The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Bradford (formerly)
Parish church
Guiseley is a small town north-west of Leeds and south of Otley. The church is large and architecturally complex (Ryder 1993, 154). Medieval parts are the W tower, a nave with a S aisle and a chancel. Restored in 1866, the church acquired a modern nave and a chancel added on the N side in 1909-1910 (Leach and Pevsner 2009, 292). Surviving 12thc. sculpture can be found on the S doorway and in the S arcade, all in a good state of preservation but the doorway shows signs of tidying on its mouldings, probably in the 1886 restoration (Rawnsley and Dobson, 4; Pevsner, (1959), 1967, 227-8; engraving in Whitaker 1816).
Sir Stephen Glynne visited in 1858, before the additions; Butler (2007, 197-98) illustrates Glynne's 'church notes' with an engraving of the interior of 1816 by Thomas Taylor. This shows both nave arcades, looking north-east, and no pews.
Parish church
Thornton-in-Lonsdale is a small settlement on the south side of the limestone hills of Craven. It is about three-quarters of a mile W of Ingleton and six miles SE of Kirkby Lonsdale. The church has an aisled nave, chancel and Perpendicular W tower. The church was rebuilt in 1869-90, apart from the tower and the round-headed arches of the N arcade. In 1933 after a fire it was again rebuilt. The three-bay N arcade had not survived but was to some extent reproduced (Pevsner 1967, 513; Leach and Pevsner 2009, 501-2). A fragment of at least one grave-slab of probable 12thc date has also been recorded.
Parish church
Dentdale, which is nine miles long, has scattered farms but only one village, Dent. The town of Sedbergh is the outlet to the west. During the 19thc, Dent ‘marble’ was produced from quarries at the head of the dale, and three kinds are used in the chancel, with and without fossils.
The church stands in the core of the compact, stone-built village. It has a west tower which was rebuilt in the 18thc, apparently occasioned by dilapidation and an earthquake (Boulton 1995, 12-13). Its plan is common in the north-west of the county, a continuous six-bay nave and chancel both with aisles, and no chancel arch – although the third piers from the east are enlarged on the inner faces and may hint at an earlier one. The building was much renewed in 1889-90 (Pevsner 1967, 177-78; Leach and Pevsner 2009, 238-9).
Piers 1 to 3 are octagonal, but the two western piers (piers 4 and 5) of the arcades are round; some of their fabric may be 12thc, but re-used. The only feature certainly relevant to the Corpus is the nave N doorway.
Parish church
Calverley lies midway between Bradford and Leeds and overlooks the River Aire. Built in local gritstone, the large church of St Wilfrid appears to be mostly late medieval, and was restored 1869-70. It has a chancel with a N vestry and chapel, an aisled nave with a porch, and a W tower. One blocked window in the S wall of the nave shows that there was an earlier aisleless church, although the window head is undateable. Sculpture appears only on numerous grave-slabs found during the 19thc. building works (Ryder 1991; 1993).
Parish church
Horton-in-Ribblesdale is a village in the far west of North Yorkshire. It is famous today as a starting-point of the ‘three peaks’ walk, and for having a station on the Settle to Carlisle railway.
The church is at the southern end of the village, and has nave, chancel and aisles under a single roof, together with a buttressed western tower. The fabric is of roughly-coursed stone of various sources including the local Silurian slate and Carboniferous Limestone.
Major restoration of the church in 1823-25, when the N aisle was rebuilt. In 1879-80 the aisles were roofed in one span with the nave (Horton Group, 1981, 52-3). Raine (1873) gives the ‘modern ascription’ as ‘St Oswald or St Thomas’; Lawton says ‘St Oswald or St Thomas a Becket’. Borthwick Institute card index says ‘formerly St Thomas a Becket’, probably sourcing this in Parish Register transcripts.
The Romanesque material includes a doorway, nave arcades, and a font.
Parish church
Hubberholme is a village in Upper Wharfedale in the Yorkshire Dates. It is famous for connections with the playwright J.B. Priestley, who is buried at the church. This has a rectangular plan, with aisled nave and chancel in one, with squat W tower; this plan, with absence of a chancel arch, is common in the NW of the county and surrounding area. Later medieval windows to aisles. Restored 1863. The interior walls resemble the rough walls on the hills (field walls near the river are of rounded water-worn stones).
The S doorway and the S arcade have round arches but are unlikely to be Romanesque. Twelfth-century work is found in the tower and tower arch.
Parish church
Ingleton is a large village between Settle and Kirkby Lonsdale, about 19 miles from Kendal. The church overlooks the river Doe just above its confluence with the Twiss; these two streams have many waterfalls which are a major attraction. The building consists of an aisled nave, chancel, and W tower. The only sculptural feature of our interest is a cylindrical font carved with figures arranged in an arcade.
Parish church
Kildwick is a small village on the N bank of a bridging point over the River Aire, between Keighley and Skipton. The church is separated from the village by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The long structure of the church is mostly 14thc to 16thc. Several carved stones, loose and reset, are pre-Conquest, but two large carved stones re-used as a respond and as a pier base in the S arcade; a reset corbel, and a tomb slab, may all be Romanesque.
Parish church
Kirkby Malham is a village in North Yorkshire, 5 miles E of Settle. The church of St Michael is Grade 1 listed and is described by Pevsner as a 'handsome Pennine church, Perp. throughout' (Leach and Pevsner 2009, 369-70). It is essentially a late medieval church with aisled nave and chancel (without achancel arch); it retains a 12th-century font.
Parish church
The village stands at about 300m above the junction of two streams, the Nidd and the Stean. Looking SE from the church down Nidderdale, it is 7 miles (11.27 km) to Pateley Bridge.
The Victorian church, of 1865-6, has a chancel, nave with N aisle, W tower and NE vestry. The chancel arch incorporates Nidderdale limestone from Blayshaws quarry, about 1¼ miles (2 km) S. This limestone was used as ‘marble’ at Fountains Abbey in the 12thc, two polished capitals in the museum there being recorded for the Corpus.
The church was built in 1866 to replace one described as ‘a primitive looking building consisting of chancel, nave without aisles, a vestry at the west end, a south porch, a low tower not embattled, rising little above the long, low roof, which on the north side originally came down to within two feet of the ground’ (Speight (1906), 344); the ground rises abruptly on the N side of the church.
There is a large but incomplete 10thc cross reset in the church (Coatsworth (2008), 212-3).
Apart from the font, which may be of our period, there are no Romanesque remains to be seen at the church, but see Comments.