has an embattled parapet. The tower arch is also modern. There was a bequest by William Dallyng, Chaplain of Halesworth for the fabric in 1429, suggesting that work was going on here at that time. The church was restored by J. K. Colling in the 1870s. He renewed the roofs in 1876 and added the diagonal east buttresses, but the new structure put such a strain on the chancel walls that lateral buttresses were added in 1888. A sketch of the church from the SE by Henry Davy of 1849 shows the church without its west tower and with a small wooden bell-turret over the west gable. Romanesque sculpture is found on the nave north doorway and a reset stone alongside the south chancel doorway.
Parish church
Rushbury is a village in the Shropshire Hills, 4 miles E of Church Stretton and 12 miles S of Shrewsbury. The church stands on the main road through the village and consists of a nave with a S porch, a chancel with a S vestry and a W tower,. The earliest part is the nave, with early herringbone masonry in the lateral walls, while the chancel and tower are of the early 13thc. The upper part of the tower was rebuilt in 1855-56, when the entire church was restored and the vestry added. Construction is of stone rubble with ashlar dressings.
Romanesque features are the N and S doorways and a plain font.
Parish church
Newnham-on-Severn is a village on the W bank of the Severn estuary, 10 miles SW of Gloucester and on the eastern edge of the Forest of Dean. The A48 Gloucester to Newport road runs through the village. St Peter’s church stands alongside the river, and was built by Waller and Son in 1875, incorporating some 14thc fabric in the tower. This new church was almost immediately burnt down and rebuilt by the same architect in 1881. It consists of a shallow chancel with a S vestry; a nave with a 4-bay S aisle, a deep N porch and a transeptal N chapel. The W tower has a battlemented parapet and a short pyramidal spire. Romanesque features are preserved in the church: a chevron-ornamented window reset above the N doorway inside; the font and a group of loose carved stones under the tower.
Parish church
Brackley is a town in the far S of the county, sited in a loop of the
Great Ouse, which forms the border with Buckinghamshire. It is an ancient site
on the main road from Northampton to Oxford, and evidence of Iron Age and Roman
settlement has been found in the town. There seem to have been two centres to
it; one around St Peter's church towards the E of the present town, and the
other on its southern edge, overlooking the river, around the site of the
Norman castle, of which a motte 3m high and 40m in diameter survives.St Peter's has an aisled and clerestoreyed nave, the N aisle gabled and
wider than the S, which has a lean-to roof. The four-bay
arcades differ in date, the S
being 13thc. and the N 14thc. Both arcades have long
responds at the E end, pierced by smaller arches. This unusual arrangement must
be related to the lost 12thc. transept, because part of the N impost of the W crossing arch (or
possibly a section of stringcourse) survives in the N arcade wall at this point. Also from the 12thc. nave is an
elaborate S doorway, now set in the aisle. This is accessible through the
modern church hall that has been added to the S side of the nave. The
chancel is 13thc., but heavily restored c.1885.
It has a heavily restored 14thc. S chapel, two bays
long. N vestry was added c.1885. The glory of
the church is its W tower, mid-13thc. in its three lowest stages with a
late-medieval fourth storey. The lower part is decorated with full-sized
figures in niches, wall arcading in the bell storey and an elaborate W doorway with
stiff-leaf capitals. Construction is of grey stone
rubble. The new church hall is of yellower rubble, incongruously provided with
triangular-headed windows and doorway. The church was restored by C. J. Bather
c.1873, and further by J. O. Scott c.1885, when the
vestry was added.
Parish church
Stonesby is a small village in the Melton district of NE Leicestershire, 5½ miles NE of Melton Mowbray. St Peter's is on the N side of the main street, and consists of an early-14thc nave, aisles and chancel, the last refaced in in 1667, and a late-14thc W tower. In the chancel is a S doorway, 12thc in origin but retooled. There is a fine 12thc font but this is completely retooled. The church is of limestone and some ironstone and was restored by R W Johnson in 1874-75.
