The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St Peter (now)
Parish church
Higham on the Hill is a village in the Hinckley and Bosworth district of SW Leicestershire, adjacent to the Warwickshire border and 2.5 miles NW of Hinckley. It consists now of a Norman W tower to which was added a nave by Henry Couchman of Warwickshire in 1791, a S aisle and porch by Ewan Christian in 1854 and a chancel by R. Jennings in 1870. It is clear from a large blocked arch in the W wall of the tower that this was originally central. It is an elaborate structure with corbel tables on all four faces, bell-openings and wall arcading.
Parish church
Wrockwardine is a village in the E of the county (now part of the Unitary Authority of Telford and Wrekin), 4 miles W of the centre of Telford. St Peter's is a large sandstone church in the village centre, and is a cruciform building with a crossing tower and N and S chapels to the chancel. Of this, the crossing, transepts and E section of the nave are late-12thc; the chancel is 13thc; the W section of the nave is early-14thc, and the N and S chapels are both 14thc too, the S later than the N. The upper storey of the tower is 13thc work with plate tracery bell openings. The church was restored in 1854 and again in the 1880s. Romanesque work described here are the N and S transept doorways and the crossing arches.
Parish church
Broughton Poggs is a village about four miles SW of Carterton. The church lies to the S of the village and was built of coursed rubble limestone with dressed quoins. The 12thc chancel was extensively altered in the 13thc, whilst the nave and the massive W tower are original. the church was extensively restore and altered in 1874. Romanesque sculptural elements consist of the chancel arch, the N and S doorways, the windows in the nave and the W tower, two blocks decorated with chevrons reset into the tower arch, and the font.
Parish church
The medieval church was on a site in Church Street, and was said to have had some Roman stone in it (McLane 1964, 3). In an illustration of the medieval church from the SE before its demolition in 1814, the chancel has a steep roof of tile but a flatter nave roof; there is a wooden bell turret at the W end within the rectangle of the nave; corbels run along the walls of the nave and chancel; one round-headed slit window remains in the S wall of the nave but other windows are square-headed; and there was a large wooden porch (Hudleston 1962).
Sir Stephen Glynne visited Norton in 1827 and saw its successor, ‘rebuilt in a plain style without a steeple’. That building was replaced by the present church on a new site in Langton Road in 1894.
When the medieval church on Church Street was demolished about 1814 ‘the owner of Sutton Grange bought the font. It was placed in the garden… and was a treasured possession. It was presented by Mrs Wightman to the new church of St Peter in 1894,’ (McLane 1964, 6-7). This font is the only remnant of the medieval church.
Parish church
Spexhall is in NE Suffolk, two miles north of Halesworth. The Roman road called Stone Street (now the A144) runs from north to south through the parish along a high plateau from Bungay to Halesworth. The village centre is simply a few houses and the church at the junction of two lanes, 0.6 mile west of the Roman road, and from this point the land falls away to the SW towards Wissett, where a valley runs SE to join the river Blyth at Halesworth. Spexhall Hall stands 0.7 mile north of the church and Spexhall Manor 0.6 mile south of it.
St Peter’s has a nave with a south porch, a chancel of the same width and height as the nave, and round west tower. The nave is of flint and rubble with a slate roof. It is 12thc, with walls thicker at the bottom and a blocked early-12thc north doorway. The south doorway is 14thc under a 15thc porch of knapped flint with flushwork panels on the buttresses. This porch was restored in 1733. The nave windows are 15thc. The chancel is also of flint, but of a different build from the nave, and probably early 14thc in date. It has a tile roof. Its south doorway is early 14thc and its windows 15thc. Unlike the nave it is buttressed, with a flying buttress over the priest’s doorway. The east wall was rebuilt in 1713 in brick with a diaper pattern of lattice, but the east window dates from the 19thc, its 1713 predecessor having been condemned by the incumbent Charles Craven (1847-77) as “of mean structure of two lights” and replaced in Victorian Perpendicular. The interior of nave and chancel form a single space with no chancel arch. There is a rood stair at the NE corner of the nave and nave and chancel piscinas, both on the south wall and both with cusped heads of c1300. The tower fell down in 1725 and was not replaced until 1911, with funding from the Calverts of Spexhall manor and the parishioners. When the foundations of the fallen tower were uncovered in 1911, they were declared to be Saxon, but this is no guarantee of a pre-Conquest date. The present tower has a circular bell-stair at the SE, its windows are plain lancets and it has an embattled parapet. The tower arch is also modern. There was a bequest by William Dallyng, Chaplain of Halesworth for the fabric in 1429, suggesting that work was going on here at that time. The church was restored by J. K. Colling in the 1870s. He renewed the roofs in 1876 and added the diagonal east buttresses, but the new structure put such a strain on the chancel walls that lateral buttresses were added in 1888. A sketch of the church from the SE by Henry Davy of 1849 shows the church without its west tower and with a small wooden bell-turret over the west gable. Romanesque sculpture is found on the nave north doorway and a reset stone alongside the south chancel doorway.
