The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Hampshire (now)
Parish church
Fawley is a village on the W bank of Sothampton Water where it runs into the Solent; a position now dominated by the Esso oil refinery immediately W of the church. All Saints has a nave with 4-bay aisles, but the E bay of the S aisle is occupied by the arches of the tower. The chancel has a two-bay N chapel, used for weekday services, and a similar S chapel screened off for use as a vestry. The nave is 12thc in origin, with a chevron-decorated W doorway under a neo-Romanesque porch. The chancel arch, chancel chapel arcades and the W and N arches of the tower are 12thc work too (the E arch to the vestry is narrow and 19thc, and there is no S arch because the outer wall is in that position). The nave arcades are 13thc .
Parish church
Martin is a village in W Hampshire, on the NW edge of the New Forest, 8 miles SW of Salisbury and 6 miles NW of Fordingbridge. It has been a part of Hampshire only since 1895, when 8 parishes on the SE edge of Wiltshire (South Damerham, Martin, Melchet Park, Plaitford, West Wellow, Toyd Farm with Allenford, Whitsbury and East Bramshaw) were transferred. It straggles along a minor road that descends from the Wiltshire Downs, crossing the Ox Drove and a Roman road as it makes its way to Fordingbridge. All Saints church is in the village centre. It has a nave and chancel, W tower with spire and a S porch. The chancel has a S transept and a N chapel that is joined to what was originally a transept. The interpretation is confused by the fact that the chancel arch was moved a bay eastwards – the original position is marked by the rood loft entrance on the S nave wall. The nave was originally 12thc – the only Romanesque feature is the blocked N doorway and a window head in the same wall, reset inverted. The tower was added in the 13thc but its upper parts are 15thc. The two transepts are 14thc additions and the chancel was remodelled at that time too. The N chapel is 16thc and the porch Victorian.
Parish church
Michelmersh is in W central Hampshire, three miles N of Romsey. The substantial village stands on high ground overlooking the river Test, which flows from NW to SE a mile to the SW. The land around is mostly pasture and well wooded, with Michelmersh Wood immediately N of the village. The church is at the village’s northern edge.
St Mary’s has a nave with a S aisle, sharing a single roof, and a S porch, a chancel with a N chapel, and a weatherboarded tower at the W end of the aisle. Nave and chancel are of knapped flint; the S nave aisle wall being very low, so that the porch roof overlaps the big roof over the nave and aisle. The nave is 12thc with plain doorways of that date at W and S; the latter covered by a 19thc flint and timber porch. The N nave windows are big three-light 15thc openings. The chancel must be 12thc too, as it had 12thc chapels to N and S. Both chapel arches remain, but the S chapel has been removed, the arch blocked and a three-light window inserted. A resistivity survey in 1998 suggested confirmed the presence of a chapel. The N chapel has been rebuilt larger, with a roof running E to W. It now serves as a vestry and the organ fills its arch. The chancel itself has been lengthened; the quoins of the original E angle remaining on the S wall. To judge from the fenestration this took place in the mid-13thc. The S nave aisle was rebuilt in an extensive restoration of 1846-47 by W. Gover of Winchester, and the striking S elevation of the nave is entirely Gover’s work. The church was again restored in 1888 under the supervision of Arthur Blomfield, who was extremely critical of Gover’s restoration which, he said, had destroyed “whatever beauty of detail it may have possessed many years since.” In particular, Gover’s rebuilding removed any evidence that might have elucidated the relation of the church to its weatherboarded tower. This was built as a free-standing structure, like the similar tower at Perivale (Middlesex), and is characteristic of the years around 1600. There is evidence of repairs to it in 1846 and 1897. The only Romanesque features are the chapel arches and the W and S doorways.
Parish church
The church has a W tower formed from an Anglo-Saxon W porch of the 8th or 9thc. Inside the tower is a elaborate mid-12th doorway. The S aisle is an ambitious Perpendicular structure and the chancel is also structurally probably late medieval. The S chancel chapel is clearly 14thc because of the sedilia and the chancel arcade indicating a mid to later date in the century. The S nave aisle was Romanesque but was unfortunately demolished in 1867, arcade and wall, to make way for a tall and wide Neo-Dec aisle. A capital from the arcade survives in the S chancel chapel.
