The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Winchester (medieval)
Parish church
Breamore is a village on the NW edge of the New Forest, 3 miles N of Fordingbridge and 7 miles S of Salisbury. It stands on the E bank of the River Avon. The village extends from a centre on the main road from Salisbury to Fordingbridge, NW for half a mile to Breamore House (site of the former Augustinian Priory of Breamore, founded by Baldwin de Redvers and his uncle Hugh towards the end of Henry I’s reign), and the church stands in the grounds of the house. St Mary’s is best known as Hampshire’s most important Anglo-Saxon church, with a spectacular rood reset high above the S nave dooway. The church is basically cruciform, having a big Anglo-Saxon central tower with a S transept or porticus (the N has gone) that is narrower than the crossing. The S crossing arch is Anglo-Saxon but those to the E and W are 14thc, as is the chancel in the main. The nave is tall with a W gallery. Romanesque features are the S nave doorway, a medallion with an Agnus Dei above it, the S porch entrance (which is reset) and the E doorway of the S porticus.
Parish church
Shalfleet church forms the core of the small nucleated village of the same name a little inland the island’s NW coast and to the S of a series of fleets draining into the Solent. The church consists of a substantial W tower, nave, S aisle, N and S porches and the chancel. The massive tower is slightly wider than the nave. The main entrance to the church is through the N porch and the doorway with a tympanum above. The lower parts of the N wall of the nave would appear to be contemporary with this doorway, with much of the wall being rebuilt in 1812. The S arcade of the nave of four bays was constructed in the mid to late 13thc and the chancel rebuilt at about this time. The north porch was constructed in 1754 (Lloyd and Pevsner 2006, 259-261). The Romanesque features are the N doorway to the nave and the W tower.
Parish church
St Peter and Paul’s church adjoins the green at the centre of the small village of Mottistone and is on the opposite side of the road from Mottistone Manor. The village is a short distance inland from the island’s SW coast and is situated to the south of the lateral chalk ridge. The church consists of a W tower, a short nave with N and S aisles, a S porch and a double-gabled east end comprising the chancel and N chapel. There is now no fabric which is dateable to the 12thc or earlier. Much of the church dates from the 15thc or later, and was restored in 1863 by Willoughby Mullins. He is reputed to have replaced a round headed Romanesque archway between the tower and the nave with the present Gothic arch (Lloyd and Pevsner 2006, 163-4). The late medieval Cheke N chapel, which has a Tudor rose on the S external label stop of the E window (Lloyd and Pevsner 2006, 164), incorporates a Romanesque linear moulding low down on the external east wall featuring two creatures and a head of human form.
Parish church
Binstead is a small village of the Isle of Wight just W of Ryde. The church is located by the island’s NE coast where it forms the core of an older established settlement to the N of a suburban development. The area was formerly extensively used for the quarrying of building stone. The church consists of a nave, a N aisle, a chancel and a S porch. The chancel contains an abundance of herringbone fabric. The nave was rebuilt in 1845 and the N aisle was added in 1875. The S wall of the churchyard includes a round-headed Romanesque doorway which was formerly the N doorway of the nave (Lloyd and Pevsner 2006, 84-6). The lower courses of the S wall of the nave contain some herringbone fabric so it would appear that only the upper courses were rebuilt in the mid-19thc. The Romanesque features are the two pieces of sculpture reset above the nave west windows and the one piece reset in the gable end of the S porch, and the doorway with a figure above, reset in the S wall of the churchyard.
Parish church
Binsted is a village in NE Hampshire 2 miles NE of Alton. The village stands on the S bank of the river Wey valley, on a ridge of the upper greensand, and the church is constructed of the underlying rock, called malm stone, a mixture of chalky marl and chloritic (slilicaceous) grains like mica. This has something of the character of a freely workable limestone.
Holy Cross has an aisled and clerestoried nave with four-bay arcades dating from c.1180 (see Comments). It has a 14thc. S doorway under a porch that was rebuilt in 1863. The chancel is lower than the nave, allowing for the later piercing of high windows at the east end of the nave. To the north and south of the chancel are chapels separated from the main vessel by two-bay arcades of c.1200. The south, or Maiden chapel is connected to the nave aisle by a plain arch of c.1200, and projects only slightly from the line of the aisle wall. The north chapel, or Westcote chapel, projects much further. It was rebuilt as a chantry by Richard de la Bere of Westcote after 1331, and contains a crusader effigy with the inscription “Richard de Westcote gist ici deu de sa alme cit merci amen” presumably the monument of the father or grandfather of Richard de la Bere. This chapel now houses the organ and a choir vestry behind it. The chancel was extended eastwards in the 13thc., and there is a small 15c vestry to the east of the chapel on the north side. The west tower must date from the early 13thc., to judge from its plain arch. It is short, with a plain later parapet and a short spire behind it, roofed in slate. Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (d.1976) is buried in the churchyard.
The present appearance of the building owes much to the restoration of 1863. The south wall and porch were rebuilt with slate roofing and a gablet on the aisle, the chancel arch was replaced and the nave galleries removed, and the north wall of the Westcote chapel was rebuilt. As it now stands, the exterior except for the tower is rendered in white, and the roofs are of red tile, except on the spire, nave aisles and porch, where they are of slate. Romanesque features recorded here are the nave and chancel arcades, the tower arch and the arch into the Maiden chapel from the nave aisle.
