The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St. Andrews (medieval)
Parish church
Inside the church of St Modan is a section of Romanesque cross, carved on two sides with one of the original cross arms missing. Repaired in 1632-3, the church was rebuilt in 1810-11, with only the lower part of the central tower (likely to be 15th century) and the upper section of about 1740 preserved from the previous church. This destroyed, earlier church appears to have been cruciform in shape and was likely a later-medieval building. No other part of the early church fabric was retained, though a few carved medieval stones survive.
Parish church
A section of medieval arch is built into the exterior S wall of the S porch. Various works on the church are attested during the 19thc, the most important being a major remodelling and restoration undertaken in 1893, when the S porch was added. It is generally held that this section of arch was taken from the original chancel arch of the twelfth-century church, but no documentary evidence to substantiate this claim is known to exist. The base level and certain sections of walling of much of the nave appear also to date from the original church. The parish of Lundie was joined with that of Fowlis-Easter in 1618, though the teinds for the parsonage and vicarage of Lundie had already been annexed to the prebends of Fowlis-Easter Collegiate Church sometime between 1522 and 1538. Lady Duncan was responsible for the erection of a mausoleum off the east end of the church, which was built in memory of her husband, Sir William Duncan, in 1787-9. Before this was added, the old chancel arch was still visible, as seen in a print of 1786 (see: MacGibbon and Ross).
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
(In this description the bays of the nave are counted westwards from the site of the crossing. It should be noted that the nave was originally of eight bays though the easternmost bay has been almost completely rebuilt, along with the adjacent parish church of 1818-21. Nevertheless, the nave bays are numbered as if that eastern bay remains in place.)Dunfermline, some three miles inland from the south coast of Fife, is on a southward facing slope overlooking the Firth of Forth. The ‘dun’ element of its name suggests there was an early fortification here; but, whatever its origins, there was certainly a royal residence by the later eleventh century. The abbey has its origins in a church built by St Margaret on the site of her marriage to Malcolm III c.1070, to which she brought a small group of monks from Canterbury, who formed the first Benedictine community in Scotland, and it was here that Margaret was buried. The house was re-founded as a major abbey c.1128 by David I, the sixth and youngest son of Malcolm and Margaret, with a fresh infusion of monks from Canterbury, and for over two centuries it was to be the most important mausoleum of Scotland’s royal dynasty. Until modern expansion, the town that grew up around its walls was largely to its north.Fragmentary footings of a diminutive four-compartment church that had evidently been built in two phases (c.1070 by Margaret and c.1100 by Edgar?) were excavated below the floor of the nave in 1916. The present building, constructed of buff-coloured sandstone, was erected after the establishment of the abbey in 1128. The surviving part is seven bays of the originally eight-bay nave, which was retained in use as the parish church after the Reformation. The site of the eastern limb and transepts is now largely occupied by the church that was built there to the designs of William Burn in 1818-21 to replace the medieval nave as the place of parochial worship. The only part of the medieval church to remain in place east of the nineteenth-century building is a fragment of the feretory chapel of St Margaret, which is presumed to have been built c.1249, and of which the lower east and south walls partly survive.No detailed record was made of the evidence for the plan of the eastern limb before the early nineteenth-century church was built, but it is thought that it was initially of four aisled bays, with an apse projecting beyond the central vessel. The church was probably the first in Scotland to have three towers, though none of them survives in Romanesque form. The central tower is altogether lost, while the north-west tower, capped by a splay-foot spire, was rebuilt by Abbot Richard de Bothwell (1444-68), and the south-west tower was rebuilt in 1811 to the designs of William Stark. An early nineteenth-century view by John Clerk of Eldin, and one made for General George Henry Hutton, both appear to show the already truncated south-west tower before its collapse and replacement as having a massive stair turret at its south-west corner.There were initially three entrances into the nave. One is on the south side, where it opened off the cloister through what was the second bay from the east; it was therefore presumably not aligned with the east cloister walk as would be more usual. This doorway is the most finely decorated feature of the surviving part of the abbey church. It has survived well through being protected initially by the north cloister walk, and later by the burial vault of Sir Henry Wardlaw, until it was rediscovered in 1903 and exposed by the removal of one bay of the Wardlaw vault in 1905. At that time there was some renewal of masonry in the jambs, and perhaps some limited re-tooling of the inner caps; unfortunately, as a result of over a century of re-exposure, the doorway is now showing some signs of weathering. A second entrance from the cloister was cut in the seventh bay at a later date.The entrance for the laity is on the north side, in the seventh bay, and, as part of the mid-fifteenth-century modifications carried out for Abbot Bothwell, a tierceron-vaulted porch was placed over that doorway. This doorway appears to have been of five orders, but the fifth order is now largely covered by the walls and vault of the added porch. It is set within a salient, the superstructure of which is weathered back a little below the aisle cornice, and which is now framed by the buttresses of the mid-fifteenth-century porch. The