The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Michael (now)
Parish church
Large church of 14thc. and later, extensively restored 1859-60. In the churchyard N of the church a flint building, originally the Chantry Chapel of St Mary, later a school called St Michael's Hall. In the S wall of this is a reset 11thc. or 12thc. relief.
Parish church
The church is of a late-medieval fully aisled vessel plan, but with the unusual feature of a 14th-15thc steeple at the E end of the N aisle of the nave. Much of the of the fabric of the chancel is Perpendicular or late 14thc, but the SW corner of the building is essentially Romanesque masonry, including the W front up to gable level. The S wall contains remains of a Romanesque window and S doorway, before being continued by a late 14thc extension.
Parish church
The villages of Upper and Lower Breinton are loosely scattered along minor roads two to three miles W of the centre of Hereford on the rising land on the N bank of the river Wye. The land here is hilly and wooded and used for rough pasture and orchards. Lower Breinton, where the church is situated, is the eastern of the two settlements and lies along the river bank. In the orchard immediately to the W of the church are earthwork remains of Deserted Medieval Village (DMV), or manorial type.
St Michael’s has a nave with a N aisle and S porch, and a chancel with a N vestry. There is no tower, but a slate-hung belfry over the W gable of the nave, with a slate broach spire. The church was rebuilt by F. R. Kempson in 1866-70, when the N aisle was added. He reused the 12thc W doorway and the window above it, and reset a pair of plain 12thc window heads in the gable above. Little is known of the old church, but a W gallery was added to the nave in 1833-34 by L. Johnson, a builder of Hereford. Only the W doorway can be considered sculpture, and it is described below.
Parish church
Brent Knoll is in the Sedgemoor district of Somerset, 2 miles NE of Burnham-on-Sea. The name of the village is taken from the hill topped by a hillfort that rises immediately to the east.
The village of Brent Knoll follows the lane around the base of Brent Knoll, from its NW sector to its S, where it joins the main A38 trunk road from Bristol to Taunton. The M5 runs only a few hundred yards further east. Brent Knoll is an Upper Lias protrusion above the dominant Middle Lias of the area, 456 feet (139m) high at its summit, mainly surrounded by the Somerset levels, it is perhaps the most prominent landmark in this part of the county. It bears the marks of agricultural and military exploitation from prehistoric times. The manor house and church hug the lower slopes of its relatively sheltered SW flank. It is about 2 miles from the present shoreline of the Bristol Channel to the W. On a clear day it is visible from well down the Channel. Unfortunately, views from the church are limited except to the south, and these are impeded by trees and housing. The church consists of a nave with a separately roofed N aisle and a S porch, a S transept (now the vestry), a chancel and a W tower. Romanesque features are the S nave doorway, a pillar piscina in the N aisle and the font.
Parish church
Chenies is a village in E Buckinghamshire, within half a mile of the Hertfordshire border and under three miles E of Amersham. The village stands on rising ground on the S bank of the river Chess with the church at its heart and Chenies manor, an attractive brick manor whose oldest parts date from the 1460s, immediately to the W. Despite the proximity of such commuter towns as Amersham and Chalfont, and the main rail link to London running nearby, Chenies has sustained an attractive village character. The Chess valley here is heavily wooded and largely given to pasture.
St Michael’s consists of a nave with no clerestory but a S aisle, extended alongside the chancel by A. J. Pilkington in 1896-97 to form a S organ chamber, a W tower and, running the entire length of the N side of the church, the Bedford Chapel begun in 1556. The church dates largely from a reconstruction begun in 1479 that continued for 30 years; Sir David Philip, then resident in the manor at his death in 1506, left £4 in his will to “fynyshe my building of the parish church of Chenies”. The 4-bay S arcade is of this date. The Bedford chapel was built in 1556 by Anne, Countess of Bedford according to the will of her husband, Sir John Russell, the first earl. It communicates with the church via three glazed arches, one in the chancel and two in the nave, and is, according to Pevsner, “the richest storehouse of funeral monuments in any parish church of England.” Unfortunately this treasure-chest is not accessible to the casual visitor, nor are the monuments easily visible from the nave, since the chapel lights can only be turned on from inside it. The chapel has been enlarged several times since the 16thc. In 1861-62 Henry Clutton extended the vault northwards under the churchyard; in 1886-87 the chapel itself was extended westwards with a vault below by A. Macpherson of Derby, and a N aisle was added and the chapel extended to the E by Bodley in 1906-07. The west tower has diagonal west buttresses and a polygonal turret taller than the tower at the SE angle, a common Buckinghamshire feature. It is fitted with large Perpendicular bell-openings and has a battlemented parapet with gargoyles at the angles. The church is constructed of flint rubble, and the 19thc churchyard wall is of knapped flint and ashlar chequerwork. The church itself was restored twice in the 19thc; by Clutton (1861-62) and Macpherson (1886-87). Vestiges of the pre-15thc church survive in the 12thc font, one of the Aylesbury group, and a loose 12thc volute capital.
