The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
West Berkshire (now)
Parish church
Padworth is a village in West Berkshire, in the Kennet valley midway between Reading and Newbury. The church is surrounded by woodland and the grounds of Padworth College, just outside the village centre to the north. It is a complete 12thc. church with a rectangular aisleless nave and apsed chancel and a shingled W bell-turret. The external masonry is covered with pebbledash rendering throughout. High-quality 12thc. sculpture is to be found on the N and S nave doorways (the S doorway protected by a modern porch), and the chancel arch.
Parish church
Catmore consists of the church and a farmhouse in the hilly, wooded farmland of west Berkshire. The church has a single nave and chancel. Nave has a 19thc. bellcote on the W gable and opposed N and S doorways, both 12thc. The S doorway, described below, is protected by a porch with a neo-Norman external doorway. The N doorway, not described, is completely plain and headed by a segmental chamfered arch. There is a 12thc. font decorated with beakhead.
Parish church
Purley was previously a rural village but is now a suburb of Reading, despite being situated outside Reading UA. Ribbon development along the Oxford Road, and the building of large housing estates to the south of it entirely subsumed the old village. Most of the old church is gone too, replaced by G E Street in 1870 (but incorporating older fabric). St Mary's has a brick W tower of 1626, a nave with 20thc. N aisle extending along the N side of the tower, and a square chancel with a pointed chancel arch. The 12thc. chancel arch has been reset on the N side of the chancel and is described below. There is also a 12thc. carved font.
Parish church
Avington is in the Hundred of Kintbury, in the SW corner of the county. The village is in the Kennet valley, 2 miles E of Hungerford and 5 miles W of Newbury. The settlement is tiny, consisting of the church and the former manor (now farm buildings) at the end of a lanes running S from the A4. The 12th-century church survives in its entirety, consisting of an aisleless nave with a chancel of the same width but slightly lower. To this was added, in the 13thc, a transeptal N chapel at the E end of the nave; gone now but the present vestry of 1877 is in more or less the same position. A S porch was added in the 16thc. There is no tower, but a bell-cote over the W gable of the nave, that may date from the 13thc. The interior was repaired, paved and seseated in 1765, and a major restoration was carried out by Butterfield in 1848-53, when the 18thc pews were removed and the chancel roof retiled. The church was again refloored in 1903, and in 1910 new roofs were erected on nave and chancel. Avington is valued as much for its sculpture as its architecture, and the main areas of interest are the richly-carved S doorway, the chancel arch, the remains of the chancel rib vault, and the font.
Parish church
Thatcham is a town of 23000 people (2003) in the Kennet valley in west Berkshire, 2 miles east of Newbury and on the opposite side of the river. It has strong claims to be oldest continuously inhabited settlement in Britain, with remains from the mesolithic, bronze age and iron age as well as a Roman town. The A4 runs through the town and the church of St Mary is just to the south of it, standing in a large churchyard in the town centre. The church itself is an imposing building of flint with ashlar dressings, largely rebuilt by T.Hellyer (1857). It consists of an aisled nave with a S porch, chancel with S chapel and N vestry, and a W tower. The S doorway, evidently moved to its present position when aisles were added to the nave in the 13thc., is all that survives of the 12thc. sculpture.
Parish church
Sulhamstead Abbots is the easternmost of a group of three Sulhamsteads (the others are Sulhamstead and Sulhamstead Bannister) on the south bank of the Kennet, 5 miles SW of the centre of Reading. The village is little more than the church and a few timber-framed, thatched houses nearby. It consists of a nave with S doorway and bellcote over W end; a narrow N aisle with a three-bay arcade of the early 13thc.; and an aisleless 19thc. chancel with a 20thc. vestry to the N. The chancel is centred on the nave with its aisle, not on the unaisled nave, and not on the fine timber nave roof of 14th–15thc. The chancel arch belongs to the 19thc., and presumably in this period the original chancel was replaced with one shifted to the N. The only feature recorded here is the font.
Parish church
Aldermaston is a village on the south bank of the Kennet, 5 miles E of Newbury and 10 miles SW of Reading. The church is on the edge of the grounds of Aldermaston Court, east of the village. It is a large pebble-dashed church with a single nave and chancel and no chancel arch. The original church was shorter, but was extended E and W in the 13thc., the W part of the nave being slightly wider than the E. At the same time a S transept was added as a chapel. There is a 15thc. tower with a spire. The only features of interest are the large reset W doorway and a carved head set on the S wall inside the nave.
Parish church
Integral 12thc. single nave and chancel with 13thc. tower. To this, G.E. Street added a brick chancel higher than the nave in 1851. Two chapels of 1706 (E chapel) and 1765 (W chapel) open off N side of nave. The tower bears the inscription MBR1637AMP, presumably referring to a restoration. 12thc. sculpture consists of a S doorway elaborately carved with chevron, a plain font, and reused pieces on the tower arch and the label of the W window.
Parish church
Stratfield Mortimer is 6 miles south of Reading and a mile north of the Roman road called the Devil's Highway. The Roman town of Calleva is 2 miles to the SW. This village itself is no more than a few houses and a pub alongside the Foudry Brook which rises near Baughurst and joins the Kennet in Reading. Stratfield Mortimer was the old centre, but the main settlement is now Mortimer, a mile to the west. The present church of Stratfield Mortimer was built by R. Armstrong in 1869. It contains an important inscribed Anglo-Saxon tomb slab (not described), and a severely eroded font basin, no longer in use, which could date from the 12thc. and is described below.
Redundant parish church
East Shefford is effectively just East Shefford house and this church, situated less than half a mile SE of the more substantial village of Great Shefford; itself 5 miles NE of Hungerford. The church consists of a single nave and chancel of c.1100 (12thc. window in N wall, 12thc. paintings on chancel arch wall) with timber bell turret at W end of nave and S nave doorway. The chancel E wall was rebuilt 13thc., and the chancel arch enlarged and a S chancel chapel added, probably c.1463.
Regular worship at the church was discontinued in 1870, although it is still consecrated. The congregation transferred to the newly-built church of the Holy Innocents (now demolished). Plans to demolish St Thomas's in 1958 were halted by the Friends of Friendless Churches. In 1972 the church was taken over by the Redundant Churches Fund, renamed The Churches Conservation Trust in 1994. Romanesque sculpture comprises a font, a pillar piscina and a loose fragment elaborately carved with foliage.