The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Lichfield (to 1075); Chester (to c.1086); Coventry and Lichfield (to 1541) (medieval)
Parish church
Bruera is in SW Cheshire, 4 miles S of the centre of Chester. It is a manor house village consisting only of the church, a moated site immediately to the NW and a few scattered houses nearby. There are traces of ridge-and-furrow cultivation in the surrounding fields.
St Mary's has a 12thc. nave with a shingled W bell-turret, added by W. M. Boden in a restoration of 1896, described by Richards as a "wanton and unnecessarily severe rebuilding of much of the church". There is a 15thc. S chapel off the nave, containing tombs of the Cunliffe family. The chancel has been largely rebuilt, but the S respond of the chancel arch is original with elaborately carved capitals and beakhead on the embrasure. There is a modern vestry on the S side of the chancel. The church contains other Romanesque or earlier material, all re-set. The S nave doorway has chevron voussoirs set above its pointed opening, and two 11thc.-12thc. carved stones on the jamb. Inside, around the rere-arch are a number of panels crudely carved with simple foliage designs, and similar panels are re-set in the interior S nave wall. They may be pre-Conquest. The church is constructed of red sandstone.
Parish church
The church comprises a nave with a N aisle of the 12thc. and a S aisle with clerestorey ofc.1300, and a 12thc. chancel. There is also a two-part crypt, rectangular under the chancel, and octagonal under the nave, both Romanesque. The fabric is of red Kenilworth-type sandstone, unless otherwise stated. Romanesque sculpture is found in the N doorway, which was resetc.1350 and is now protected by a porch, in the windows of the chancel both inside and out; on the corbel tables and buttresses of the chancel; in the chancel arch and the N nave arcade, and in the crypt.
Parish church, redundant
Woodcote is a village of a few houses and farm buildings, 2 miles S of Newport in the NE of the county, close to the Staffordshire border. The main building in the village is Woodcote Hall, originally the seat of the Cotes family. The hall was rebuilt for Charles Cecil Cotes in 1875 by F. P. Cockerell after a fire destroyed the earlier building, and it is now a residential care home. The church stands in its grounds, some 50 metres S of the hall and was made redundant in 2003. It is a small sandstone ashlar chapel with a tiled roof with gabled ends, coved eaves and an open bell turret on the W gable. The single cell building has nave and chancel in one. It was restored in 1883-84 when a N vestry was added and the E wall rebuilt. The only Romanesque feature is the late-12thc S doorway.
Parish church
Seighford is a small village only 2½ miles NW of the centre of Stafford. St Chad's is a curious mixture of brick and stone building. he W tower is of red brick and 17thc., with brick clasping buttresses and stone pinnacles added in 1748. This, or something like it, is also the date of the brick nave, but the chancel and the N nave aisle and its eastward extension to form a N chapel are of stone. The tower was built in the western bay of the nave, so that the W bay of the four-bay N arcade is alongside it. This end of the aisle has now been converted for use as a kitchen and lavatory. The arcade itself is 12thc. and the nave has no clerestory. The chancel arch is also 12thc., but the chancel contains a 13thc. piscina and nothing earlier. The arch to the N chapel is segmental and very broad, presumably rebuilt. The responds supporting it are Perpendicular (Pevsner reports the W respond as EE). The chapel is now occupied by the organ, with a vestry to the E. There are two antiquarian view of the church in the William Salt Library. A sepia wash drawing of 1838 by T. P. Wood shows its elevated position well in a distant view from the N (SV VIII 155a), and another sepia wash drawing by Buckler shows the church from the SE (SV VIII 156). Both show the building much as it is today. The only Romanesque features are the N nave arcade and the chancel arch.
Parish church
The church consists of chancel, nave, N and S
aisles, W tower and S porch. The reset S doorway is
all that survives from the 12thc.
Parish church
Stanton by Bridge is in the South Derbyshire district, 5½ miles S of the centre of Derby, the bridge in question being Swarkestone Bridge, a 13thc bridge over the Trent and its marshy flood plain linking the villages of Stanton and Swarkestone to the N. The church is on the W edge of the village and consists of a nave, north aisle, south porch and chancel, with a bell turret on the west gable. The building underwent general restoration in 1865-66 by Ewan Christian, who added the bellcote. The fabric contains Anglo-Saxon stones including some interlace, and impressive long-and short work on the SW angle of the nave. The west window and wall and perhaps the chancel arch are Norman, along with the Norman south doorway. The rest of the church is later 13th century.