Parish church
The seven South Elmham villages, St James, All Saints, St Nicholas, St Cross, St Margaret, St Michael and St Peter, to which may be added Homersfield, sometimes referred to as South Elmham St Mary, lie in a scattered group between Bungay and Halesworth in NE Suffolk, to the W of the Roman road known as Stone Street. North Elmham (the centre of the see until 1071) is over 30 miles away, to the NW of Norwich, and both apparently took their name from Aethelmaer (bishop of East Anglia 1047-1070) the landholder before the Conquest. This is not certain; Tricker suggests that the name meant villages where elm trees grew. The land here is flat, generally arable and sparsely populated; the villages rarely more than a few houses clustered around the church without shops or pubs. South Elmham St Peter consists of a few houses around a T-junction of byways with the church more or less at the junction. It is on the N side of a branch of the Beck, a minor tributary of the Waveney. St Peter's Hall is 0.3 m NE of the church, and is a stone building including 15thc. tracery windows that might have come from a religious foundation (Pevsner suggests the demolished church of South Elmham St Nicholas or Flixton Priory). The flint church consists of nave, chancel and W tower; the nave with a 12thc. S doorway under a 15thc. flint and brick porch. The blocked N nave doorway is of the late-12thc. or early-13thc. The nave windows include one with Y-tracery (c.1300) on the N and the remainder are 15thc. The chancel arch is 13thc. and has signs indicating the removal of a screen. On the N side of the chancel is a blocked arch, indicating that a chapel has been removed. There are no windows on this side, but those on the S and E have Y-tracery or intersecting tracery, pointing to a datec.1300. The 14thc. tower is tall and tapers markedly towards the top. It is of whole and broken flints and has a NE polygonal stair. The tower arch is tall, and the tower has diagonal buttresses with chequerwork, similar to that at South Elmham St Cross. Like St Cross too, the battlemented parapet has flushwork tracery decoration. The two nave doorways are described below, although the N doorway may be 13thc.
Parish church
The church is largely 19thc. and comprises a W tower, a nave with N and
S aisles, a chancel flanked by a vestry (N) and chapel (S). When the church was substantially
rebuilt in 1878, the nave arcades were retained.
Parish church
The church has a complex building history, each phase of which has left traces in the fabric. The earliest discernable form is of an aisleless 12thc. nave (see the round-headed window scar in the N arcade wall above bay 2). The N wall was pierced for this four-bay
arcade towards the end of the century, and a N aisle added. The arcade has round-headed, unchamfered arches and quatrefoil
piers, but the lower parts of two of the piers are of a different form; one cylindrical and the other octagonal. Pevsner considers this to be a later encasing, designed to alter the arcade design but not completed. The alternative is that the more solid pier forms represent an earlier state of the arcade, but on balance Pevsner's explanation seems more likely, especially in view of the octagonal pier forms of the S arcade. This dates from after 1298, when a good deal of work was carried out (see VII History). The chancel has N and S chapels, extensions of the aisles, and the chancel arch and chapel arches belong to the same campaign as the S arcade, as do many of the Y-traceried windows and the S nave doorway. The slender W tower belongs to a similar or slightly later date in its lower storeys, up to the level of the reticulated bell-openings, but it was heightened in the 15thc. with a new bell-storey above, and a wooden spire (demolished c.1645). The nave has also been heightened, for the addition of a 16thc. clerestorey, but the earlier roofline is clearly seen on the W interior wall. The church was restored from 1884-86, with the loss of medieval wallpaintings.Construction is of ironstone rubble except for the Perpendicular addition to the tower, which is of grey ashlar. In 1999 a Parish Church Centre was added. This was sensitively conceived as a separate building to the W of the church. The N arcade is described below.
Parish church
Nave with a plain S doorway (not recorded but possibly 12thc.), 13thc. chancel with a 14thc. arch, early 13thc. W tower with a shingled bell-storey and pyramid roof. Only the nave is probably of a 12thc. date but, as the RCHME (3:15) stated, 'there is little evidence of this'. The font is the only certain evidence of the existence of a Romanesque church here.
Parish church
Lilley is a village in North Hertfordshire, set in rolling farmland less than a mile from the Bedfordshire border. It is 3 miles NE of Luton (Beds) and 4 miles SW of Hitchin, on the N side of the A505. The village has a long high street running N-S with the church towards its southern end.
St Peter’s was rebuilt in 1870-72 in an Early English style by Thomas Jekyll, incorporating earlier material in the 13thc piscina, the 15thc font, some stones of similar date in the S doorway, and the 12thc chancel arch, reused as the arch for the organ chamber on the N side of the chancel and described below. Jekyll’s church is of uncoursed flint with ashlar dressings, and consists of a chancel with with a N vestry and organ chamber, and the tall Sowerby chapel on the S, approached by stairs from the SE corner of the nave. This is unaisled and has a tower porch at the SW corner. The tower itself has a parapet of chequerwork in stone and tile.