The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Peterborough (now)
Parish church
Brackley is a town in the far S of the county, sited in a loop of the
Great Ouse, which forms the border with Buckinghamshire. It is an ancient site
on the main road from Northampton to Oxford, and evidence of Iron Age and Roman
settlement has been found in the town. There seem to have been two centres to
it; one around St Peter's church towards the E of the present town, and the
other on its southern edge, overlooking the river, around the site of the
Norman castle, of which a motte 3m high and 40m in diameter survives.St Peter's has an aisled and clerestoreyed nave, the N aisle gabled and
wider than the S, which has a lean-to roof. The four-bay
arcades differ in date, the S
being 13thc. and the N 14thc. Both arcades have long
responds at the E end, pierced by smaller arches. This unusual arrangement must
be related to the lost 12thc. transept, because part of the N impost of the W crossing arch (or
possibly a section of stringcourse) survives in the N arcade wall at this point. Also from the 12thc. nave is an
elaborate S doorway, now set in the aisle. This is accessible through the
modern church hall that has been added to the S side of the nave. The
chancel is 13thc., but heavily restored c.1885.
It has a heavily restored 14thc. S chapel, two bays
long. N vestry was added c.1885. The glory of
the church is its W tower, mid-13thc. in its three lowest stages with a
late-medieval fourth storey. The lower part is decorated with full-sized
figures in niches, wall arcading in the bell storey and an elaborate W doorway with
stiff-leaf capitals. Construction is of grey stone
rubble. The new church hall is of yellower rubble, incongruously provided with
triangular-headed windows and doorway. The church was restored by C. J. Bather
c.1873, and further by J. O. Scott c.1885, when the
vestry was added.
Parish church
St Laurence's has a three-bay aisled nave without clerestoreys. The N aisle and arcade date from 1850, the S has elaborately carved 12th-13thc. capitals, at the very least heavily restored in the 19thc., carried on piers of a variety of forms. The arches above are 13thc. The chancel was rebuilt by J. M. Derrick in 1848, with no chapels or vestries. The W tower is 12thc. in its lower stages, with a plain 12thc. doorway to the S, but heavy buttresses and a top storey were added, probably in the 15thc. In 1999 a kitchen and lavatory block was added to the N of the tower, communicating with the N aisle. The church also contains a font, stylistically 12thc. but suspiciously crisp and regularly carved.
Parish church
St Andrew’s has a nave with a north aisle, the plain three-bay arcade dating from c.1200. A north transept was added in 1847 to house a Robinson family pew. The chancel has chapels to north and south; the north now housing the organ, and the south monuments of the Robinsons. The west tower is late-13c in its lower parts, including an elaborate west doorway and the bell-openings. It was heightened and battlements added in the 14c. Only the N arcade is described below. The two Cranford churches were united under a single rector in 1841, and in 1954 St Andrew’s became a chapel-of-ease to St John’s. It passed into the care of the Churches Conservation Trust in 1996.
Parish church
The medieval church was demolished in 1848, and the present one built by R. C. Hussey, using some of the old stone alongside newly quarried Warwickshire sandstone. The dressings are of limestone. The nave is of five bays with aisles to N and S, and transverse arches as well as the longitudinal ones in both nave and aisles. The chancel has a S chapel, now used as a vestry. The church was restored by Butterfield in 1874. The font is use is a 19thc. affair of coloured marbles, but a damaged and unusable Romanesque font is also kept inside the church.
Parish church
All Saints' as it now appears has a nave with four-bay aisles, but the eastern bays on either side were originally transept arches. They date from the 13thc., whereas the remainder of the nave arcades are of c.1300. The chancel has no arch, but its E window suggests a date around 1300. To the S of it is an imposing chapel with a tall three-bay
arcade, dated by Pevsner to c.1520-30. The chapel also contains the important wooden effigy of Sir Thomas de Latymer. The entire eastern arm, chancel and chapel, have been partitioned off with panelled studding to make a parish room. This seriously compromises what must have been a beautiful, airy space, and one hopes that it is a temporary arrangement. At the west is a two-storey Perpendicular tower in ironstone ashlar with an octagonal ashlar spire. The remainder of the church is of large, rough ironstone blocks, except for the south chapel, in very fine grey ashlar. No Romanesque fabric, then, but a 12thc. font which stands out even in a county with many fine examples.
