The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Mark (now)
Parish church
Englefield is just outside Reading, to the east, and consists of Englefield House and its park with the estate church built by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1857 nearby. Scott re-used a good deal of the medieval church that was already there in his new build. His church consists of a nave with S aisle, chancel with a N chapel (the Englefield Chapel), a tower (added in 1868) at the NW of the nave and a S doorway with a porch. Three bays of the S arcade date from c.1200, while the jambs of the doorway, a pillar piscina and the font are all 12thc.
Parish church
Avington is in the Hundred of Kintbury, in the SW corner of the county. The village is in the Kennet valley, 2 miles E of Hungerford and 5 miles W of Newbury. The settlement is tiny, consisting of the church and the former manor (now farm buildings) at the end of a lanes running S from the A4. The 12th-century church survives in its entirety, consisting of an aisleless nave with a chancel of the same width but slightly lower. To this was added, in the 13thc, a transeptal N chapel at the E end of the nave; gone now but the present vestry of 1877 is in more or less the same position. A S porch was added in the 16thc. There is no tower, but a bell-cote over the W gable of the nave, that may date from the 13thc. The interior was repaired, paved and seseated in 1765, and a major restoration was carried out by Butterfield in 1848-53, when the 18thc pews were removed and the chancel roof retiled. The church was again refloored in 1903, and in 1910 new roofs were erected on nave and chancel. Avington is valued as much for its sculpture as its architecture, and the main areas of interest are the richly-carved S doorway, the chancel arch, the remains of the chancel rib vault, and the font.