Parish church
Taddington is situated high on a limestone plateau of Derbyshire's Peak District, along the former route of the A6, which now bypasses the village to the north. The church tower and spire date to the 14thc and the body of the church is 14th to early 15thc with late 15thc re-windowing. The whole church was restored in 1891.
The only Norman feature is a cross shaft and socket stone in the churchyard, described in Historic England's List Entry (1009051) as of 'probable 11thc' date.
Parish church
St Albans is a city in Hertfordshire by virtue of the cathedral (formerly St Alban’s Abbey), although in terms of its population it is only the 4th largest settlement in the county, after Watford, Hemel Hempstead and Stevenage. The city is situated centrally in the county, 2 miles outside the M25 on the N side, and midway between the A1 and the M1. St Michael’s parish is on the W edge of the city, in Verulamium Park. The church now consists of a chancel with a N vestry, nave with a N aisle having a tower at its W end, and a Lady chapel on the S side of the E part of the nave, with a porch at the centre of the S side and a vestry at its W end. The building’s development is a complex one. A 2-cell Saxon church has a foundation date of 948. Remains of round-headed windows in the original nave walls seem too large to represent the original fenestration, but they certainly predate the piercing of the walls to provide 3-bay aisles in the 12thc. The chancel was lengthened at this time, and in the 13thc the nave walls were heightened and provided with clerestory lancets. A W tower was also added at this time and the Lady Chapel was added at the E end of the S aisle by widening it and modifying the arcade bays. Evidence of the tower falling into disrepair and the loss of the S aisle from the 18thc led to major restorations. The first general restoration was by George Gilbert Scott in 1866, and he also added the S porch. Then from 1898 a more drastic restoration was undertaken by Lord Grimthorpe, who added a vestry on the site of the lost S aisle, demolished the tower and rebuilt the W end of the nave,building a new tower at the W of the N aisle and the N vestry to the chancel. The church is faced with flint and also includes Roman brick, notably in the pre-Conquest nave windows. The arcades are described below. A small early medieval interlaced carved stone cross set in the N arcade wall was introduced from Italy in the 20thc.
Parish church
The seven South Elmham villages; St James, All Saints, St Nicholas, St Cross, St Margaret, St Michael and St Peter, to which may be added Homersfield, sometimes referred to as South Elmham St Mary, lie in a scattered group between Bungay and Halesworth in NE Suffolk, to the W of the Roman road known as Stone Street. North Elmham (the centre of the see until 1071) is over 30 miles away, to the NW of Norwich, and both apparently took their name from Aethelmaer (bishop of East Anglia 1047-1070) the landholder before the Conquest. This is not certain; Tricker suggests that the name meant villages where elm trees grew. The land here is flat, generally arable and sparsely populated; the villages rarely more than a few houses clustered around the church without shops or pubs. South Elmham St Michael consists of a few houses along the minor road running S from St Peter's to Home Farm, which marks the end of the village. The church is off this road to the E. It comprises nave, chancel and W tower, all of flint but mortar rendered on nave and chancel. Both nave and chancel have been raised, with courses of brick at the top of the walls. A mark on the W wall of the tower shows an earlier, steeper roofline. The nave has a 12thc. S doorway under a timber-framed porch, mortar rendered on the exterior. The N nave doorway is blocked and gives no indication of its date. The nave windows date from c.1300 and have two lights with Y-tracery. The chancel S and E windows are of the same c.1300 type (there are no N windows), and the priest's S doorway and piscina are contemporary. There is no chancel arch. The tower, of unrendered flint, has W window and bell-openings of c.1300, and the tower arch is tall and narrow. The only Romanesque sculpture is on the S doorway.
Parish church
The church consists of a 13th-century chancel, late 13th-century S aisle, a N aisle of 1755, and a W tower of 1725. The chancel arch appears to date from the 12th century and is extremely wide and flat, as if it has been reset. The S door has 12th-century jambs and a Perpendicular head, one of the most bizarre combinations in the county.
Parish church
A flint and stone church with 12thc. nave (possibly rebuilt in the 13thc.), 19thc. S aisle, early 14thc. chancel and S transept, 15thc. W tower and 19thc. S porch. The church was substantially restored and rebuilt in 1871-3 by G. F. Bodley. During the reconstruction of the S aisle of the nave the 12thc. doorway was reset and the simple N doorway of the nave was also reused. The chancel retains 13thc. windows.