The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Herefordshire (now)
Parish church
Madley is a large village in central Herefordshire, 6 miles W of Hereford. There is evidence of Iron Age and Roman settlement in the area, and a Roman road runs through the E end of the village, running from Leominster towards Abergavenny. The church stands in the centre of the village. It has an aisled and clerestoried nave with a north porch and a S chapel; a W tower, and a chancel with a crypt below it. The building history begins with the 12thc. N porch, apparently once the transept of a much shorter church. The present church is substantially of the 13thc. and 14thc., and the oldest part of this is the W tower, whose E arch still has a form of scalloped capital, and whose windows and bell-openings are plain, pointed chamfered lancets. The nave arcades are of six bays, carried on cylindrical columns with moulded capitals and chamfered, two-order pointed arches. The clerestory windows are plain pointed lancets. The aisles extend westward alongside the W tower; a 13thc. arrangement with the original lancets surviving on both sides. There was a major remodelling c.1320, when the four eastern bays of the N nave aisle were heightened and fitted with three-light reticulated windows, and a chapel with a four-bay arcade was added S of the S aisle (the Chilstone Chapel). The semi-octagonal-apsed chancel and its crypt also date from this campaign. There were repairs in the 17thc. and 18thc. (see Anon (1957) below). In 1833-35 and again in 1871-79 the church was re-seated and repaired; the latter campaign under the supervision of F. R. Kempson of Cardiff. Further repairs were carried out in 1962-64 and in 1979, both times by H. J. Powell of Scriven, Powell and James, Hereford. Photographs of the 13thc. E tower arch capitals are included, but no description. The former N transept, now the N porch, has plain 12thc. lancets on its E and W walls, and the remains of a 12thc. arch above the present 13thc. entrance. These have been photographed but include no sculpture and are not described in detail here. The only 12thc. feature recorded below is the font.
Parish church
Tarrington is a village 6 miles E of Hereford and a silar distance W of Ledbury on the A438. The church is in the centre of the village, and consists of 12thc nave and chancel, originally with an apsidal E end, a N aisle by Edward Pritchard of 1835-36, a S porch by C Ford Witcombe of 1901, and a 16thc W tower. There was a major restoration by F. R.Kempson in 1871-72. Romanesque work is found in the N chancel windows, the enormous chancel arch, the tower arch and the N and S nave doorways
Parish church
Orcop is a small dispersed village in the S of the county, 8 miles S of Hereford and a similar distance W of Ross-on-Wye. It is in a hilly, mixed farming district, and Orcop itself consists of little more than the church and the remains of a motte and bailey nearby. It is at the foot of Orcop Hill whose summit, a mile NW of the church, rises to a height of 293m. Orcop Hill is also the name of the larger village on its eastern slopes. Orcop church, however, stands in isolation except for a few houses. It consists of chancel with a N vestry, nave with a N aisle and a S porch, and a W tower, timber clad in its upper part and carrying a timber bell stage with a short spire. None of the fabric is obviously Romanesque: the aisle is 13thc; the chancel of c.1300; the nave windows indicate a rebuilding in the 14thc, and the tower perhaps 16thc in origin, but the church was comprehensively restored by Thomas Nicholson in 1860-61. The only Romanesque sculpture here is a pillar piscina bowl.
Parish church
Bredenbury is a village in the N of the county, on the E side of the A44 between Leominster and Bromyard. The church stands alongside the main road, and was built by T. H. Wyatt in 1876-77, on a new site, to replace medieval chuches both here (in the grounds of Bredenbury Court) and at Wacton, a mile to the NE. Wyatt's church consists of a chancel with a gabled S vestry, a nave with a S porch and a W tower with a pyramid roof and a SW stair turret. Construction is rusticated, or rock-faced, with ashlar dressings and a fishscale slate roof. When Wacton church was pulled down in 1881, the font bowl was brought here and is now in the churchyard W of the S porch, where it does duty as a planter. A second smaller bowl from a font or stoup stands in a matching location to the E of the porch. These are the only features described here.
