The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St. Andrews (medieval)
Parish church
The present church is essentially of late medieval date; there is no evidence for a church on the site before the 12th century. A Romanesque doorway survived as the N nave entrance until 1797/8 but is now known only from an engraving. Just one carved stone, a scallop capital, appears to have survived from the first church. Another stone, sculpted with a head and leaves, has been by some attributed to the 12th-century, but it is actually of later date. It was found in 1981 during excavations in the S choir aisle, in the foundations under the E wall. A head boss at the W end of the choir vault has also occasionally been mentioned, but again it is of later medieval date. Several changes to the church and various restorations were undertaken after the medieval period, culminating with a major re-organisation of the interior in the years 1872-83 and the addition of the Thistle Chapel in 1910-11.
Parish church
The church is rectangular on plan. It was enlarged in 1677 and again in 1829, but much of the lower masonry courses may be of medieval date. Sections of a Romanesque string course survive on the exterior.
Parish church
The church was to a large extent rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries, but some of the 12th-c wall still survives, including 2 blocked windows in the E wall and a blocked window in the N wall of the chancel. There is also a later blocked doorway in the S wall of the chancel. This appears to have replaced another doorway (now a window) west of it. The original plan of the church consisted of a rectangular nave and smaller rectangular chancel at the east end. A loose stone with carving on one side is kept inside the church. The interior of the church was remodelled in the 20thc.
Parish church
The earliest parts of the church consist of an unaisled nave and W tower, which includes a spiral stair in the SE corner. There was likely also an eastern chancel, but this no longer exists. Early doorways survive in the S nave wall (now blocked) and E wall (moved from the N side of the church). Large sections of the church walls are medieval, but there have been several additions and other interventions over the centuries. A projecting burial wing on the SE corner of the nave, called the ‘Stair Aisle’ was built in the 17thc, as well as the upper part of the W tower and belfry above its eastern wall. The interior was re-designed in the 19thc. However, a gothic arch (now blocked) can be seen on the N side of the E end of the nave, and there is another arch from the Transitional period in the E wall of the W tower. Drawings show that a post-Reformation exterior staircase was built onto the S side of the W end of the nave, with a doorway inserted into the gallery level. This has subsequently been taken down, the doorway removed and a Romanesque-style doorway built at ground-floor level. In 1822 an aisle was added to the N side of the nave and the old N doorway rebuilt in the gable of this aisle. But in 1884 the aisle was extended and the doorway moved to the E wall of the church, where it became the principle entrance to the church.
Parish church
Duddingston Parish Kirk is located about two miles from the centre of Edinburgh (to which the village now belongs), on the side of Duddingston Loch. The church appears to have originally been built as a two-chambered, aisleless structure, as the W tower and the N aisle were added later. Although there is no document which refers to the building of the church, a date in the 2nd quarter of the 12thc would fit the surviving references, as would the decoration.
In 1598, during a visitation of the church by the Presbytery of Edinburgh, the choir of the church is mentioned as somewhat ruinous. The first documented work on the church comes in 1631, when it was agreed to build an aisle for the owners of the Prestonfield estate. Work was undertaken in 1806, this time on the W tower and N aisle, and about 1835 the church was again enlarged and repaired. Further alterations were carried out in 1889 and in 1968, primarily on the interior.
The Romanesque S nave doorway (now blocked), the chancel arch, the exterior stringcourse and possibly some of the external corbels of the chancel, the external bases and part of a cross survive from the original 12thc building.
Parish church
Dalmeny church is a four-cell building consisting of a west tower, nave, vaulted chancel and vaulted apse. The original west tower seems to have collapsed in the fifteenth century and was subsequently re-built on the same ground plan in 1937, preserving the original sides of the tower arch (capitals and bases) leading into the nave. Four corbels which were found when the tower arch blocking stone was removed have been re-used on the interior of the tower. In 1671, much of the eastern part of the north wall of the nave was taken down to form a new aisle and this area was again altered in 1816. The twelfth-century parts of the church are built from a local sandstone, which on the interior of the church is a soft, light brown, but on the exterior has weathered to a light grey. Both on the interior and on the exterior faces of the walls, the stone is of coursed ashlar and of high quality. In the 18th century, the nave walls were lowered and the chancel walls heightened to form a continuous roof line, but these were put back to their original levels in the restoration work carried out between 1927 and 1937. In addition, some of the windows had had the inner orders taken out to create more light in the 18th century and these windows were restored back to their original form during the restorations. Only one window in the main part of the church is entirely modern, that west of the south entrance, which was inserted in the 18th century to allow light into the gallery (since removed) which had been built at the west end of the nave. In the apse, a tomb niche was inserted into the south interior wall at some point subsequent to the twelfth century.
