The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
not confirmed (medieval)
Ruined parish church
All that remains of the church is the buttressed, three-stage 12thc. tower and part of the S transept including a 14thc. N arcade. The S transept was restored in 1835 for use as a mortuary chapel. The tower has a twin pointed bell-opening ofc.1200 (Pevsner refers to them asc.1200 twins.) on the highest stage of the W face with a shared mullion within a round-headed, chamfered arch. There is a round-headed window of two orders on the second stage and a further deeply splayed round-headed window set into a buttress on the S face, heavily restored. The only Romanesque sculpture is on the corbels supporting the tower arch.
Ruined parish church
The ruins of the church centre around a rectangular structure with N and S additions. Dates in the 16thc and 17thc for the primary post-Reformation additions have been suggested, but there is no surviving documentation concerning this work. Major construction on the the church is only first recorded for 1739-40, when certain renovations were carried out. Minor repair and maintenance is documented in succeeding decades, including for replastering in 1776, but no major construction is recorded after 1740. Following much consideration in the early 19thc about the cost of renovating the church, it was decided to rebuild on a completely different site. The new church was begun in 1818.
During the 1993 excavations, earlier activity beneath the church was found, but there was no evidence of a pre-Romanesque church. Foundations of the Romanesque church were discovered with a chamfered plinth beneath the N and S walls and for the original W wall, which was further E than at present. These showed that the first church was about half the length of the present structure.
Within the surviving nave walls of the church are reused stones from the Romanesque church. Other carved stonework, with roll mouldings, survive and are laid out in the E part of the church, now overgrown. There is also a single head of beakhead form built into the E exterior of the S extension.
Ruined parish church
Nave and chancel church. The chancel
(22.4 m x 7 m) is rubble-built with sandstone dressings with a possibly 13thc. door
in the S wall and pointed lancet windows in the N and S walls. It has a round-headed
chancel arch. The nave probably dates from the 15thc. and
has limestone dressings. In the S wall of the nave are two ogival windows and a
doorway. In the W wall is a cusped, ogee-headed window with
belfry above.
Parish church
The village of Monkhopton is located about 4 miles south of Much Wenlock. A priest's doorway on the S side of the chancel may be 13thc or a 19thc copy (Newman and Pevsner, 2006)
The 12thc S doorway is decorated with sculpture, as is the interior of the S chancel window.
Parish church
St Leonard's is built of cobbles, and has a square-ended, late-13thc. chancel and a three-bay aisled nave with a clerestorey. The S arcade dates from the late 13thc., and the N is Perpendicular as is the brick clerestorey. The W bay of the N aisle houses the tower - Perpendicular and of brick with a low tiled roof. The chancel arch indicates that the nave itself is 12thc., and also from this period comes the reset S doorway and a section of string course reset in the W wall of the S aisle.
Parish church
A spired church in a late 13thc. style by G. E. Street, 1862-63. It contains an arcaded font which is probably medieval rather than 19thc.
Parish church
The church comprises an aisled nave, apparently late 11thc in origin, a 14thc W tower, and a square-ended chancel with a plain arch and a vestry on its N side. It contains a plain font.
Parish church
St Chad's is on Greengate Street, one of Stafford's main shopping
streets running S from the market square. Its W front is entirely the work of
George Gilbert Scott (1873-74), but this conceals a church that is
substantially 12thc. and considerably larger than expected. It is cruciform
with a crossing tower and aisles to the nave. The
aisles have four-bay
arcades
carried on heavy cylindrical piers with scallop
capitals and chevron decoration on the two eastern
arches of each arcade. Above the E respond capitals and pier 1 capitals
on the nave faces of both arcade walls are attached
half-shafts rising to clerestory sill level, with plain cuboidal blocks where capitals and
bases would be expected. The W responds of the arcades
are of a later date than the rest, suggesting that the nave might originally
have extended further W, but the vicissitudes undergone by the façade
(see below) make this by no means certain. Above the arcades are round-headed clerestory windows; originally 12thc.