upper part of the salient, which is partly obscured by the roof of the porch is decorated with a blind arcade of seven unmoulded arches carried on en-delit shafts with cushion capitals. The details of the caps and bases of that arcade are now too eroded to describe.The great processional entrance, which is the largest of the three, is at the centre of the west front. It is set within a salient that is weathered back below the window inserted at mid-height of the west front in the mid-fifteenth century.Externally there are three tiers of windows along the south and north flanks, which light the aisles at the lowest level, the galleries over the aisles, and the clearstorey. All of the Romanesque aisle windows survive on the south side, apart from that in the rebuilt east bay; they were set above the cloister roof. On the north side only the aisle windows in the third and fourth bays from the east survive in their Romanesque form. They all have a plain inner order, which may have been pared back to increase the daylight opening. Framing that opening in the jambs are en-delit nook shafts (largely renewed) supporting cushion or scalloped capitals with a roll necking and plain abaci that have a quirk between the two planes. Those abaci extend outwards to form a string course that meet the flanks of the pilasters between the bays. In the arch the shafts support an order in which chevron wraps around a curved profile. Framing that order is an outer order decorated with a label moulding, around which there is a hoodmould with a chamfered soffit. The exceptions to this, which are both on the south side, are in the second bay, which is above the south-east doorway from the cloister, where the hoodmould appears to have been enriched with low-relief carving, and in the seventh bay, where there is no hoodmould.The two aisles are now braced by arched buttresses along much of their length, those on the south side being of 1620, and those on the north side of 1625. The roofs over the galleries were rebuilt to steeper pitches, possibly at the same time that the buttresses were built. On the south side this evidently meant that the upper part of the outer gallery walls was cut down, truncating or possibly completely destroying the window at that level, while the clearstorey windows were blocked in their lower part. On the north side the gallery windows appear not to have been altered, and the new roof instead rose to mid-height of the clearstorey windows. These changes were reversed during restorations of 1845-55, when some of the details of the gallery and clearstorey windows may have been modified. Evidence for the sequence of changes is to be found both in early views and in masonry changes, since the later work is marked by the use of a fine-grained grey stone, rather than the buff-coloured stone of the medieval work.The nave gallery windows that may preserve their Romanesque appearance are in the second to the seventh bays on the south side, and in the second and third bays on the north side. All those on the south side, however, were renewed in the 1840s, and are now blind; the renewal is identifiable from the use of grey stone. The Romanesque windows at this level have triangular heads composed of two stones set at an angle to each other, which are carried on en-delit nook shafts with cushion capitals. Within that frame is a pair of triangular-headed openings with a lozenge shaped opening in the spandrel, all those openings having chamfered arrises to the reveals. In the fourth, fifth and sixth bays on the north side these windows have been replaced by small single-light windows, probably of thirteenth-century date, though the ghosts of the Romanesque jambs are still detectable in parts. It may be speculated that the triangular window heads could be a pointer to the possibility that the gallery storey was originally finished externally by a series of lateral gables, as is known to have been the case at Durham Cathedral, though at Dunfermline there is no other evidence to support this possibility.The nave clearstorey windows are all of the simplest kind, having semicircular arches, with the reveals of both jambs and arch being relieved by no more than a narrow rebate. They have no hoodmould.Internally the division between the monastic choir and the nave is known to have occupied the easternmost bay of the nave. The pulpitum, which is only known from the evidence of early views, and whose date is unknown, was in the west crossing arch; its single round-arched opening is shown on a view by Henry Cave drawn before construction of the parish church of 1818-21. The lower courses of the choir screen, with its two doorways, were located in excavations by Peter Macgregor Chalmers in 1916 and remain in view; traces of the screens across the aisles are also visible within the masonry at the internal side entrances to the early nineteenth-century church.Within the nave there is a striking contrast between the decorative treatment of the arcade storey and that of the gallery and clearstorey levels, the former being treated with considerable richness and the latter with extreme plainness. It is thus likely that, while the arcade storey of the nave was built as a continuation of the campaign on the eastern limb and transepts, the upper storeys were built following a change of design. However, views drawn for Francis Grose and General Hutton in the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries respectively indicate that the gallery level in the easternmost nave bay was treated more richly than the bays to its west, evidently with four sub-arches within each opening, suggesting that as part of the first campaign an abuttal for the central crossing was provided at gallery level. There may then have been a slight hiatus before construction of the upper storeys of the nave, when work was re-started in a very much more frugal manner. Nevertheless, it is assumed that work on the nave was largely complete by the time of a dedication recorded in 1150.The nave arcade piers are generally of cylindrical form, the two eastern ones on each side being decorated with incised patterns. The south-west tower pier is composed of elements that