The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St John the Evangelist (now)
Parish church
Radclive is a tiny village in the NW of the county, in the Domesday hundred of Ixhill, less than a mile E of Buckingham. It lies in rolling, wooded pasture, in a loop of the Great Ouse, and consists of a few dwellings on minor roads clustered around the church and the manor house. Radclive Manor is an imposing 16thc timber-framed building with brick infill, that was encased in stone in the 17thc. It stands immediately to the S of the church. Radclive Hall, a smaller 19thc house on the N side of the church, was formerly the rectory.
The church has a nave, chancel and W tower. The nave has a late-12thc S doorway under a timber-framed porch that has been heavily restored, the chancel arch is also 12thc in origin, and the tall, narrow proportions of the nave must be 12thc or earlier. Both the nave and the tower were rebuilt in the 14thc, and at that time the S doorway and chancel arch were remodelled. The nave windows are a mixture of 14thc and 15thc types, while the tower has a reticulated W window and plain 14thc bell-openings and W doorway. It also has diagonal W buttresses, a SW stair and a battlemented parapet. The masonry of the tower and nave is of roughly course stone rubble, whereas that of the chancel is of larger, more regular, blocks of ashlar. The earliest chancel windows are 13thc. There was a restoration by J. O. Scott in 1902. Romanesque sculpture is found on the S doorway, the chancel arch, stones from that arch reset above it in the E wall of the nave, a relief set above the interior W doorway of the tower and the plain font.
Parish church
The church of St John the Evangelist was newly built in 1851 in this N Oxfordshire hamlet. It houses a decorated Romanesque font that came from Over Worton nearby.
The Romanesque font came from Holy Trinity, Over Worton, a church nearby that was almost entirely rebuilt in 1844, just before St John’s, Hempton (Sherwood and Pevsner, 1974).
Parish church, formerly chapel
Originally a chapel of ease, this is now a small parish church, consisting of nave and chancel with a 13thc. N aisle. It was restored in 1872 by Charles Kirk Jr.; the S porch was added at this time. The Romanesque features are the S doorway and the font.
Parish church, formerly Augustinian house
The medieval church of Shobdon consisted of nave with S porch, chancel and W tower. A reversed view of it appears in Britannia Illustrata, vol. 2, London 1715, pl. 64 (reproduced here). This church had been demolished by 1752, except for the tower which was restored and re-used, and the present one, consisting of a broad nave with transepts, a short chancel and a W gallery, was built in an elegant Gothick style. The chancel arch and the two lateral doorways of the medieval church were erected in Shobdon Park, about quarter of a mile N of the church, as a folly. They are a crucial monument for the Herefordshire School of Romanesqu sculpture, and are described separately. The 12thc font, also a product of this School, was first discarded and used as a garden ornament in nearby Shobdon Court. In 1852 Lewis (p. 3) commented that "it is much mutilated". At some later date it was moved to the present church, where it is now installed at the crossing. This is the only Romanesque feature of the church.
This report is substantially George Zarnecki's. Ron Baxter's contribution was largely confined to editing, photography and compiling the bibliography.
Parish church
Caldecott is the southernmost village of Rutland about 4 miles N of Corby (Northamptonshire). The church lies to the N of the village; originally a chapel of ease serving the nearby parish of Lyddington, this is now primarily a 13th-c parish church of ironstone. The chancel, nave and S aisle are of the late 13thc; the W tower and spire are of the late 14thc, the clerestory was added in the 15thc and the S porch in 1648. The spire was rebuilt in the 18hc using Weldon stone. During a renovation in 1865 the chancel was rebuilt and the organ-chamber/vestry off the N wall of the chancel was added in 1908. Reset in the S wall of the chancel is a small Romanesque window.