but entirely remade. The aisles are entirely Scott's work. The only nave
doorway is at the W. The crossing tower was rebuilt in
the 14thc. and restored by Robert Griffiths of Stafford in 1884, and all four
crossing arch heads are 14thc., although the
beautifully carved 12thc. W arch was retained, the new W crossing arch being constructed immediately to the E of it. In
the detailed descriptions below, the 12thc. arch is called the chancel arch. The N arch was rebuilt in the 19thc,
incorporating 12thc. carved capitals and imposts
discovered in the restoration. The E arch has 12thc. embrasures, capitals and
imposts supporting the 14thc. archivolts above. The S arch appears to be entirely 14thc.
work, but it is largely concealed by the organ. The N transept is by Griffiths
(1886) and now houses the Jevons Memorial Chapel, furnished in 1937. The S
transept was not rebuilt until 1953-55 and houses the organ with a
vestry behind it. The chancel
is now of three bays, with 12thc. windows in the two
western bays, original on the N side, and 12thc.
interior wall arcading in these bays on the N and S sides. The exterior chancel stringcourse also stops at the end of bay two, indicating that the 12thc. chancel was a bay shorter than the
present one. It may have ended in an apse.The architectural history is a complex one. Building must have begun in
the 1140s, and an inscription on an impost of the E
crossing arch attributes the foundation to Orm,
presumably Orm le Guidon, a major Staffordshire landowner married to the
daughter of Nicholas de Tosny. The tower was rebuilt in the 14thc., but
thereafter the building seems to have fallen into decline. By 1650 it was
ruinous. The aisles were pulled down at some time in the 17thc., and the
arcades bricked up. The transepts were also removed. In
1740 the W end of the nave collapsed, and in 1743 proposals for restoration
were received from Samuel Webb and from Richard Trubshaw. Trubshaw's estimates
were accepted, and his work was completed by 1745. He repaired the E
gable, refaced the nave walls in brick with stone
facings, inserted classical windows, rebuilt the parapet of the tower with urns
at the corners, and built an austere classical W front of brick (see Friedman
2001). He may also have been responsible for plastering over the carvings of
the 12thc. chancel arch. By the early 19thc. the tower
was in a dangerous state of disrepair, and by 1860 the churchyard had been
overbuilt with tenements and workshops, and a shop shut off the W front from
Greengate Street. The first of the 19thc. restorations concentrated on the
chancel. It was funded by the banker, Thomas Salt and
carried out from 1854 by Henry Ward (restorer of Armitage church). The plaster
was removed from the chancel arch, revealing the
sculpture; the 12thc. chancel windows were unblocked,
and a new E window was installed in a Geometrical style. Salt died in 1874, and
work began on the restoration of the nave in his memory. George Gilbert Scott
began this work, opening up the blocked S arcade, and
building an aisle on this side and a new W façade in a Romanesque style
to replace Trubshaw’s brick one. After Scott's death in 1878, Robert
Griffiths of Stafford continued the work to Scott's designs. He opened up the N
arcade, rebuilt the aisle and, in 1884, restored the
tower. In 1886 he rebuilt the N transept on the old foundations, and it was
while cutting through the tower wall to make this arch that the 12thc. carved
stones now incorporated in the N crossing arch were
discovered. The S transept was not rebuilt until 1953-55, when the present
organ chamber and choir vestry were added. The William
Salt Library holds three views of 1837 from the NE, by T. P. Wood and by
Buckler, all showing the nave without its N aisle, and with no sign of any
clerestory windows, and the tower before rebuilding, with urns at the corners
(SV.IX.112a, 112b, 113a). There is also an interior by Buckler of 1844, showing
the church without aisles and with the chancel arch
plastered over. Webb's and Trubshaw's proposals are illustrated in drawings in
the William Salt Library, Hickin Papers
319/2/40.
Parish church
This small church, tranquilly standing in a wooded hollow of the wolds, consists of a nave and chancel with a very short, squat, embattled W tower that barely rises above the peak of the roof. The chancel arch is 18thc but with 13thc responds. Much rebuilding of the walls has taken place. Between 1884 and 1885 restoration was carried out by H. M. Townsend of Peterborough.
The Romanesque material consists of the font and a loose capital.
Parish church
The tall, single-cell nave, entered on the S, has a blocked N doorway and incorporates some herringbone masonry. There is a tower on the S side, a modern N transept, and a long square-ended 13thc. chancel. Romanesque sculpture is found on a fragment reset inside the porch and on a fragment of a font.