The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Norwich (now)
Parish church
Now comprising a nave and chancel, St Mary's also appears to have had a W tower of which no fabric now survives. The church, which has a fine 15thc font and double piscina, also houses the reset remains of a pillar piscina, which constitutes the only Romanesque feature at the site.
Parish church
This aisleless church has a thatched nave and chancel. The windows, N porch and W tower date from the 15thc, while the carved Romanesque S doorway surviving in the flint wall of the nave, together with a deeply-splayed round-arched recess low in the N wall of the chancel, indicate that the structure of the building is substantially earlier.
Parish church
St Mary and All Saints has a chancel, an aisled nave and a S tower. Of the late-medieval building on the site, the 14thc S tower porch and 15thc N nave aisle have survived, possibly associated with the church erected by Sir Robert Knollys (d. 1407). A ruthless and immensely wealthy professional soldier, Knollys died in Sculthorpe, his chief Norfolk manor, having rebuilt the church. The chancel was replaced in 1846-47 and the S nave aisle with three-bay arcade was added in 1860-61. The elaborately carved Romanesque font is one of a distinctive and localised group, closely related in terms of their ornament and style. Two short chip-carved fragments on the sill of the W window of the N aisle (in 1985) constitute the building's only other Romanesque sculpture.
Parish church
Of the previous building on the site, the nave alone had survived by 1848, at which time it was considered very ancient (Lewis, 1848). The present church was built in 1898 at the expense of King Edward VII. Substantially a late-19thc structure incorporating 13thc elements, it has a single S nave aisle and contains no Romanesque carving apart from the font, one of four in north-west Norfolk long seen as forming a stylistically related group. Arguably among the finest in the country as a whole, and certainly in the county, the Shernborne font is, in Pevsner's memorable phrase, 'a barbaric but mighty Norman piece.'
Parish church
All Saints has a chancel, nave, N aisle and 13thc W tower, distinctively surmounted by a three-tier timber lantern that may date from the 16thc. In the chancel, the late 12thc door and piscina have pointed arches. The 14thc N aisle has an impressive timber roof. There is a two-storeyed S porch with an ogee niche. The font is the only feature with Romanesque sculpture.
Parish church
Blundeston is in Lothingland, the northernmost hundred of Suffolk. It is
a tongue of land enclosed by the Waveney which turns N after leaving Beccles so
that it may reach the sea at Yarmouth rather than Lowestoft. The land here is
low-lying and arable, and its villages have usually managed to resist
encroachments by their giant neighbours to the N and S. Blundeston could be
considered a suburb of Lowestoft, but it has not been overrun as Oulton was. It
is a good-sized village of some 300 inhabitants, most of whom commute to
Yarmouth or Lowestoft. Blundeston prison, at the southern edge of the village,
dates from 1963. The church and hall are half a mile apart on either side of
the village centre. St Mary's is a flint church with a nave, chancel
and round W tower. The tower is off-axis towards the N of the nave. It is tall
and slender with a change of masonry halfway up and another just below the
bell-openings, and its fenestration repays study. Its low W window is an
insertion of the 15th -16thc. in brick, and the only other window in the lowest
masonry is a very narrow round-headed S lancet at the level of the
eaves of the nave. The first masonry break comes
halfway between the nave eaves and the apex of the nave roof, and there are small 12thc. lancets at
this level facing S and W. Then near the top of the nave roof are six large
round-headed openings, evenly spaced around the tower and all blocked with
brick. These were doubtless the original bell-openings. Alternating with them
are another six small 12thc. lancets, at the level of their arch heads. Then
comes the second masonry break, a change from flint to brick. Finally there are
four pointed bell-openings immediately below the battlemented parapet. Inside,
the tower arch is extremely narrow and 12thc. Its offsetting to the N reflects
a widening of the nave, so that while the N wall is in its original position,
with a 12thc. doorway (now blocked), the S has been rebuilt much further S.
