
The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland

Holy Rood (now)
Parish church
Sparsholt is a village in the Vale of the White Horse, 3 miles W of Wantage. The church is a long, untidy building with a 13thc. W tower with a broach spire (renewed in 1796); a 14thc. nave and chancel and a S transept (N transept removed). The reset N and S nave doorways are late 12thc or early 13thc, and there is a plain 12thc. font.
Parish church
Wood Eaton is a quiet village off the beaten track, yet it is only 5 miles NE of Oxford, and 2 miles from Islip. Holy Rood church comprises a chancel, nave, S porch and a W tower. The main fabric of the present chancel and nave probably dates from c. 1250 (VCH). There is a plain font that might be Romanesque.
Parish church
Empshott church is located in an elevated, secluded village of scattered farms and woodland in rural E Hampshire, S of Selborne. Although small reset windows in the N and S walls of the W porch and in the N wall of the chancel are considered to be Norman, the church dates largely from c.1200, with major campaigns of renovation and rebuilding c.1624-26 and c.1867-68.
The building comprises: a W porch; a W bell turret with a glazed lantern beneath the bell stage; a nave with elaborate roof trusses; N and S aisles which have been greatly reduced in width but retain four-bay arcades; a reinforced chancel arch, and a chancel which once opened into N and S chapels. The S chapel has been replaced by a vestry.
The nave arcades date from c.1200. Stylistically they are Early English, like the chancel, but the S arcade includes scallops and cusped fluting, indicating the transitional nature of the ensemble. A Purbeck font of similar date stands at the W end of the nave.
Parish church
Shilton is a village by the river Shill, 1.5 NW of Carterton and a similar distance SE of Burford. The church of the Holy Rood consists of a C13th chancel, Romanesque nave and S aisle, C13th N porch and C15th W tower. Restoration from 1884 by G. E. Street. There is a small round-headed window in the E wall of the S aisle. The chancel arch was probably adapted in the C13th from a Romanesque arch with plain square jambs.
Parish church
Daglingworth lies some three miles NW of Cirencester. The church, which is on a level site close to the present manor house, consists of a nave, chancel, S porch, perpendicular W tower and 19thc N aisle and vestry. The only Romanesque feature is an altar, originally set in the W face of a former cross wall in the nave some 4.52m above floor level, and now set into the N wall of the chancel.
Parish church
Cuxham is about 5.5 miles N of Wallingford and 6 mi S of Thame. Today it is part of the parish of Cuxham with Easington in the Deanery of Aston and Cuddesdon. The church of the Holy Rood is set back from the road behind a thatched terrace in the centre of the village. It comprises a W tower with pyramidal roof, aisleless nave, chancel and N vestry. The walls are of coursed chalk rubble with limestone ashlar dressings. The roofs are of red tile with some medieval tiles surviving, notably in the tower. Alterations took place in the mid-18thc. The chancel was entirely rebuilt by C. C. Rolfe after a fire in 1895. The W tower is 12thc with two round-headed windows in the lower stage and rebuilt arched doorways to the exterior and to the nave. The plain, tub-shaped font is probably also Romanesque.
Parish church
The church of Holy Rood, serving a large village N of Alton in E Hampshire, is a spacious structure with flint and rubble facings and, mainly, red tile roofs. It comprises a W Tower, nave, N aisle and chancel, with an organ chamber and vestry to the north of the chancel.
Later works ensured that few decorative features of the 12thc and 13thc church remained. A small fragment carved with scallops is reset in a squint between the N aisle and chancel, and two fragments of dogtooth are reset within a blocked doorway in the S wall of the nave. The authenticity of the font is questionable.
Parish church
A cruciform church with an aisleless nave retaining Saxon features, a late-12thc chancel, late-13thc N and S transepts, S porch, 15thc W tower and 19thc N vestry. In the centre of the N nave wall is one small undecorated Early Romanesque window and part of one now blocked (photographed but not described as features). A fine quality 12thc pillar piscina is in the SE corner of the chancel, and a 12thc font is in the W tower. The only other Romanesque sculpture is found on the Transitional chancel arch.
Parish church
Mordiford is a village 4 miles SE of the centre of Hereford, built around a crossing of the river Lugg at a point less than half a mile before it joins the Wye. The land is flat to the W, in the floodplains of the two rivers, but to the E is a series of wooded hills, partly cleared for arable or rough pasture, or replanted as orchards. The church stands at a crossroads in the village centre, alongside the bridge, which dates from the 14thc. in part, and the Old Rectory, an imposing red brick building of the 1750s. The church of the Holy Rood was greatly modified in the 19thc.; first after a flood in 1811 and then in a restoration of 1868-70 by F. R. Kempson of Cardiff. The medieval church had a nave and a chancel with a central tower. After the flood the tower was taken down and a replacement built at the SW angle of the nave, but the late-13thc. E and W tower arches remain. From the S side of the nave at the E end projects the Hereford pew, of uncertain date. A N aisle with a four-bay arcade was added to the nave in 1868-70, and a polygonal N vestry was added to the chancel at the same time. The latter has a plain late 12thc. doorway re-set in its NW face. The only other Romanesque sculpture here is the S nave doorway, now squeezed between the tower and the Hereford pew and protected by a lean-to porch.
Parish church, formerly chapel
The church has a Norman nave with surviving narrow windows with deep splays and a chancel that was built in the 13thc. In the nave the north and south doors date from the 12thc. while the church contains an unusual stone chair that may belong to the 13thc.