Parish church
St Mary's is an ashlar church with aisled and clerestoreyed nave, Wtower
and chancel with N vestry. The
nave doorways date fromc.1300; that on the S has a porch, but on the N the doorway now gives access from the
church to a small kitchen and lavatory block added in 1999. The tower has
diagonal buttresses and reticulated bell-openings indicating an early 14thc.
date, and the chancel belongs to the same period. The N
nave arcade is generally early 13thc., but one of its
capitals is either a reused 12thc. piece or very old-fashioned indeed. The S
arcade is 14-15thc. There was a restoration in 1877-78
by Albert Hartshorne of Pinner, when the church was rebuilt except for most of
the chancel, the nave arcades,
and most of the nave S wall. The rogue capital in the N arcade is all that is described
here.
Parish church
The interior now presents the curious arrangement of a nave and chancel with a N aisle and N chancel chapel (rebuilt by Lewis Lloyd of Overstone in 1849) but no nave arcade. There was previously a wooden arcade on stone bases, which has been removed. The short tower is in the angle between nave and chancel on the N side, and is attributable to the restoration by E. F. Law in 1852-54. The only feature noted here is the font, an important piece on account of its inscription.
Parish church
The church has a complex building history, each phase of which has left traces in the fabric. The earliest discernable form is of an aisleless 12thc. nave (see the round-headed window scar in the N arcade wall above bay 2). The N wall was pierced for this four-bay
arcade towards the end of the century, and a N aisle added. The arcade has round-headed, unchamfered arches and quatrefoil
piers, but the lower parts of two of the piers are of a different form; one cylindrical and the other octagonal. Pevsner considers this to be a later encasing, designed to alter the arcade design but not completed. The alternative is that the more solid pier forms represent an earlier state of the arcade, but on balance Pevsner's explanation seems more likely, especially in view of the octagonal pier forms of the S arcade. This dates from after 1298, when a good deal of work was carried out (see VII History). The chancel has N and S chapels, extensions of the aisles, and the chancel arch and chapel arches belong to the same campaign as the S arcade, as do many of the Y-traceried windows and the S nave doorway. The slender W tower belongs to a similar or slightly later date in its lower storeys, up to the level of the reticulated bell-openings, but it was heightened in the 15thc. with a new bell-storey above, and a wooden spire (demolished c.1645). The nave has also been heightened, for the addition of a 16thc. clerestorey, but the earlier roofline is clearly seen on the W interior wall. The church was restored from 1884-86, with the loss of medieval wallpaintings.Construction is of ironstone rubble except for the Perpendicular addition to the tower, which is of grey ashlar. In 1999 a Parish Church Centre was added. This was sensitively conceived as a separate building to the W of the church. The N arcade is described below.
Parish church
All Saints' has a nave with two-bay N aisle, a chancel with a N chapel (RAF chapel) and a N vestry off this, and a W tower with a broach spire. The form of the original church is seen in the long and short quoins at the E end of the chancel, and in the massive chancel arch. This is normally assumed to be Anglo-Saxon (eg by Pevsner) but may postdate the Conquest by a decade or so (see VIII below). The N aisle was added in the mid-12thc., the tower dates from the late 13thc., and the chapel to the early 14thc.. Construction is of Barnack limestone, irregularly cut and coursed. Features reported here are the chancel arch, N arcade and font.
Parish church
St Mary's has a clerestoreyed nave with N and S aisles. The arrangement
of the arcades is rather complex. There are six
bays on the N and five on the S. The two east
bays of each arcade correspond.
The next pier W of each arcade
is a short section of wall with responds to E and W and transverse arches
across nave and aisles. W of this there are four bays
in the N arcade but only three in the S, although the
arcades are of equal length. This is because the S
arcade has pointed arches throughout, and the N round
arches. Of this ensemble, the earliest work is in the W section of the N
arcade, say c.1190-1210. The two E
bays of both arcades date from
a decade later; pier 1 of each arcade is cylindrical with a moulded capital and the arches on
the N are round, but on the S the round arches have been replaced by pointed
ones with an unusual double hollow profile. This modification probably belongs
to the later 13thc., and from this period too dates the entire west section of
the S arcade. The E part of the present nave was, of
course, the chancel originally, with chapels to N and S
now integrated into the nave aisles. A new chancel was
built to the E in the 13thc., but the present chancel
is largely of 1866-67, and by James Fowler of Louth. The remainder of the
church was restored in the same period, by William Slater of Northampton. The S
nave doorway is covered by a porch, which also
incorporates a tiny 13thc. chapel, once vaulted, open to the S aisle. The W
tower dates from c.1250, and has a 14thc. ashlar broach
spire.