Parish church
A single-vessel church with no architectural division between nave and chancel, but with a wide span. Assertive W tower with big Romanesque strip-buttresses on the corners, of three stories, with Romanesque round-headed windows in the top two stages, and two circular windows at the top of third stage. No sculpture on the tower except roll-mouldings between the stories and around the windows (the E face of the tower, and the whole parapet is of brick, with an attractively cogged lower frieze). Two inscriptions help date the fabric of the building and are likely also Romanesque in themselves. The font is also of the 12thc, but heavily mutilated.
Parish church
Bullington is in rolling woodland and sheep pasture in central Hampshire, 7 miles N of Winchester, and is one of a chain of villages than runs along the valley of the river Dever, many of which form the present benefice. This dispersed village runs for a mile along the river, with Lower Bullington to the W and Upper Bullington to the E. 1 mile N of the village is the Iron Age hillfort of Tidbury Ring. The A34 trunk road runs from N to S between the two, and the A303 from E to W, the two intersecting immediately N of the village. The church is in Lower Bullington, in wooded pasture land on the S bank of the river Dever.
It consists of a flint nave and chancel in one, with a 19thc neo-Romanesque S nave doorway set under a flint and timber 19thc porch and a blocked 12thc N nave doorway without a porch. There are plain 12thc lancets on the lateral walls of the nave towards the W end. The 13thc chancel has a N vestry and the church has a W tower of brick with a tiled pyramid roof. There was a restoration in 1871 and Pevsner suggests that the tower may date from that time. The only Romanesque feature recorded here is the N nave doorway.
Parish church
Damerham is a village in W Hampshire, on the NW edge of the New Forest, 8 miles S of Salisbury and 3 miles NW of Fordingbridge. It has been a part of Hampshire only since 1895, when 8 parishes on the SE edge of Wiltshire (South Damerham, Martin, Melchet Park, Plaitford, West Wellow, Toyd Farm with Allenford, Whitsbury and East Bramshaw) were transferred. The village straggles along a network of roads following the line of a stream called Ashford Water. It has centres at its N and S ends, suggesting an assart from the woodland which still surrounds it, but the church, in the centre, is in an otherwise uninhabitated part.
St George’s has an aisled nave (a 3 bay aisle to the N and a 2 bay aisle to the S), with a doorway in the S aisle under a long 15thc porch, and a blocked N dooway. The tower is on the S side of the nave at the E end, and has a weatherboarded upper storey and a leaded pyramid roof. The chancel was originally 12thc , and has the remains of blocked arcades visible inside and out on the N and S sides. These do not match – the N arcade is of 2 pointed bays and the S of 2 round-headed wider bays extending further E. 12thc work is found on the N arch of the tower, on the N nave arcade, which has been clumsily reworked in the later Middle Ages, and on the N, and possibly also the S chancel arcade. More interesting than any of these is a tympanum depicting a horseman riding down a fallen enemy, reset over the S nave doorway. There is also a Christ in Majesty relief, possibly c.1200, reset in the gable of the S porch, and a large loose chevron voussoir.
Parish church
Crondall is in NE Hampshire, 1½miles from the county boundary and less than 3 miles NW of Farnham, over the border in Surrey. The village is a substantial one built on rising ground, and the church stands at its highest point, towards the S.