Parish church
Sheriffhales is a scattered village in the E of the county, 4 miles NE of Telford and a similar distance S of Newport. The church stands in the village centre, which is towards the S of the parish. It consists of a 13thc chancel, a 12thc nave with a 14thc N aisle, and a tower rebuilt in 1723, reusing a 14thc W window. The only Romanesque feature is the tower arch; puzzling in that its capitals indicate a later-12thc date while the arch itself is pointed and deeply chamfered, suggesting a 13thc date.
Parish church
Blithfield takes its name from the river Blythe, a tributary of the Trent, and is some 8 miles E of the centre of Stafford and 4 miles N of Rugeley. There is no village any longer; all that remains are the hall, the church and the old rectory (damaged by fire in 1962 and rebuilt into apartments in the 1980s). The old village disappeared, probably in the 16thc. or 17thc., to allow the extension of parkland for the hall. The Blythe itself was dammed in 1953 to form Blithfield Reservoir, over two miles long and half a mile wide, and now a centre for wildlife and leisure activities as well as a source of water for S Staffordshire.St Leonard's is of pinkish grey sandstone and consists of a nave with aisles and a tall clerestory, a chancel with a polygonal N vestry and a W tower. The four-bay nave arcades are mid-13thc. work, with cylindrical piers, moulded capitals and pointed arch with chamfered
orders. The aisle windows are 14thc. square-headed double lights and there is a S doorway with a porch by Street (1860). The nave was heightened and the tall clerestory added around 1500. The chancel is ofc.1300 or slightly later, with Y-tracery windows and ogee tracery in the piscina. In the S wall outside is a niche tomb that has been identified as that of Richard de Blithfield, rector fromc.1185-1234. On the N side of the chancel, the polygonal vestry dates from 1829-30. It was built as a mortuary chapel for the Bagot family, and is liberally supplied with Bagot memorials. Other Bagot tombs stand in the chancel itself. The W tower is of two storeys, 14thc. below and 15thc. above with diagonal buttresses and a battlemented parapet. The chancel was restored to Pugin's designs in 1851, and the work included replacing the timber roof and the E window. An attractive, simplified S view ofc.1770 in the William Salt Library (SV II 53) shows the church without its porch and apparently lacking a chancel roof. In Buckler's 1824 SE view (SV II 46) the porch is also lacking and the chancel is heavily overgrown with creeper. His NE view of the same year (SV II 48) shows the N side before the polygonal mortuary chapel was added. Other antiquarian views are noted in the bibliography. The church contains a 12thc. pillar piscina that has been ingeniously converted for use as an offertory box, and is thus prominently sited opposite the S nave doorway.
Parish church
Yoxall was built along the river Swarbourn, which runs from N to S here. It was on the edge of the Needwood Forest, which was not enclosed until the 19thc. Its main street is now the A515 from Lichfield to Ashbourne and the church stands back from this in a spacious churchyard. St Peter's is mostly by Woodyer of 1865-68 and has an aisled nave with a clerestorey, a chancel with N and S chapels and a W tower. The nave is spacious with five-bay
arcades in a Decorated style and a clerestorey with square-headed quadruple lights. The S doorway is genuinely medieval and of c.1200 and has no porch; the N is 19thc. The chancel chapels are both of two bays, and the N now contains the organ. The W tower has a battlemented parapet and tall crocketed finials. Drawings predating Woodyer's restoration show a similarly aisled nave, apparently without a clerestorey and with no N porch; a very similar W tower and a much lower chancel without chapels. The only feature included here is the S doorway.The present hexagonal font is Woodyer's, but a drawing by Buckler of 1839 shows a slender, neo-classical font with a baluster
shaft (William Salt Library SV XII 153b).
Parish church
St Michael's has a 12thc. nave with its S doorway under a very simple ashlar porch. A N aisle with a four-bay arcade was added c.1300. The chancel has no arch, but dates in its earliest parts from the 13thc. It has a two-bay N chapel - an extension eastwards of the N aisle with a two-bay arcade to the chancel. Both this and the W tower date from c.1500. The present double-span roof is 19thc., replacing a 15thc. single-span roof over nave and aisle. Construction is of red sandstone ashlar.