The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
All Saints (now)
Parish church
Selworthy lies 3 miles from Minehead, on the northern fringes of Exmoor, Somerset. It was rebuilt as a model village in 1828 by Sir Thomas Acland. The village and the surrounding Holnicote estate was given to the National Trust in 1944 by Sir Richard Acland. The church of All Saints, which is built of whitewashed roughcast-rendered rubble with Hamstone dressings, is described by the official Historic England listing text as 'one of the finest churches in the county'. It consists of a W tower, nave with N and S aisles, chancel and S porch. The Romanesque elements consist of a font and a piece of loose sculpture.
Parish church
Swinderby is a village in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, 8 miles SW of Lincoln and 6 miles NE of Newark. The church stands onm the W side of the High Street, It conists of a 13thc. W tower,a nave with a N aisle, a chancel with a two-bay N chapel, and a 19thc. apse added by J. T. Lee who restored the church in 1879. The N nave arcade and the pillar piscina in the chancel are Romanesque.
Parish church
The ancient parts of Langport [probably the etymology of its name is ‘long (market) town’] surround All Saints church on an originally fortified hilltop, stretch W below the hill along a causeway leading to the crossing of the major Somerset river, the Parrett. From late Saxon times the river was a major communication link enabling Langport to be a very important trading hub. It is still noticeably commercial although no longer holding the importance it had before the growth of other Somerset towns based on road and rail developments. Nowadays the principal communications are along the road more or less keeping to the high ground afforded by the Blue Lias ridge and running from Taunton in the W to Somerton and that road’s offshoot E of Langport running along the foot of the S scarp of the Blue Lias ridge and leading to the A303 London road.
To simplify geology and topography, at Langport the River Parrett cuts through the well-known WSW/ENE outcrop of the Limestone variety known as Blue Lias. The current geological description of the surface geology of the hill on which All Saints church perches categorises the stone as belonging to the Triassic type: ‘Westbury Formation & Cotham Member Mudstone & Limestone’. The church itself rests on ‘Langport Member, Blue Lias Formation & Charmouth Mudstone’.
Although the church mainly dates from the 15thc and 16thc, it houses a resited Romanesque lintel.
Parish church
Wingerworth is a large village in the North East Derbyshire district of the county, 3 mles SW of Chesterfield. The church stands in the village centre and until 1963-64 consisted of a nave with a 12thc N arcade, a chancel with 13thc lancets and a 15thc W tower. It was restored in 1903-05. In 1963-64 an extension was added to the N in the form of a new nave with an an altar and chancel at the N end, occupying the full width of the original nave and divided into 5 bays by concrete arches. The architect was Bernard Widdows of Naylor, Sale and Widdows. This spectacular enlargement was necessitated by the growth in the size of the village in the early 1960s. The original nave thus became a narthex and the chancel was repurposed as a lady chapel. 12thc features recorded here are the S doorway, the plain chancel arch, the N arcade and the font.
Parish church
Long Marston is a small village in the Dacorum district of W Hertfordshire, 3 miles NW of Tring and 5 miles E of Aylesbury, over the border in Buckinghamshire. The church dates from 1882-83 and is by Carpenter and Ingelow. It replaced a dangerously dilapidated medieval church on a site to the S, of which the 15thc tower remains. The site of the old church was saturated with water from a moat dug to drain the former manor house, and the new church was therefore built on a fresh site. The present church, built of knapped flint, consists of a tall nave and chancel under a single roof with a lean-to N aisle whose 15thc arcade piers were taken from the parish church of Tring (restored 1880-82), when Carpenter and Ingelow replaced Tring's piers with new ones. The capitals stayed in Tring. The chancel has an organ room to the N, and behind the organ, set in the N wall, are medieval stones taken from the old church. A W tower was planned by the vicar, W. C. Masters, but was not built, and in 1907-08 a W porch and vestry were added by William Huckvale instead. In 1995 a vestry, kitchen and lavatory were added at the W end of the aisle.
Parish church
Croxby is a hamlet in the parish of Thoresway in the district of West Lindsey in NE Lincolnshire. It is in the Wolds, 10 miles SW of Grimsby and 8 miles NE of Market Rasen, and consists of little more than the church situated on a minor crossroads in a landscape of rolling farmland. A church reduced to a shadow of its formal self: a two cell vessel of nave and chancel. It is mostly of the 12thc. though fragments remain of a N arcade built around 1300. A S porch was added in the 17th/18thc. Romanesque elements consist of a S doorway, S arcade, chancel arch and font.
Parish church
Fenton is a village in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, 14 miles SW of Lincoln and 5 miles E of the centre of Newark. The church stands to the S of the village centre. It has a Perpendicular W tower with a spire, a nave now with three-bay N and S aisles and a chapel on the N side of the chancel. The S aisle and chapel are of the late 13thc. The chancel was rebuilt in 1838. Romanesque elements include the blocked N doorway of the nave, the two western bays of the N arcade, and a pillar piscina. Construction is of coursed ironstone rubble, Ancaster stone ashlar, blue lias and red brick with some rendering.
Parish church
Burmarsh is a village in the Romney marsh area of Kent, 3 miles W of Hythe. The church of All Saints is a twin-cell building with a 13thc W tower, short nave, S porch, and a small chancel. For the most part it presents a later medieval appearance, and the interior owes much to the last century or so. The sole surviving Romanesque sculpture is on the S doorway, although the chancel clearly has early origins.
Parish church
Harmston is a village in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, 5 miles S of Lincoln. The church stands in the centre of the village. The nave with clerestory and side aisles, chancel, and S porch were rebuilt in 1868 by R. J. Withers of London. This followed an earlier rebuilding of the church in 1717 under the patronage of Sir George Thorold of Harmston. Throughout these renovations the W tower seems to have been left intact and is primarily of the 12thc. though capped with a Perpendicular embattled parapet with eight pinnacles. The capitals of the twin bell-openings in the upper stage of the tower and the interior tower arch are Romanesque.
Parish church
Merriott lies 2 miles N of Crewkerne. The village is close to the centre of the SW parish boundary, apparently at the crossing of two old routes. One runs along a low ridge from West Chinnock across the Parrett at Bow Bridge to Hinton St. George; the other from Chiselborough (and perhaps Martock) in the NE. to Crewkerne in the south. The parish church of All Saints dates from the 13thc, with modifications in the late 15thc or early 16thc, and major restoration including the extension of the nave, a new chancel and chapels by Benjamin Ferrey in 1860. There are two Romanesque sculptural fragments in the church and some reused exterior sculpture.