All Saints’ has an aisled and clerestoried nave with four-bay arcades of which the eastern bays give onto non-projecting transepts with arches linking them to the nave aisles. These transepts are chapels now, with E altars, and may have been originally, but in Ferrey’s plan dating from his 1847 restoration, both transepts held longitudinal rows of seats, those on the N side designated for children. The Romanesque features within them all date from the 19thc. The nave has N, S and W doorways, the N protected by a porch that was under restoration at the time of the visit, impeding but not entirely preventing photography of the doorway. The chancel is of two bays and rib-vaulted. The present tower is a brick structure of 1659, positioned on the N side of the chancel. Evidence for an original tower over the crossing can be seen in the form of a stair turret in the angle between the E wall of the N transept and the N wall of the chancel, in the thickness of the piers at the entrance to the transepts, and in the ugly buttresses erected on either side of the crossing in the 16thc. to shore up the walls. The old tower apparently became too unstable to maintain after it was unwisely decided to install two more bells in 1642, bringing the total to six, and to re-roof it with 1,200 lbs of lead.. The church contains a plain 12thc. font; the nave arcades and transepts originally dated from c.1170-1200 but are largely 19c work now, and the three nave doorways and the chancel and its arch and vaulting date originally from c.1200-1220. The chancel has been restored, and the N doorway practically entirely replaced, while the other two doorways have not been restored. The difference is striking. A plain 12c window survives at the W end of the N aisle. There is a 19thc. vestry on the N side of the chancel, W of the tower. Very little of the fabric is in its original condition. A drawing by Anne Crane, daughter of the Rev. John Lockman Crane (vicar 1803-08) of the interior c.1840 shows galleries between the nave piers, the arch to the S transept lower than the nave arcade, and no clerestory windows above the transept arches. In 1847 it was restored by Benjamin Ferrey, who repaired the N doorway, replaced the aisle and clerestory windows, removed the galleries and restored the chancel arch and nave arcades. In 1871 the church was again restored, this time by George Gilbert Scott II. His interior work was concentrated in the chancel, where the floor level was raised and the E windows replaced, but he coated the exterior walls with an inappropriate cement render that has since caused problems by retaining water. The current restoration has seen the replacement of windows on the N side and consolidation of the masonry of the north porch.
Parish church
Dibden is a village on the W side of Southampton Water on the N outskirts of Hythe. Dibden was formerly an extensive parish on the NE edge of the New Forest, with farms scattered around a central village core. This state of affairs has been overtaken by the growth of Hythe and Dibden Purlieu, and although the core still remains, around the church, Church Farm and the site of the old manor, it no longer forms a unified village centre. All Saints’ was bombed in 1940 and restored in 1955 by Pinckney and Gott. The restoration necessitated the replacement of the nave, but the 1884 tower and medieval chancel remain. The church now consists of a nave with a S porch, a W tower, and a late-13thc chancel with tall blind arcading on the interior to N and S. The only Romanesque feature is the Purbeck marble font.
Parish church
Barton Stacey is in rolling woodland and sheep pasture in central Hampshire, 7½ miles N of Winchester, and 5 miles E of Andover. It is one of the chain of villages than runs along the valley of the river Dever, many of which form the present benefice, and it occupies a network of roads on the S bank of the river, and the slopes of the valley of a stream running into it. The church stands at the crossroads in the village centre.
All Saints is largely of flint and consists of an aisled nave with a W tower partly inserted into it, and a chancel with transeptal N and S chapels. The nave has a S porch. The tower is early 16thc, of ashlar, with a polygonal SW turret, and a battlemented parapet with pinnacles. It was inserted into an aisled nave with 3-bay arcades, effectively cutting off rather less than half a bay of the N and S arcades. The arches of the 2 western bays of the arcades are early 13thc; pointed with a slight chamfer. The E bay on either side has a double-stepped arch with deep chamfers and pyramid stops, dating from the mid-13thc. The earliest of the arcade piers is the westernmost of the N arcade, with a multi-cusped capital. Its partner on the S has a moulded capital. Both are cylindrical. The other arcade piers are octagonal, and their capitals have more complex mouldings and dogtooth decoration. At the E end of the arcades are octagonal piers rather than responds, and they carry the chancel arch, transverse arches crossing the aisles and the longitudinal arches that frame the entries to the two chapels. The E responds of these chapel arches are similar in design, and the entire arrangement must therefore represent a major remodelling in the mid 13thc that also included the chancel. The transept façade windows are also 13thc in style, but replaced. There is also evidence of a 15thc remodelling, in the nave windows. By 1635 the church was ruinous. The manor was held at that time by Sir Robert Payne, who paid for the repair of the chancel. In 1848 the foundations were reseated and a W gallery removed. More repairs were carried out in 1877, including the replacement of the chancel roof and the porch, and much exterior remodelling. The chancel piers were reset in 1894-1901, and there was a restoration of the stonework in 1989-91.
Romanesque sculpture is found in pier 2 of the N arcade, and in a Purbeck marble font.