
The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland

St John the Baptist (formerly)
Parish church
'The largest parish church in the W parts of the West Riding' (Pevsner 1967, 229) is a mostly 15thc. building with only traces of an earlier structure. It was restored in 1879. The church has a five-bay nave with aisles, a W tower, a small N porch, a larger S porch, and a S chapel (Holdsworth chapel); the aisled chancel is also of five bays and has a N chapel (Rokeby chapel). The nave altar is currently in the fourth bay of the chancel.
For general illustrations and plan, see Ryder (1991, 75-77; fig. 89; plan in fig. 155).
The 12thc. remains are fragmentary, and sometimes puzzling.
Parish church
The church has a chancel, nave with S aisle and a W tower, and it has been much altered and repaired over the centuries (Pevsner & Neave 1995, 381). Only the fine font survives from the 12th century.
Parish church
Kirkby Wharfe is a village 2 miles S of Tadcaster in the Selby district of Yorkshire. The church of St John the Baptist appears to be compact and small-scale from the exterior, but as well as usual nave and chancel, it has north chapel, north and south aisles and west tower. Inside, there is work of many periods including pre-Conquest cross pieces and window glass collected from the Continent. There is quite alot of plaster on the arcade pillars, though without any significant marks. Pevsner says the restoration was in 1860, but no papers exist at the Borthwick Institute.
The Romanesque work includes a little late sculpture on the south doorway, N and S arcades, and, most unusually, of the three fonts, two are plain and of probable Romanesque date.