Parish church
The name Bredwardine (DS - Brocheurdie, DBH - Brodewordin) means the place on the slope of a steep ridge and in fact, the village stands on the western bank of the Wye, on the ground that rises to the top of Bredwardine Hill, over 291 m (700 feet) above sea level. Of the 12thc. church, only the aisleless nave survives, with two carved doorways (N and S), the traces of one plain doorway, now blocked, in the W wall and a font. There is some herring-bone masonry in the N wall and tufa was used for quoins and for doorways. The sculptured features are of red sandstone, except for the huge font, of breccia. For the rest, there is a tower of 1790, built on the north side of the nave, at its east end. The nave was lengthened and the chancel, which doglegs to the north, was rebuilt in the 15thc.
Parish church
The villages of Upper and Lower Breinton are loosely scattered along minor roads two to three miles W of the centre of Hereford on the rising land on the N bank of the river Wye. The land here is hilly and wooded and used for rough pasture and orchards. Lower Breinton, where the church is situated, is the eastern of the two settlements and lies along the river bank. In the orchard immediately to the W of the church are earthwork remains of Deserted Medieval Village (DMV), or manorial type.
St Michael’s has a nave with a N aisle and S porch, and a chancel with a N vestry. There is no tower, but a slate-hung belfry over the W gable of the nave, with a slate broach spire. The church was rebuilt by F. R. Kempson in 1866-70, when the N aisle was added. He reused the 12thc W doorway and the window above it, and reset a pair of plain 12thc window heads in the gable above. Little is known of the old church, but a W gallery was added to the nave in 1833-34 by L. Johnson, a builder of Hereford. Only the W doorway can be considered sculpture, and it is described below.
Parish church
Bridge Sollers is a village on the River Wye 6 miles W of Hereford. The village consists of a few dwellings and the church clustered around a crossing of the river. The church is on the N bank, alongside the main A438 road from Hereford to Brecon. It consists of 12thc nave with a later 12thc W tower and N aisle and a 13thc chancel. The Romanesque features here are the S doorway, under a 19thc timber porch, and the later 12thc N arcade.
Parish church
Sellack is a village in the Wye Valley, 3 miles NW of Ross-on-Wye. The village is a small settlement on the S bank of the river, consisting of a few houses and the church. St Tysilio’s has a narrow nave and chancel in one; the nave with a S porch and a 3-bay N aisle. The W bay of the nave arcade is 12thc, while the other two bays open onto a broad transept. This was added in the 14thc and rebuilt in a restoration by George Pearson of 1841-42. There is a 13thc N chapel, entered from the chancel and the nave aisle through a broad 13thc arches, and a modern vestry to the E of the chapel. The only Romanesque feature is the W bay of the N arcade.
Parish church
Nave with a plain S doorway (not recorded but possibly 12thc.), 13thc. chancel with a 14thc. arch, early 13thc. W tower with a shingled bell-storey and pyramid roof. Only the nave is probably of a 12thc. date but, as the RCHME (3:15) stated, 'there is little evidence of this'. The font is the only certain evidence of the existence of a Romanesque church here.
Parish church
Holmer is on the northern edge of Hereford, alongside the Leominster road. It is effectively a Hereford suburb now, and the account in Littlebury’s Gazetteer describes the beginnings of the process of absorption. In 1861 the population of the civil parish of Holmer and Shelwick was 1,083. By 1871 it had grown to 1,905, and this rapid growth is explained by the “facility afforded for the erection of houses, allotments of land being easily obtained.” That account lists the growing of wheat, barley, fruit and hops among the activities of the parish, along with the manufacture of bricks and tiles. Even today Holmer parish is largely agricultural, and Hereford only impinges on the southern part of the village.
The church stands alongside the busy Leominster road, and consists of a long nave and chancel in one with a detached tower alongside the nave on the S side, and a parish room recently added at the W end. The S chancel doorway is of c.1200 but very plain. The S nave doorway and the nave and chancel windows are all early to mid 13thc. The S porch is later, of stone and timber. The lower storey of the tower is early 13thc, with plain lancets, while the upper storey is timber-framed and has a pyramid roof. The church was repaired and reseated by J. H. Evins of Hereford in 1859-60. The chancel S doorway is the only Romanesque feature.