Parish church
St John’s church is situated close to the early 17thc. manor house known as Yaverland Manor; together they occupy a small level of rising ground, to the S of the lateral chalk ridge in the ‘Bembridge Isle’ area at the eastern extremity of the Isle of Wight. St John's church originally consisted of a nave and chancel dating from the 12thc., connected by an elaborately carved chancel arch. It was restored in 1887--89 by the architect, Ewan Christian (1814--1895), who added the western bell turret and the south porch, which now protects the Romanesque S doorway of the nave (Lloyd and Pevsner 2006, 310-2). The Romanesque features are the S doorway and the chancel arch.
Parish church
St Edmund’s church is situated alongside a farm to the W of Wotton Creek which flows to the island’s NE coast into the Solent. There is much recent residential development to the S of the church site. Wootton church consists of a nave and chancel with no architectural division between the two. The round headed S doorway with chevron ornament indicates a 12th-c date for the fabric of the W end of the nave. The church would appear to have been extended towards E in the 13thc, with some change in the fabric of the S wall and the presence of pairs of lancet windows lighting the chancel from the N and S. The elevation of the N wall of the church published by Stone shows the ‘entrance from St Edmund’s Chapel now blocked up’ almost half way along the elevation from the W, as well as the scar of the former E wall of this structure (Stone 1891, plate XXXVIII). This chapel was rebuilt in 1893 along with an organ chamber and the wide archway leading to it unblocked and restored (Lloyd and Pevsner 2006, 302). The scallop capitals of this archway are of a 12th-c type. The Romanesque features are the S doorway and the responds of the opening from the nave into the N chapel.
Parish church
Boldre is in the southern New Forest in SW Hampshire, 2 mile s N of the centre of Lymington in the valley of the Lymington river. St John’s is half a mile N of the village centre, on the edge of the woodland. The church has an extremely long nave with N and S aisles, a S porch and a N vestry, and a chancel with a S chapel and a tower above it. On the N side of the chancel is a small modern vestry. The church presumably began as a two-cell building with a nave approximately half its present length and perhaps an apsidal E end. A three-bay S aisle was added in the 12thc, and in the mid-13thc a three-bay N aisle was added. Later in the 13thc the nave was lengthened westwards by three more bays, with an aisle on the S only continuing the line of the old S aisle to the W. The chancel was lengthened c 1300, but was rebuilt entirely in 1855. The present S chapel was added in the 14thc. The upper storey of this, forming the tower, is of brick and dates from 1697. A vestry was added alongside the N wall of the nave, W of the aisle, in the 19thc and extended to the line of the W front in the 20thc. The S porch is 14thc, but the nave and S aisle now share a single roof that descends very low so that the aisle windows and the porch rise well above the eaves and have dormer roofs. The W wall of the nave was rebuilt in 1996 after it was found to be cracking and falling outwards. Construction is generally of ashlar and rubble with flints, said to come from the Isle of Wight as there is no local source. The only Romanesque feature recorded here is the E section of the S nave arcade.
Parish church
Eling is a village on the S edge of Totton at the N end of Southampton Water. The church stands on a rise overlooking the main road running through the village. It consists of an 11thc-12thc nave with a chancel with N and S aisles. The N, of c.1300, has a tower at its W end, while the S arcade dates from c.1200, but has been widened and its arches replaced c.1300 to match those of the N arcade. The chancel has N and S chapels that communicate with their respective nave aisles, and there is a plain vestry on the N side of the N chapel that bears a date of 1825. Early 12thc windows in the W bay of the S nave aisle wall and the E bay of the N chancel chapel arcade wall confirm that both nave and chancel date from c.1100. Photographs of these plain windows are included, but the only Romanesque feature recorded here is the S nave arcade.
The church was drastically restored by Benjamin Ferrey in 1863-65, and, with the exception of the tower and N aisle, externally looks Victorian rather than medieval.
Parish church
The church is situated overlooking the W bank of the Yar estuary within the ‘Freshwater Isle’. It is to the E of the core of the substantial modern settlement of Freshwater. The church site and its associated settlement formed a component of the historical polyfocal settlement within the parish. Prior to 1874 the church consisted of a W tower, nave, N aisle and porch, S aisle and porch, chancel, and N and S chapels flanking the chancel. The restoration by Stratton in 1874-75 extended the N and S aisles outwards with the provision of a S porch and shallow N porch, and lengthened the chancel eastwards with an organ chamber to the N. Three long-and-short quoins of Anglo-Saxon workmanship define the nave before it was extended westwards by one bay in the 13thc. The N and S arcades of three bays were inserted into this nave in the later 12thc. The N and S chapels and the present chancel appear to have originated at the same time as the nave arcades. The W tower has a giant arch of the 13thc rising through two storeys and a late medieval upper stage (Lloyd and Pevsner 2006, 138-140).
The Romanesque features are the round-headed doorway now reset as the N doorway of the church, three bays of the N and S arcades, and the N and S arches leading from the chancel into the flanking chapels.