The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Nicholas (now)
Parish church
Chearsley is a village in the east of central Buckinghamshire, six miles SW of
Aylesbury. It stands on the rising ground on the W bank of the river Thame, and the
church is at the SE end of the village, in rolling wooded pasture near the river. The
church has a nave with a S porch, chancel with N vestry and a W tower. The relation
between nave and chancel is an odd one; the chancel is slightly lower than the nave, and offset to the N. A local
tradition suggests that the lower walls of the chancel may
have been part of a single-celled 11thc. chapel. There is certainly a change in the
masonry, from very irregular rubble below to coursed and more regular rubble above. A
priest's doorway was added to the chancel in the 13thc., and
it was completely remodelled in the 15thc., when ashlar buttresses (including
diagonal ones at the E angles) and Perpendicular windows were added. The vestry was added c.1850. The nave has some herringbone masonry in the N wall, but no other signs of its early
origins. The lateral doorways and two side windows are 13thc., and the N doorway has
been blocked in its lower part to leave a window. The S porch
is an 18thc. utilitarian brick structure, and the wooden W gallery of the nave also dates from this period. The tower is 15thc., and has
a polygonal turret with a pyramid roof on the S side that
rises above the battlemented parapet of the tower. The only Romanesque sculpture here
is the font.
Parish church
The church is built of flint and stone in a chequerboard pattern, and consists of a chancel and a nave with a large S transept. During the 19th-century restoration, the 12th-century door was incorporated into the S side of the nave. Some of the stones were reused from the old church.
Parish church
The church consists of a 13thc. S doorway; N and S nave arcades and chancel of the 14thc. (as per inscription once in E window of chancel noting patronage of 'Thomas de Wyversty' (see Holles), the abbot of Waltham from 1345-71); clerestory and W tower later medieval. Ewan Christian restored the chancel in 1875-78. The billet frieze on the S and E exterior chancel walls and the tower arch are of the 12thc.
Parish church
The church, largely of flint, stands on a substantial mound, and
consists of an aisleless nave with S porch; a 12thc.
chancel of clunch rubble lengthened in the 16thc.; and
a short two-storey W tower with a pyramid roof. There is a 12thc. window in the
N wall of the chancel.
Parish church
The Anglo-Saxon church is remarkably complete, having an apsidal
chancel and a rectangular nave with porticus or
transepts at its E end. The tower on the N side of the chancel was built in 1871, and the N porch was added in 1886. The font dates from the early
13thc.
Parish church
Islip lies 5 miles NE of Oxford, on the N bank of the river Ray. According to tradition, Islip was the birthplace of King Edward the Confessor in 1004, who is reputed to have been baptised in the wooden Saxon church that pre-dated the current one, N of the present site. The church of St Nicholas was built in the late 12thc and largely rebuilt in the 14thc. It now comprises a chancel, a nave with S and N aisles, a W tower and a S porch. There was a drastic restoration by E. Bruton in 1861. The transitional-style N nave arcade survives with two squat round piers, and a single round-headed window is reset at the W end of the S aisle.
The battle of Islip bridge fought during the Civil War (1645) caused severe damages to the building. Substantial restoration work was carried out in 1680. It was almost entirely rebuilt in 1861.
Parish church
Little Saxham is a small village in W Suffolk, just 3½ miles W of the centre of Bury St Edmunds. The church stands in the centre of the village. It is of flint and septaria and has a round W tower, a nave with a N aisle and a chancel with a N chapel, now used as a vestry. The tower is described by Pevsner as 'the most spectacular Norman round tower in Suffolk' on account of its arcaded bell-storey. It also has its original W window; small but decorated with chevron ornament and a tall, very narrow tower arch. The S nave doorway is 12thc. too, under a 14thc. porch, and another 12thc. doorway is now set inside, in the W wall of the nave, S of the tower arch. The N aisle, with a three-bay
arcade of simply-moulded continuous arches with chamfered
orders, dates fromc.1300, and to the same campaign belong the S clerestorey and the plain N nave and chancel doorways. The aisle windows have flowing and reticulated tracery and must have been added towards the middle of the 14thc. The chancel arch is tall and broad with Perpendicular capitals and bases. The nave S wall was remodelledc.1500 or slightly afterwards. It was heightened and given battlements and three-light windows in the plainest of Perpendicular styles. The N chapel was built as a chantry chapel by Sir Thomas Fitzlucas, Solicitor-General to Henry VII, in 1520. It has battlements and a window like those of the nave S wall. Fitzlucas died in 1531 after building his own tomb, decorated with shields in quatrefoils, but he was buried in London. He left a bequest for remodelling the chancel and adding battlements like those of the nave, but although the E window appears to date from this period the battlement was never added. Romanesque features described here are the S nave doorway, the re-set doorway and the windows, blind arcading, string course and tower arch. of the W tower.