reflect the form of the wall responds along the aisles, except on its north face, towards the central vessel, where it has a plain face with no engaged shafts or pilasters. Thus, on each of the east, south and west sides there is the combination of a half-shaft on the face of a pilaster, flanked on each side by a set-back half roll. On the north side the west arcade bay beneath the north-west tower was replaced by a solid wall terminating in an arcade respond as part of Abbot Bothwell’s work in the mid-fifteenth century, and the pier to its east was rebuilt to octofoil clustered shaft form.Along the aisle walls the bays are articulated by major responds. The lower walls below the windows of the north and south aisle, and across the west front, were initially decorated throughout with blind arcading, except in those bays where there are doorways. However, the arcading has been removed in those parts that were rebuilt by Abbot Bothwell in the mid-fifteenth century. It has also been almost entirely lost below the south-west tower, which was rebuilt in the early nineteenth century, and in the seventh bay of the south nave aisle, where a later medieval doorway was inserted. In addition, it has been removed or partly obscured in the fifth bay from the east of the south aisle, and in the second and fourth bays of the north aisle, due to the insertion of post-medieval memorials.In the south nave aisle the string course below the windows survives in the second to the seventh bays, though in the second bay there are only short stretches on each side of the doorway rear-arch in that bay. In the north nave aisle the string course below the windows has survived only in the third and fourth bays, though much of that in the third bay is restored. The rich detailing of the Romanesque aisle window rear-arches that rest on the string course is one of the clearest indicators of the high aspirations behind the first phase of construction at Dunfermline. They have survived in the second to the seventh bays of the south nave aisle, and in the third and fourth bays from the east of the north nave aisle.The aisles are vaulted throughout, except within the early nineteenth-century south-west tower. The only area where the vaulting appears to be essentially in its Romanesque form, however, is in the second to fifth bays of the north nave aisle, where the webbing is of heavily plastered rubble. Here there are broad transverse arches with a flat soffit and sunk angle rolls. The diagonal ribs have a soffit roll flanked by segmental hollows. Diagonal ribs of this kind are also to be seen down the length of the south aisle, though the form of the transverse ribs, together with the ashlar construction of the webbing, makes clear that the vaults on that side have been reconstructed at some stage, retaining only the diagonal ribs. A combination of the facts that the diagonal ribs in the second to fifth north aisle bays inter-relate rather awkwardly with the moulded second arcade order, and that in the south arcade the second arcade order towards the aisle is of simple rectangular profile in the third to sixth bays, might suggest that it had been initially intended that the vaults should be groined and not ribbed. But there can be no certainty on this. Beneath the east side of the south-west tower, where there is also a surviving Romanesque transverse arch, there is a second order to that arch, with a pair of rolls to the soffit and a segmental hollow to the face.The gallery openings, which rest on a string course, are simple round arches with plain arrises, and those that are still in their Romanesque form are relieved by no more than a single arch order at the centre of the wall thickness. It cannot be ruled out, however, that the original intention had been for each arch to contain a number of sub-arches, as appears to have been the case in the first bay on the north side on the evidence of early views. In the sixth to eighth bays on the north side the gallery arches were reconstructed for Abbot Bothwell in the mid-fifteenth century. In the sixth and seventh bays simple unmoulded round arches were built, while the eighth bay was left blank,The clearstorey windows also rest on a string course, and have no more enrichment than a single nook shaft on each side in the jambs. There is a wall passage at clearstorey level, which appears to have continued across the west front; there was also a lower wall passage across the west front a little below the level of the gallery. The clearstorey of the sixth to the eighth bays on the north side were rebuilt as part of Abbot Bothwell’s reconstruction of the north-west corner of the nave, and are even more simply detailed than their Romanesque counterparts.The central vessel of the nave is now covered by a flat panelled ceiling braced by transverse timber arches dating from the mid-nineteenth century. A view of 1805 by the Rev’d John Sime shows that when in use as the parish church a ceiling had been inserted above the level of the arcade arches, with two levels of timber lofts within the arcades and further lofts at each end. The upper level of lofts in the aisles was lit by a number of windows cut through the aisle walls, some of which involved paring back of the vault webbing, and although much of this was reversed in 1845-55, traces of some of those openings are still discernible.There are extensive remains of the ranges on the east and south sides of the site of the cloister, and of the guest house/palace to the south-west, though none of these incorporate detectable Romanesque fabric and need not be discussed here.
Chapel
A Romanesque stoup was set against an interior wall of the chapel until the 1950s, when it was moved to the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.
Country House
A large stone cross, now kept in Kinneil House, was found during excavations of the nearby Kinneil church ruins in 1951. It was built into walling of the S extension (Laird’s Aisle). Both the house and the church are located close to the Roman Antonine Wall, near one of the Roman fortlets. The stone cross is decorated with a relief of a crucified Christ, and its dates vary from the 11thc through to the 12thc.