Parish church
The church has a nave with a 13thc. south aisle extended west alongside the tower, no clerestorey, a chancel and west tower. The 13thc. nave arcade is three bays long. In the aisle is a late-12thc. doorway under a porch. The north doorway is later and has no porch. The tower is 13thc. in its lower parts, with early 14thc. bell-openings. Construction is of stone rubble. The only Romanesque element is the plain S doorway.
Parish church
Rushbury is a village in the Shropshire Hills, 4 miles E of Church Stretton and 12 miles S of Shrewsbury. The church stands on the main road through the village and consists of a nave with a S porch, a chancel with a S vestry and a W tower,. The earliest part is the nave, with early herringbone masonry in the lateral walls, while the chancel and tower are of the early 13thc. The upper part of the tower was rebuilt in 1855-56, when the entire church was restored and the vestry added. Construction is of stone rubble with ashlar dressings.
Romanesque features are the N and S doorways and a plain font.
Parish church
Newnham-on-Severn is a village on the W bank of the Severn estuary, 10 miles SW of Gloucester and on the eastern edge of the Forest of Dean. The A48 Gloucester to Newport road runs through the village. St Peter’s church stands alongside the river, and was built by Waller and Son in 1875, incorporating some 14thc fabric in the tower. This new church was almost immediately burnt down and rebuilt by the same architect in 1881. It consists of a shallow chancel with a S vestry; a nave with a 4-bay S aisle, a deep N porch and a transeptal N chapel. The W tower has a battlemented parapet and a short pyramidal spire. Romanesque features are preserved in the church: a chevron-ornamented window reset above the N doorway inside; the font and a group of loose carved stones under the tower.
Parish church
The church is of pebble rubble, embattled
following a restoration of 1640 when the chancel was also rebuilt. It has a nave, possibly of the
11thc. (RCHM), with a 14thc. S aisle, a mortar-rendered unaisled
chancel with S vestry and a W
tower. There are assorted architectural mouldings and a piece of a 13thc. grave
slab reset on the exterior of the S and E walls of the S vestry. The only 12thc. sculpture is on a reset window head
in the N nave wall.
Parish church
Boxted is a village that extends over a network of minor roads between the River Stour and Colchester, 4 miles to the S. There are two main parts to the village. In the N, less than a mile from the Stour and the Suffolk border, is the church and the hall, while to the S of this and detached from it is the long straight road to Colchester that contains the newer part of the village. St Peter’s consists of a nave with N and S aisles and clerestories; the arcades (3 bays on the N side and 4 on the S) simply pierced through the 12thc nave walls. The interior walls are rendered and whitewashed but the outlines of 2 round-headed windows are faintly visible on the N arcade wall. There is a W gallery dated 1836, and N and S nave doorways, the former now leading to a modern kitchen built of timber. The chancel arch is 12thc and the 2-bay chancel has 15th windows. There is a W tower that might originally have been 12thc, with round-headed brick lancets on the lowest storey. Construction of the tower is of boulders and puddingstone conglomerate rubble in the lower parts, and brick above with bell openings indicating an early 14thc date for the top parts. The diagonal brick buttresses are presumably contemporary. The exterior of nave and chancel are of coursed mixed rubble, while the S porch and the dormers in the aisle and nave roofs present a markedly domestic appearance. The only Romanesque feature is the heavily modified chancel arch.