The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Martin (now)
Parish church
The church is of limestone rubble, partly rendered with ashlar dressings. The present nave, S and N doorways, and the chancel responds date from the 12thc. The chancel was rebuilt in the early 13thc and lengthened in the 14thc, when the transept, porch and tower were added. It is now cared for by The Churches Conservation Trust.
Parish church
Simple church in Norman style with nave and chancel, N vestry: bell turret too elaborate to be a copy. Morris 1919 says the church ‘was gutted by fire some years ago, but has since been extensively restored'; other sources do not mention a fire. R. D. Chantrell rebuilt the church 1849-50 reusing Norman sculpture and masonry but was apparently restricted in what he could do.
The stone of the original building was a local Jurassic limestone and it is weathering fast where exposed. Almost all the original work is outside: Chantrell made a pleasing interior, but a plain one: his chancel arch, with blocky capitals, and plain and square orders, is as plain as the replacement corbels on the N wall. A restoration in 2015 included preservation work on the old corbels, mainly treating with lime plaster; photographs of corbel CS4 taken by Matthias Garn (by permission of Ferrey and Mennim, architects).
When Fangfoss church was rebuilt in 1849-50 many old stones were left lying in the churchyard. The late Kit Galbraith visited Fangfoss church and found, among the jumble of discarded broken or worn stones at the E end of the church, five which she obtained permission to remove for study. These ended up in Birkbeck College, where they were seen by the fieldworker in June 1999. At that time they included two voussoirs with beakhead, two with a radial fluted motif and one fragment of integral base, ring and column. The two pieces with radial fluted decoration were jambs stones, not voussoirs, but that was only possible to assess by eye. Eventually the stones were allowed on loan from the church to the Hull and East Riding Museum, where two were (2004) on display as “Romanesque Stonework”. The other three stones were not displayed.
In 2003, there was a loose chevron voussoir by the chancel arch; this was outside in 2015. It is shown outside in the later photographs, but has since been taken inside again. A permanent display at the church of old carved stonework is being discussed (2016).
There is a remade doorway and two patterned string courses; original corbels, all except one, are on the S side of the church. Inside, there is one reset stone over the S doorway.
Parish church
Fivehead is a good-sized village in central Somerset, 8 miles E of Taunton. The village stands on the slopes of Fivehead Hill, on land that runs gently down to the Fivehead River, a tributary of the river Isle. The church is in the centre of the village and Langford manor house is just outside the centre, to the E.
St Martin’s is of Lias rubble, mostly squared and coursed, with Hamstone dressings. It consists of a nave with a S aisle and S porch, a chancel and a W tower. The church dates mostly from the 13thc and 15thc, and was restored in the 19thc and 20thc. The only Romanesque features are a small section of chip-carved stringcourse set in the inner S wall of the nave at its E end, and the font.
Parish church
The church is one of the smallest in Wiltshire. It has chequered walls of flint rubble and ashlar, and comprises a chancel and a nave without a division between them. The 12thc. font and a lancet window in the north wall suggest an early origin, but other windows and the west and south doorways are of dates from the late 15th to the early 17thc.
Parish church
Fiddington is a village in W Somerset, 5½ miles W of Bridgwater and 3½ miles from the coast, sited in the valley of a brook in low rolling country. The church is at the NW end of the village.
The church is built of coursed & squared red sandstone rubble, with some coarse and uneven herringbone masonry in the S wall of the nave, and freestone dressings. It consists of a nave with a N aisle and a S porch, chancel and W tower. The herringbone may be 11thc; the church is otherwise of the 14thc and 15thc., restored in 1860. A sheela-na-gig set at the SE corner of the nave is the only feature described here.
Parish church
Hayton is just off the Roman road from Brough to York, and about 3km from the Wolds escarpment.
The church has a chancel with a chamber off the N side, a nave with a N aisle, a W tower, and a S porch. Outside, it looks ‘very much of the C14 with Victorian restorations’ (Pevsner & Neave 1995, 451). Inside, there are several twelfth-century features: a simple round-headed arch and a plain doorway off the chancel, with part of a decorated string course reset between them on the N side; a pristine run of corbels seen from the N aisle; and a N arcade of c.1170, also with sculpture.
Parish church
The church, as most descriptions mention, is approached from the S through a tunnel of yew trees. 'The body of the church is Norman, as shown by the corners of the nave and a blocked S window visible from the aisle' (Pevsner & Neave 1995, 365). Morris 1919, 122, notes the blocked window, and corbels above the arcade.
There is a west tower, an aisled nave, and a chancel, which is not large. The arcades are similarly pointed throughout, giving unity to the interior. The lighting from clerestory windows is also good. Against this setting, the various items of the 18th-century woodwork also look well. In the E bay of the N aisle are notable tombs (under restoration in 2004). The church was not restored in one great Victorian sweep, but has been improved on by patrons in the 18th century, and the Rev. Robert Wilberforce, son of the reformer, in the mid 19th. Some of the stonework has been made good with a fine cement-like filler, although in places this is coming loose.
There is a font with arcading; much of what must have been a round-headed chancel arch remains (but how much is uncertain), and a few corbels are seen from the S aisle. Some of these features have been retooled or even more severely reworked.
Parish church
White Roding is a village in the Uttlesford district of central W Essex; one of 8 settlements sharing the suffix, believed to have its origin in an Anglo-Saxon community led by one Hroda, which settled the area in the 6thc. The River Roding, a tributary of the Thames, runs through the area, and a Roman road linking London and Great Dunmow runs less than a mile to the E of White Roding. The village is 9 miles W of Chelmsford, the county town, and clusters around a junction of the A1060 Chelmsford to Bishop's Stortford road, with the church to the S of the centre.
St Martin's has a chancel with a N vestry, a nave with a S porch, and a W tower. The nave has early-12thc lateral doorways and brick windows, 2 on the S side and 1 on the N, of a similar date. The chancel is 13thc, the tower of c.1500, originally with a spire that was taken down in 1959. The timber porch is 17thc, and the vestry was added by Somers Clarke as part of his 1878-79 restoration. Construction is of flint with Roman brick quoins to the nave. At the time of the visit the tower was under scaffolding. Romanesque features recorded here are the 2 nave doorways, the chancel arch and the Purbeck font.
Parish church
W tower of the 14th c., four-bay nave with N and S aisles, square-ended chancel is Norman with 13th c. interior; restored in 1859 by Kirk and Parry. Built of Ancaster stone. On the exterior there is a reset Romanesque corbel table in N and S walls of chancel and a Sheila-na-gig in W wall of W tower. N arcade of the nave is 12thc., but heavily restored in the 1859 renovation. Font is Romanesque.
Parish church
Medieval font now at a church built in 1939 at the junction of Anlaby Road and North Road, in the western suburbs of Hull. The font was brought from the ‘dilapidated’ parish church at Nunkeeling (Borthwick Institute, Faculty Book 12, p. 165A). The font is now in the western apse of the nave, in the children’s area, but may be moved to another position.