On the interior, both the chancel arch and the apse arch are elaborately decorated with chevron patterns and there are head corbels carrying both rib vaults, but it is the south exterior entrance which has the most elaborate decoration, though badly weathered. This consists of a doorway with voussoirs carved with various figures and heads, and an upper zone carved with interlacing arcading surmounted by head corbels. In addition, there are three original, heavily decorated windows on the apse, two on the chancel walls and three on the nave walls. Original exterior corbels survive in situ on the chancel, apse and above the south entrance, and there is a 12thc sarcophagus outside the church.
The west tower of the church is thought to have fallen c.1480, at which time the tower arch was filled with rubble. Four romanesque corbels, found when the tower was rebuilt in 1937, were inserted into the west interior wall of the tower above the tower arch. Sometime before 1604 a loft was built into the west end of the nave. Around 1671, part of the north nave wall was taken down to build a north aisle (called the Rosebery aisle), while in 1766 the exterior wall walls of the choir were heightened and the nave walls decreased in height so that the roof continued unbroken across both. Sometime also in the later 18th century, a new window was inserted on the south side of the nave, west of the doorway, to allow light into the loft. In 1816, a gallery was built in the Rosebery aisle and a plaster ceiling in imitation of the stone vaulting in the eastern parts was constructed over the nave (since removed). About the same time, a porch which had been built in front of the south nave doorway, the roofline still in evidence, was taken down, along with the removal of the south chancel doorway. In 1832 a new west belfry was added. Restoration work on the church was finally carried out between 1927 and 1937, at which time the pews and west loft were also removed. A new west tower was also built onto the west end during these restorations after some discussion of the form it should take. Finally, in or before 1948, A.J. Turner undertook a study of masons’ marks in the church.
Parish church
The parishes of Albar and Aberlemno were merged in the 17thc. The baptismal font inside the Aberlemno Church belonged to the church or chapel at nearby Aldbar. It was was moved to Aberlemno sometime after 1887 and placed outside the church there. In 1992 the baptismal font was moved inside the church, where it remains.
Parish church
Leuchars is a small town in the north-east of Fife, Scotland, situated 6 miles north-west of St Andrews. The plan of the medieval church of St Athernase and Bonocus is only partly known, since no more than the square chancel and eastern apse survive. It is uncertain if there was ever a tower at the west end of the nave, though, bearing in mind that churches of comparable date and quality such as Dalmeny and Tyninghame did have west towers, it might be thought unusual for such an ambitious church as Leuchars not to have had one.
The chancel was walled off from the nave at some date after the Reformation, apparently leaving little visible evidence of the fine arch that had opened into it. An octagonal two-stage domed bell tower was raised over the apse that can probably be attributed to John Douglas, who is known to have worked on it in 1744, but the line of the earlier apse roof is still visible against the east gable wall of the chancel. The nave was extensively remodelled for parochial worship on a number of occasions, and there are recorded works in 1812-14 by Robert Balfour. At some stage a lateral north aisle was added.
The nave was entirely rebuilt to an elongated rectangular plan and in a mildly Romanesque idiom in 1857-8 by John Milne. Its show front, to the south, has a central gabled salient with a door covered by a later porch; that salient is flanked symmetrically by pairs of windows and by a doorway towards each end, that to the east being now blocked. On the less visible north side, considerable extents of cubical masonry suggest that Romanesque fabric has been re-cycled. Milne also carried out some restoration works on the chancel and apse.
A more scholarly restoration was carried out by Reginald Fairle in 1914, who reopened the chancel arch towards the nave. Within the re-opened arch he placed a timber screen, but this was relocated to the vestibule to form a baptistery area in 1935. Fairlie had also proposed shortening the nave of the 1850s, while doubling its width towards the north and adding a western tower and narthex.