Parish church
Built of grey coursed rubble, the church consists of a 12thc. nave and chancel, both without aisles, and a 19thc. tower inserted into the W end of the nave. Romanesque sculpture is found in the S and N nave doorways, the latter now blocked, in a window and string course on the E chancel wall, and in the chancel arch; there are also some carved fragments inset into the interior chancel wall. A 19thc. sketch records the appearance of the Romanesque W front, which was moved to the vicarage grounds when the W tower was built.
Parish church
The reader is referred to the report on the church of St Martin at North Stoke for important general material on this area, part of Mercia during the Saxon period.
The view showing Bathampton church in its landscape-setting looks across from the church to the water-meadows south of the Avon to the housing-estates of Batheaston on the other side of the river. The first bridge left of the church carries Mill Lane between Bathampton village and Bathampton Bridge (and Batheaston beyond) across the main railway line; the second (clearly more recent) bridge carries the lane over the newly aligned A4.
Bathampton and Batheaston, nowadays virtually suburbs of Bath, lie on opposite sides of the Avon (on the left and right banks, respectively) at the point where the river turns its course from north-westerly to south-westerly, flowing around the massif of Bathampton Down to its south — which hill rises to 204m above OD and thus makes a dramatic statement south of the river in a landscape otherwise characterised by north-south Cotswold ridges reaching down to end on the north side of the Avon valley. The Down, which shows ample evidence of exploitation in prehistory and later — Wansdyke, probable frontier between Wessex and Mercia, runs across the top — , is nowadays privileged by the site of a fine golf course which incidentally rewards the walker with exceptionally instructive as well as beautiful views.
Perhaps the clue to the siting of Bathampton is that the first river crossing above Bath itself (which may reflect a long-standing historical reality) is just north of the church — now effected by a fine bridge with attendant mill. The lane from Bathampton Bridge which runs past the west end of the churchyard would originally have continued south up to Bathampton Down, so one suspects here an important medieval and pre-medieval route. Nowadays, that route is very much cut across and obscured by later developments: (1) the Kennet & Avon Canal runs roughly east-west parallel to the south side of the churchyard little more than a lane-width away (and slightly elevated), the bridge carrying the present lane across the canal being about 100m west of its presumed original line; (2) the development of the village between the canal and the main A36 Bath-Southampton road which runs around Bathampton Down above most of the settlement. Housing development is predominantly orientated on that main road; it appears on the 1904 second edition OS six-inch map, based on an 1882-3 survey revised in 1902, to have been strung out along the A36 between Bath and Bathampton at least since the end of the nineteenth century.
A very recent development in road-building has resulted in yet another main road along the busy Bathampton corridor: the main A4 London to Bristol road, which used to run through Batheaston, has been provided with a by-pass (which makes a very easy connection — if of rather questionable æsthetic effect when viewed from certain points, e.g., Bathampton Down — with the A46 running north to the M4). Like the railway alongside, this runs past Bathampton through a cutting.
Archæological investigations attending the building of the new road in the water-meadow area between the river and the gravel terrace occupied by the most northerly part of the village discovered, as to be expected, evidence of exploitation from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages through the Roman and sub-Roman periods.
The remaining means of communication to take into account, Brunel’s main railway line to Bristol from Paddington via Chippenham and through the fine Box tunnel c.5kms east, is crammed into the small space south of the river as it passes Bathampton but, although only about 50m north of the churchyard, it runs through a cutting and is thus relatively unobtrusive. Once upon a time there was a station for Bathampton (just north-east of the church) but of course modern conditions have rendered that awkward as well as unnecessary. South to north, the canal is 500m from the main A36 road, the railway 150m from the canal, and the new A4 road about 25m from the railway — the church being squeezed between canal and railway.
Nowadays, the canal is much used for leisure (although there seem to be some permanent residents), its towpath is a fine walkway, the George pub opposite the church is very well patronised, Walter Sickert rests in the churchyard: consequently, this particular spot is often a scene of picturesque and happy activity, especially but not exclusively in fine weather.
Geologically, Bathampton is built on a gravel terrace created by the river Avon.
The church is 13thc in origin and consists of a W tower, nave, N and S aisles, S porch and chancel. The tower is 15thc, and the N aisle was added in 1858. The chancel was restored in 1882. There was an earlier restoration by Ralph Allen in the mid-18thc, but evidence of that was largely obliterated by later works. Construction is of ahlar and coursed squared rubble.
Parish church
St Nicholas's has an aisled nave with no clerestorey. The S arcade is taller than the N and is entirely the work of R. C. Hussey (1864-65). Hussey's work dominates the N arcade too, but pier 3 of the four-bay
arcade is original work of c.1200. The N aisle has been extended eastwards to form a chapel alongside the chancel, with a two-bay
arcade between it and the chancel itself. This work is 14thc., as are the chancel and its arch and piscina. The west tower is early 14thc., to judge from the doorway and tower arch. The N nave doorway has been blocked and the S has a porch. Construction is of ashlar. Romanesque interest centres on the font; a spectacularly ugly piece, elaborately, if inaccurately carved, with similarities to the Buckinghamshire group.