The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Northamptonshire (now), "St Peter’s, Northampton"
School chapel, formerly Hospital chapel
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. The
church is a long single-celled building with a short tower attached to the N
side, W of centre. There is no chancel arch, but the
extent of the original chancel is marked by an
arcade of four bays on the N
wall, now blocked but originally giving onto a chapel. There was apparently
another chapel on the N side of the nave, W of the tower, where a tall
quatrefoil-section pier
survives with the first few voussoirs of vault-ribs above its capital. The exterior masonry is much
disturbed on the S side, where blocked doorways and a total lack of
fenestration at the W end indicate the removal of conventual buildings which
communicated with the church. An elaborate late-12thc. W doorway is the
earliest dateable feature of the fabric, but most of the remainder suggests a
13thc. date, including the W window, the triple-lancets of the chancel S wall, and the simple lancets of the tower.
Construction is of stone rubble. There was a restoration in 1869-70 by
Buckeridge. The only Romanesque features are the W doorway and the font, both
of c.1200.
Parish church
The church has a nave with a three-bay S aisle
extending W a further bay alongside the tower and a
clerestorey on the S only, a N transept, and a S
doorway under a porch. The ashlar chancel, taller than the nave and with a steeply pitched roof,
was rebuilt in 1862. The W tower, dated to the late 13thc. by Pevsner, appears
earlier to the present author, and its windows are included in this report. The
tower has been certainly rebuilt, as it has a tall plinth course, W-facing buttresses and a 19thc. W
stair-turret. The aisle and porch and the N transept chapel too are 19thc. work, largely
faced in brick-sized blocks of red ashlar. Inside, it is apparent that the
tower arches were dramatically modified when the S aisle was rebuilt by J.
Manden in 1870. 12thc. material is present, but the arrangement is extremely
quirky. The tower now has arches to the nave and the extended S aisle. The S
wall of the tower is pierced by a 19thc. arch, supported by a half-column
respond at the W and a
cylindrical pier at the E. All of this is 19thc. work,
but the E pier has a reused foliage capital of c.1200.
Immediately to the E of this pier is another similar,
which forms the last pier of the 19thc. S
arcade. The E tower arch is also unusual. Its N
respond is a semi-quatrefoil
with a moulded capital, both 13thc., and on the S it is supported by a
quatrefoil
pier with a
similar capital, the pier positioned alongside the
double-pier at the E of the S arch. The SE angle of
the tower is thus supported by three piers. A further
complication is introduced by the wave profile of the E arch soffit; a motif which belongs neither to the 13thc. nor the
19thc. Described here are the S tower arch and the tower
windows.
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.