The Romanesque chancel and apse are remarkable for their extraordinarily lavish external decoration, with two levels of blind arcading carried on decorative string courses that run around both parts. At the lower level of the chancel flanks the arcading is intersecting and carried on paired en délit shafts with cushion or scalloped caps. At the upper level of the chancel the arcading is simple, and is carried on en délit shafts flanking pilaster-like projections; the upper arches have continuous mouldings to the inner order and a cable moulding to the outer.
The lower level of the apse has simple arcading that is carried on engaged pairs of shafts separated by a spur, with chevron decoration to the arches. The apse rises to a lower height than the chancel, and the simple arcading to its upper level is carried on similar supports to those of the chancel, though the arches have chevron to the inner order and multiple billet to the outer. There is greater variety to the capitals of the upper apse arcading, with several of volute form. The wall-head around both chancel and apse has a decorative corbel table with grotesque human and animal heads.
Enclosed within the upper arcading around chancel and apse, there are two small-rounded windows to the south flank of the chancel and one on the north, while the apse has three such windows. It appears, however, that in their present form they date from John Milne’s restoration of 1857-8, and that they replace ‘two square windows with a single stone mullion’ in the south chancel wall and one in the apse. It is likely, however, that the original windows were of this form.
On the north side there is evidence that the Romanesque nave was, as might be expected, slightly wider than the chancel, though it did not extend so far to the north as the nave of 1857-8. The evidence for this is seen in the survival of its base course below the east face of the north-east corner of the mid-nineteenth-century nave. There is also above it a corresponding section of decorated string course, at a level corresponding to mid-height of the upper level of blind arcading on the adjacent chancel. The evidence has been somewhat confused by the way in which that string course has been extended by reset lengths of string course with the same moulding along the whole of the east nave wall and back along the eastern part of its north wall. But there can be little doubt that the base course provides a firm indicator of the width of the nave on the north side, because it can be seen that it returns towards the west.
Internally, it is clearer than on the exterior that the chancel has been heavily restored, and there must be some doubt over the extent to which there was any basis for the form of the restored rear-arches to the two windows in the south wall and the one in the north. The rear-arches of the apse windows, however, appear to be more likely to reflect their original form. Their chevron-decorated arches are carried by en délit shafts that rise from a string course.
Rising from that same string course, above grotesque head corbels, are wall shafts that support the ribs of the vault, which have triple-rolls to their soffits. The ribbed part of the vault is confined to the semi-circular eastern part of the apse, and there is a short section of barrel vault to the western part. There may have been some restoration of the vault when Reginald Fairlie removed an arch that had been inserted to support the tower over the apse. There is no evidence that the chancel has been vaulted.
The chancel and apse arches are the finest features of the interior. The responds in each case have a leading half-shaft on the face of a pilaster, which is itself flanked by three-quarter nook-shafts, and the caps are of cushion or scalloped form. The chancel arch has an inner order with triple soffit rolls and simple chevron to the leading face, while the outer order has continuous mouldings and there is a chip-carved hood mould. The apse arch is more richly treated, with two chevron-decorated orders and a billet-carved hood mould towards the chancel.
Parish church
The church has undergone numerous changes throughout the past, but still incorporates masonry of 12thc. date. The base course with chamfered edge, presumably from the Romanesque church remains in part on the exterior of the W front and the lower part of a blocked doorway on the N side of the nave can still be seen. The most significant surviving section of the early church is part of a blocked doorway on the S exterior of the nave, west of the later (1830) S extension. There is evidence above the doorway of at least two phases of construction. The church interior was re-ordered in 1932 and nothing Romanesque is now to be seen inside.
Parish church
The Romanesque church consisted of a west tower, aisleless nave and chancel, built with large squared stones. From the 12thc. church survive the W tower arch, the S nave doorway and part of the N nave doorway. The E end was extended, probably in the 13thc. Other changes seem also to have been made in the late-15th/early 16thc. A 16thc. font was discovered in the late 18thc. (now in the Roman Catholic church in Broxburn) and a surviving late medieval bell was made in 1503. Otherwise the church remained the same until after the Reformation. The Shairp Aisle, on the S side, was added c.1620 and in 1644 the Buchan Gallery (only stairs for this survive) was also built. During the 18thc., a further addition was made to the N side, called the Middleton Aisle. Later, in 1878, the majority of the N Romanesque wall was removed to build a much larger addition to that side of the church. By 1896, the shafts of the S doorway had also been renewed. Finally, in 1937-40 a complete restoration of the church was undertaken, during which time the arch from the nave into the tower was opened up.