Ruined parish church
The ruins of the church centre around a rectangular structure with N and S additions. Dates in the 16thc and 17thc for the primary post-Reformation additions have been suggested, but there is no surviving documentation concerning this work. Major construction on the the church is only first recorded for 1739-40, when certain renovations were carried out. Minor repair and maintenance is documented in succeeding decades, including for replastering in 1776, but no major construction is recorded after 1740. Following much consideration in the early 19thc about the cost of renovating the church, it was decided to rebuild on a completely different site. The new church was begun in 1818.
During the 1993 excavations, earlier activity beneath the church was found, but there was no evidence of a pre-Romanesque church. Foundations of the Romanesque church were discovered with a chamfered plinth beneath the N and S walls and for the original W wall, which was further E than at present. These showed that the first church was about half the length of the present structure.
Within the surviving nave walls of the church are reused stones from the Romanesque church. Other carved stonework, with roll mouldings, survive and are laid out in the E part of the church, now overgrown. There is also a single head of beakhead form built into the E exterior of the S extension.
Ruined parish church
The surviving stonework shows that the 12th-c church consisted of an aisleless nave and chancel, but it is unknown whether the chancel was square ended or had an apse. A drawing in 1817 shows the plan of the chancel at that date as square ended. The Romanesque chancel arch and S nave doorway (filled in) survive, with chevroned arches. There are also large sections of Romanesque string coursing on the exterior of both the nave and chancel. During or shortly after the Reformation, the so-called ‘Congleton Aisle’ was added onto the N side of the nave. But, in 1612, the church at Gullane, by Act of Parliament, was translated to Dirleton, as its site in Gullane was deemed too remote from the centre of the parish, and because church and churchyard were continually being overblown with sand. After this, the church became effectively abandoned, with the nave and chancel converted to use as private burial spaces. A late 18th-c etching shows the chancel arch as still open at this date. By 1817, the eastern and western burial extensions had still not been built, but a small burial area (the Cochrane Aisle) had been created on the exterior corner where the Congelton Aisle and chancel meet. By 1896, the chancel arch and Congelton arch had been filled in and E (Yule Aisle) and W (Forrest Aisle) burial extensions created. Various grave stones, a few of which show early decoration, are to be found in the churchyard on the S side of the church ruins.
Ruined parish church
The church is now ruinous, only the W gable and foundations remaining. The excavated plan of the church shows that it originally consisted of a rectangular nave and narrower rectangular chancel. A S extension was added at a later date; this is traditionally referred to as the 'laird's loft'. The church was disused from about 1670 and a fire occurred in 1745. Excavations show that there is likely to have been an earlier structure on the site, but it has not been determined whether this was a church or something else. The present building possesses no surviving sculptural features; a simple base for a nook-shaft was recorded in 1951 but subsequently went missing. The most significant item from the church is a large stone cross, excavated on the site in 1951, which is now housed at nearby Kinneil House (See: Bo’Ness, Kinneil House).
Ruined parish church
The medieval church does not survive, but some ashlar may have been reused in the construction of a burial vault on the site. In 1627, the church was described as in a ruinous state, the roof already decayed. Certain repairs were made in 1669, but in 1688 a report noted further faults with the roof. In 1750, it was finally decided to unite the parish of Kirknewton with that of East Calder, following which a new church was built on an entirely different site. In 1780, much of the church appears to have been demolished, and in 1844 it was reported that there were ‘scanty remains’ on the site of the old church. Until the 1950s/60s, a hogback type grave cover was to be seen in the churchyard, S of the ruins. It has since disappeared, but a photograph and various descriptions survive.
Ruined parish church
Situated within the policies of Tyninghame House, St Baldred’s Church survives as a roofless structure. The only significant structural survivals at Tyninghame are the two chancel arches and two apsidal wall shafts. The west face of the chancel arch also has two round-arched altar recesses. Portions of the lower courses of the walls remain, allowing clear identification of the original plan, which consisted of a western tower, an unaisled rectangular nave, a square chancel and an eastern apse. There is a late medieval tomb recess in the south wall of the chancel which encloses an effigy. At some point following the Reformaiton, the interior of the church was re-organised, a school set up in the western part, and a laird's loft built within the eastern section. The church remained in use until the village was cleared in 1760-61, at which time the parish was united with Whitekirk. In 1628, the Earl of Haddington bought Tyninghame and its land. Following this, the earls and their families were buried within the church, which continued even after the church ceased to function in 1761. In 1924, some work was carried out on the surviving ruins, and in the 1930s an excavation took place, at which time the nave and west tower foundations were discovered, as well as the correct line of the eastern apse. In 1947 damage was caused to the east apse during a severe storm, requiring some reconstruction work, as inscribed on the rear of the SE respond. A letter from Lady Binning concerning this storm and damage is kept in the Haddington files of the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh.