The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Mary Magdalene (now)
Parish church
Little Whelnetham stands in the rolling countryside of the Lark valley,
some 3 miles SE of the centre of Bury St Edmunds. The village amounts to a
cluster of houses and farm buildings on the road from Sicklesmere to Bradfield
St George. Curiously, Great Whelnetham its nearest neighbour, belongs to a
different benefice.The church stands on the road through the village. Immediately to the E
of the present chancel are the rubble remains of what
may have been a round tower. If so, the present church was built to the W of an
earlier one, but Pevsner suggests that it may not have been a W tower at all,
but a separate watch tower, or an apsidal chapel. St Mary Magdalene's is of
flint with a W tower, nave and chancel. The earliest
feature is a 12thc. pillar piscina, set in the S nave
wall near the E end. It could, therefore, have served an altar against the E
nave wall but it may be reset. The nave itself is 15thc. in all its windows and
N and S doorways. The S doorway is set under a 15th-16thc. brick
porch. The chancel has a plain
13thc. priest's doorway, piscina and aumbry. Its windows and chancel arch
are 14thc. The tower is 14thc. too, to judge from the flowing W window. Its
bell-openings have been replaced, and a battlemented brick parapet added. The
pillar piscina is the only Romanesque feature.
Parish church
The church has a nave with N and S aisles; the N arcade dating from the 13thc., but the S from the late 12thc. There is a 16thc. clerestorey on the S side only. Both arcades are unusual in having an E bay that is lower than the others, and on the south the first pier from the east is actually a section of wall containing a 14thc. niche towards the main vessel. Pevsner has argued that the eastern bay was originally the arch to a chapel, and thus that pier 1 marked the division between the nave and the chancel in the 12thc. Sculptural interest in the S arcade centres on the chamfer stops of the piers, carved with foliage motifs and heads. The present chancel has no masonry arch to it, but a timber arch supported on 19thc corbels. There is a N chapel, now housing the organ, and its arch and the chancel windows are of the early 14thc. The tower stands at the NW of the nave, and was rebuilt in 1707. It seems clear, therefore, that a 12thc aisleless church of nave and chancel was given a S aisle and chancel chapel at the end of the 12thc, and a N aisle and chapel in the 13thc. Early in the following century a new chancel was added, with N chapels, and the former chancel incorporated into the nave. The church was 'thoroughly' restored in 1862 (Duncumb (1897), 47).
The church contains a well-known font, carved by sculptors of the Herefordshire School, and three unpublished carved fragments, one reused as a window sill and two loose. A very short distance to the W of the church stood a castle (see VII).
Parish church
East Ham, in the London Borough of Newham, is 2 miles N of the Thames and the Royal Albert Dock. Its High Street runs parallel to the A13, and immediately N of it, and the rubble-built church, surrounded by a large cemetery that is now designated as a nature reserve stands on the N side of the High Street. It is an imposing building with a tall, spacious nave, a chancel with the remains of intersecting arcading on the side walls, no chancel arch but a 12thc apse arch and a semicircular apse. On the S wall of the chancel are 2 low side windows, the westernmost equipped with a wooden shutter. There is a W tower, variously dated between the 13thc and the 16thc, and the 12thc W doorway to the nave is inside the tower. On the S side of the nave is a 12thc doorway protected by a porch. The church was dilapidated by the end of the 19thc, but was restored in 1891-96. Further restoration work took place in 1930 and more recently after in was damaged in the 2nd World War. Romanesque features described here are the W and S nave doorways, the chancel blind arcading, the apse arch and a corbel reset above the piscina on the S wall of the apse.
Parish church
Geddington is famous above all for the Eleanor Cross in the centre of the village. St Mary Magdalene lies just to the NE. Its nave is Anglo-Saxon, with arcaded decoration surviving on what was originally an exterior wall in the N aisle. Both faces of a splayed window pierced in this wall in the 12thc. can still be seen. The wall was pierced again for an arcade when an aisle was added in the late 12thc. The arcade is of 2½ bays, and Pevsner suggests that the original intention was to extend the nave to the E, pulling down the Anglo-Saxon E wall, but this was not done. By the time the S aisle was added in the 13thc., any such intention had been abandoned, since its arcade is of three complete pointed bays. The chancel was rebuilt later in the 13thc. and remodelled in the 14thc. This remodelling included the addition of the S chapel, and appears to be dated 1369 by inscription. Stylistically this seems 50 years too late - Pevsner goes into detail on this issue. There is also a N chapel - now housing the organ. The W tower is Perpendicular, with a spire with two rows of lucarnes. The only Romanesque sculpture is in the N arcade, and in loose stones clearly replaced from that arcade during a restoration.
Parish church
Waltham on the Wolds is a small village in the Melton district of NE Leicestershire, 5 miles NE of Melton Mowbray. The church stands on the High Street in the village centre and is built of coursed and squared limestone. It consists of a chancel with a N vestry, central tower, transepts, aisled nave and a S porch. The doorways indicate a 12thc nave to which aisles were added c.1300. The chancel was remodelled at this time too, and so were the transepts. The nave clerestorey and the tower belong to the 15thc. The church was restored by Rev. G. E. Gillett in the 1830s, then in 1850 a complete restoration was undertaked by G. G. Scott. The richly carved font is 13thc in form but largely Romanesque in its details, and other features described here are the much restored N, S, and reset vestry doorways. In 2016 a new guidebook was produced (Alexander (2016) and before it was complete, new works were begun that necessitated the inclusion of an addendum explaining what had been done. The work took place between April and September of that year and included the installation of a toilet at the W end of the N nave aisle, along with a servery for catering. The font was moved from its traditional position inside the W doorway to the E end of the N aisle, and the step for the celebrant to stand on while baptising was discarded. In the course of these works it was found that the nave floor was rotten and the PCC decided to replace it with polished Ancaster slabs. It was decided at the same time to remove all the pews permanently to allow the nave to be used for more social purposes; a decision that some of the parishoners found inappropriate.
