The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Thomas of Canterbury (medieval)
Parish church
The village of Elsfield is located on a rural escarpment 3 miles NE of Oxford, outside the ring road. A church existed here by 1122, or perhaps earlier. The present church of St Thomas of Canterbury now comprises a chancel, nave with S porch, and a 19thc bellcote on the W gable. It was largely rebuilt in the 13thc. There was once a N aisle, whose blocked arches were visible in the N wall until restorations of 1849 and 1859. The earliest surviving Romanesque feature is the chancel arch of c. 1170-80, with high quality decorated responds. There is also a plain Romanesque font.
Parish church
Whepstead stands on a low hill in the largely arable farmland of W Suffolk, some four miles S of the centre of Bury St Edmunds. The village is small, consisting of a few houses with outlying farms along the B1066 and its side roads; the church is on one of these minor roads W of the village centre. St Petronilla's has a nave, chancel and W tower. All windows of the nave and chancel are Y- or intersecting tracery ofc.1300, or other early 14thc. forms. The N and S nave doorways are 13thc.; the S under a knapped flint 19thc. porch, and the N now giving access from the church to a vestry. The nave is broad and bright, with a chancel arch having 12thc. jambs and a round head decorated with 19thc. neo-Romanesque chevron. There is a S rood stair set in the E reveal of the easternmost nave window. A scar on the E wall of the tower shows that the nave was originally taller. The 15thc. tower arch is tall and four-centred and a wooden gallery has been erected halfway up it. The tower is 15thc. too, and was repaired in 1582 (date on buttress). It has very broad E buttresses with a stair turret set in the angle of the SE buttress, diagonal W buttresses and an embattled parapet. It was apparently taller when built, and certainly had a spire but a storm in 1658 brought the spire down, and the battlements postdate that collapse. The church is entirely mortar rendered except for the S porch, the chancel E wall and the parapet of the tower, all of flint. The only Romanesque sculpture is found on the chancel arch.
Cathedral church
The Cathedral of St Thomas of Canterbury is a light, spacious church with a complicated plan, built in four principal phases.
The oldest part of the church, the original aisled chancel (now the Chapel of St Thomas), dates from c.1180-1190. The plain exterior is of rubble with ashlar dressings, and the roofs are covered in red tiles. A blocked oculus in the E gable once lit the roof space. Internally, several of the aisle capitals are late Romanesque or Transitional in character, but the rest of the ensemble – which includes stiff-leaf – is Early English. Brief entries on the Early English carvings are included here to contextualise the Romanesque or Transitional sculpture
Each chancel arcade is composed of four bays of pointed arches, grouped into pairs beneath broad round-headed arches. These correspond to the four vaulted bays of the aisles and the two vaulted bays (rebuilt in wood and plaster c.1843) over the main vessel. Above the arcades, a clerestorey incorporates a passage which continues across the E wall, through a triple-light window. To N and S, each clerestorey bay comprises a screen of three pointed arches and a single lancet. The en-delit shafts (with annulets [shaft rings] to the E and W responds) carry round capitals.
The transepts of c.1190-1230 (now the Lady Chapel to N and the Holy Martyrs Chapel to S) largely survive, although the roofs and much of the W walls were rebuilt in the 17thc (see History, below). Plaster has been removed from the S wall of the S transept, exposing evidence for medieval vaulting, but both transepts now have flat ceilings (renewed 1992).
In the S transept, a low doorway at the S end of the W wall serves a vice (stair) to the clerestorey passage, which continues through simple lancet windows to E and S. Behind a blocked pointed arch in the E wall lies the vestry (now flower room) of 1828, which is accessed from the S chancel aisle.
The clerestorey passage does not continue into the N transept, which is slightly longer than the S transept. It is lit by irregularly positioned lancets to N and E. The upper lancets, including a triplet in the E wall, have cusped heads. A pointed arch in the E wall contains a double lancet with a quatrefoil in the spandrel (almost a form of plate tracery). Between this and the chancel aisle, a mid-13thc wall painting (uncovered c.1904) occupies a trefoil-headed niche. To the W, a wide pointed arch (built 1935-38) opens into the outer quire aisle beneath a blocked lancet.
A small cloister and associated single-storey buildings (bishop’s room, vestries and sacristy) butt against the church to the NW of the N transept. This complex, dating from 1935-37, was built of coursed rubble with a flat roof, except for the vestry range, which is covered by a hipped tile roof.
W of the transept is the aisled quire (choir; former nave) and the central tower (former W tower) of 1683-94. The tall, simple columns of the nave arcades have Tuscan capitals and carry round arches, topped by a modillion cornice. Since there is no clerestorey, the central space is lit by dormer windows which puncture the barrel vault. The aisles, which were engulfed by outer quire aisles in 1935-38, are also lit through their roofs. The massive tower carries an octagonal cupola topped by a lantern and a weathervane. Internally, arches punched through the E and W sides create a view of the quire from the nave. The transepts to N and S of the tower ('the tower transepts') were added in 1935-38.
A four-bay aisled nave (1938-39; 1990-91), surrounded by a flat-roofed ambulatory, comprises the W end of the cathedral. It is built of coursed rubble with ashlar dressings. An 18thc doorway has been repositioned between bays 3 and 4 of the N ambulatory. The W bay of each aisle (1990-91) rises the height of the nave, under a hipped roof. The main vessel is lit by four-light clerestorey windows with segmental arches. The round-headed entrance and rose window in the W façade are positioned between two square towers with ogee roofs. Despite being built in 1990-91, this façade has the character of an early Romanesque westwork.