Parts of the 12thc. S doorway were reused, but it is largely of the 14thc.,
under a 15thc. porch of knapped flint. The nave
windows on N and S are all 14thc. (flowing) or 15thc. The chancel is of knapped flint with flowing tracery windows of
c.1350. The chancel arch and piscina are also 14thc. The chancel
was rebuilt in 1851. The N and S doorways are described
below.
Parish church
Consisting of a chancel, aisleless nave and W tower, All Saints presents as a 14thc church, recorded in building in 1327 and restored in 1897. The only Romanesque sculpture there now - the pillar piscina reused ingloriously inside the W tower - might, however, be all that survives of an earlier structure.
Parish church
St Edmunds is a complete 12thc. church of nave, round W tower and chancel with an apsidal E end. The 12thc. nave was originally much narrower, and was widened in the 14thc. by moving the S wall nine feet S. The result is that both the tower and the chancel are set at the N end of their respective nave walls. The effect is most disconcerting looking down the nave from W to E. The chancel has a barrel-vaulted straight bay and an apse with three windows, deeply splayed and decorated with a chevron
order within, but small and plain without. The windows of the straight bay are insertions, perhaps of the 14thc. The arch to the chancel is pointed and of four orders that die into the walls without supports. It presumably belongs to the 14thc. remodelling. The apse arch is 12thc. and described below. The exterior of the chancel is of flint with some brickwork repairs at the top and flat pilaster buttresses. The nave is also of flint, although its tall E wall has been rebuilt in brick. It has a S doorway with a porch of knapped flints, and the N doorway now gives access from inside the church to a 19thc. vestry. Both nave and chancel have thatched roofs. There is no tower arch inside the church; simply a small pointed doorway. The lower section of the tower is of flint with some large blocks of ashlar, bricks and tiles included. The upper part is of knapped flints with a parapet of brick. There are 13thc. lancets in the lower storey, wider pointed windows of brick at the foot of the upper storey and Perpendicular bell-openings. There was a restoration in 1854-56 by J. Brown and B. Jackson.Inside the church are 12thc. paintings of the Life of St Edmund (in the apse) and a large 14thc. painting of St Christopher (in the nave). Romanesque sculpture described here is confined to the apse windows and the apse arch.
Parish church
Gisleham stands on the edge of the arable land of the NE Suffolk coastal plain, less than a mile S of the edge of Lowestoft. The village was a small one, but the expansion of Lowestoft seems set to absorb it as it has already absorbed its neighbour, Carlton Colville.Holy Trinity stands in the centre of the village, with the moated site that was once the hall less than half a mile to the S. It is of flint and comprises a round W tower, nave and chancel. The tower has a 12thc. W window and further small round-headed windows just above the nave roof level at E and W. An octagonal upper storey with Y-traceried bell-openings and a battlemented parapet was added in the early 14thc. The tower arch is plain and round-headed. The nave retains the remains of a 12thc. N doorway; blocked with bricks in its lower part and overbuilt by a 19thc. window above. This window is a copy of the 14thc. reticulated windows that form the rest of the fenestration of the nave and chancel. The work was done at some time between 1800 and 1860, and a N porch was removed at the same time. The S doorway is 14thc. and sheltered by a contemporary porch of knapped flint with flushwork and heraldic reliefs. The 14thc. chancel arch has been taken out, but the remains of its responds indicate that it was very tall. The remains of a piscina, like the windows, indicate an early 14thc. date. The S porch and wall were restored in 1990-91. The tower arch and the N doorway are recorded below.
Parish church
St Andrew's is of considerable significance, both for its architecture and as an institution. The aisleless nave and axial eastern tower, both with long-and-short quoins, are of equal width and are part of the same late 11th-early 12thc. build. The present rectangular chancel is Perpendicular Gothic. The foundations of the former chancel, exposed in the 19thc., revealed this to have been apsidal in plan. There is Romanesque architectural sculpture on both the interior and exterior of the nave, the blocked W doorway and the tower arches. A small group of Romanesque carved fragments is stored in the porch and inside the church.