Parish church
Duns Tew is a village about nine miles S of Banbury and 15 miles N of Oxford. The church lies to the centre of the village and consists of a coursed squared marlstone and limestone structure of a chancel, a nave with N aisle, a NE vestry, a S porch and a W tower. The church was largely rebuilt in 1862 by George Gilbert Scott, but the building retains the reset S doorway, the font and some late medieval features.
Parish church
Debenham is a small town skirted by the river Deben (little more than a
stream at this point), in central Suffolk some 8 miles E of Stowmarket. It is
built on a hill, small but steep-sided, with the church at the summit and the
High Street running past it from N to S. The church provides a perfect example
of the development of English medieval architecture. Its sturdy W tower is
11thc.; its chancel is 13thc. Early English; the nave
is 15thc. Perpendicular and the W Galilee is 14thc. Decorated. In more detail,
the lower parts of the flint tower probably date from the first half of the
11thc., before the Conquest, and show long and short work at the angles (best
seen at the NW) and coursed and herringbone masonry.
On the S wall are two simple round-headed lancets, but they are not identical.
The lower is thinner with long and short masonry jambs and belongs with the
first phase described above. The upper is broader with a slight chamfer around the opening, pointing to a post-Conquest date.
The tower arch inside belongs to this second campaign. The tower received its
belfry stage, including the bell-openings, around 1380,
the date of a bequest of 20 marks from Walter Hart. The ashlar embattled parapet is a later addition. It apparently had a
small spire that was struck by lightning in the 17thc. and taken down in 1667.
There is no obvious trace of the Romanesque nave and chancel that belonged to the tower. The next phase of the
present building is the 13thc. chancel that replaced
its Romanesque predecessor. The N windows are plain pointed lancets but those
on the S, facing the town, are two-light plate tracery windows, indicating a
date towards the middle of the 13thc. The E window is renewed, but is a simple
triplet as might be expected. Inside, the piscina is
also 13thc. On the S side stands the impressive tomb of Sir Charles Framlingham
(d.1595) and his wife. The next campaign involved the building of the Galilee,
a two-storey W porch of flint with a knapped flint
façade and battlements on the lateral walls. It dates from the late
14thc. The Norman nave was completely remodelled in the first half of the
15thc., when aisles were added with tall, four-bay
arcades. The chancel arch was
replaced at the same time as the arcades were built.
Mortlock points out that the 13thc. jambs of the arch were raised by inserting
new sections, and new capitals were carved, like those of the nave
arcades. The arch became unstable, and by 1875 it was
propped up by a timber support, and the chancel was
blocked off as unsafe (Watling). It was restored in 1883. The nave aisles are
tall too, and lit by three-light windows with segmental two-centred heads. The
walls of the central vessel were raised to provide clerestories with two
triple-light windows per bay. The Perpendicular work
was faced externally with knapped flint, and embattled
parapets were provided for nave and aisle walls. The N and S doorways
are positioned below half-height windows in the aisles, and have no porches.
The original nave buttresses have flushwork panels, but two have been replaced
in the centre of the S wall, along with the section of aisle wall between them.
This work is done in red brick, and probably dates from 1567-68 when money was
bequeathed to repair the broken and decayed windows. The S aisle windows lost
their tracery and mullions during the 18thc, and were patched with brick and
timber, and in the same period the SE corner of the church was consolidated
with huge brick buttresses. These disfigurements were reversed in the
restorations of 1882-87 by H. J.Green of Norwich, who also restored the
chancel. The tracery of the new S aisle windows was
copied from those in the N aisle. Only the tower arch is recorded
here.
Parish church
A large church with at least two main phases of 12th-century building identifiable: at first it had a cruciform plan; later, nave aisles enclosing a west tower were added. Pevsner 1967, 154, says Campsall church has ‘the most ambitious Norman west tower of any parish church in the Riding’. Subsequently, alterations have been made to the aisle arcades, windows, chancel and south doorway. The church was restored between 1871 and 1877 by G. G. Scott (Borthwick Institute Faculty Papers 1871/2 with plan) and piecemeal after. Restoration of stonework on the tower was in progress in 2005. Romanesque sculpture is on the west doorway and tower; one chancel window (inside and out); arches at the crossing; and numerous loose and reset fragments.
Parish church
Numerous additions and restorations have produced a complex,
asymmetrical building dating largely from the 16thc. and 19thc. The earliest
part is the lower stage of the S tower, dating from the late 12thc. or early
13thc.
Parish church
A roadside parish church to the south of Ashford, with Romanesque sculpture in two exterior doorways. The church has a massive Norman W tower, its W face containing a Romanesque doorway with a smaller 15th-century portal inserted within it. The chancel dates to the 14th century, as do the aisles to the nave. The south aisle contains a reset Romanesque doorway.