The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
Nun Monkton is a settlement 8 miles N of York. The church is the main survival from the priory founded before 1154, and is approached from the SW on a private road up an avenue leading directly towards the W facade. The five bays of W part of the present church are the only visible remains from the priory. The W facade is 12th-century in the lower stage, with doorway and statuary; the W doorway opens into the tower which is enclosed in the aisleless nave. The E wall is a 19th-century feature; it did not exist in this position at the time of the visit by Sir William Glynne (Butler 2007, 308-10). The E end of the present church was added in 1873, incorporating the remains of the easternmost doorway in the S wall. (See Leach and Pevsner 2009, 610-11).
There are three doorways in the S wall of the nave of which the E is the most elaborate but mostly restored; access to the exterior S wall was restricted in 2014. Plan of church in Poole 1844 shows a straight E wall limiting the early work to five bays; sources of earlier illustrations are given in Bilson 1915, 107; three illustrations of the pre-restoration building are given in Butler 2007, 308-10).
Romanesque sculpture is foound on the E doorway, S wall, and on the W facade.
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
Little remains of the 12thc. church, which was rebuilt in 1480-82. The present building comprises a medieval chancel and crossing tower, and a modern W porch on the site of the E bays of the nave; the transepts and the two chapels flanking the choir are in ruins. Romanesque sculpture is found on a respond just outside the modern doorway leading into the porch, on its N side, on a fragment set into the N wall inside the church and on a loose capital on a window ledge. There is also a plain double-handled piscina or stoup inside the church, of uncertain date.
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
Dunster is a large village in the district of West Somerset, 5 miles W of Watchet. The church is predominantly of the 15thc , and has a cruciform plan with a central tower and N and S transepts. The nave has aisles and a S porch, and the chancel has side chapels and dates from the 13thc when Reginald de Mohun established a Benedictine priory affiliated to Bath Abbey. The church is of red sandstone, and was restored by Street in 1875-77. Romanesque work survives in the W portal (which is largely by Street), and the W crossing piers.
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
Romsey is a town on the E bank of the river Test in the SW of the county, some 7 miles NW of the centre of Southampton. The abbey is on the western edge of the town, near the river.
The present church has an aisled nave and chancel and a crossing between with a crossing tower, and unaisled transepts with single eastern chapels. The eastern arm is unusual in that it is square-ended but has an ambulatory. The central vessel of the chancel is three bays long and terminates at the east with a two-bay arcade. The aisles are of four bays, the eastern bays ending in apses, and the straight ambulatory thus consists of four bays: the east bay of each aisle and between them the two bays east of the eastern arcade. There was once an axial chapel, of course, and the two deep arches leading into it from the ambulatory survive, now fitted with altars dedicated to St Mary and St Ethelfleda. It has usually been suggested that this chapel was originally an open square, two bays by two, but Fernie raises the possibility that there were two parallel chapels separated by a wall, each housing the relics of one of the founding abbesses (Elfleda and Merwinna). The 12thc chapel was replaced c.1270-80 by a Lady Chapel, itself demolished after 1544.
The original chancel elevation remains to north and south, and consists of a three-bay round-headed arcade with a tall gallery whose openings have central shafts and arches dividing them in two, but no tympana. There are no gallery windows. The clerestory has a passage and each bay has a tall central arch around the window, flanked by lower ones. Shafts run up the wall face ending at the straight horizontal wall-head, indicating that there was no stone vault. The arcade has compound piers and the arches of the arcade and gallery are decorated with chevron and other motifs. The aisles have transverse arches and quadripartite rib vaults between them. The elaborate figural and foliage capitals, including the ROBERTVS inscriptions, for which Romsey is justly celebrated are found on the aisle and ambulatory vault responds. The chapels at the ends of the aisles (St George’s on the north; St Anne’s on the south) are decorated with internal wall arcading with scallop or volute capitals and chip-carved decoration.
The crossing has round-headed arches carried on compound crossing piers. On the interior walls, above the crossing arches, a passage runs all the way around the tower, opening into the crossing space through three bays of paired round-headed arches on each face. What remains of the tower outside the church is short, plain and largely rebuilt.
The east walls of the transepts have similar elevations to the chancel; three storeys with two ground level arches framing the entrances to the chancel aisles and transept chapels (the S now the clergy vestry and the N the choir vestry), and gallery and clerestory arcades above. The west walls of the transepts, however, have significant changes in elevation. On the exterior the S transept has a triple window at the middle level of the outer bay, with simple round headed clerestorey windows above, and large areas of blank wall above and below the lower window. On the inside the S bay is articulated with blind arcading below the triple window, and the blank wall above it is largely occupied by the splays of the windows and their elaborate arches. The clerestory of the inner bay is again similar, but below it the gallery and the arch to the nave aisle have an enclosing arch, or giant order. This scheme continues in the nave arcade, and also appears on the external face of the south transept façade in a less plastic form. It is also notable that the gallery opening on the south, but not the north, has a heavy cylindrical central shaft, rather than the slender shafts used elsewhere in the transept and chancel galleries. On the N transept thel exterior W wall has a more conventional elevation with windows at 3 levels in the outer bay. The clerestorey is flanked by blind arches, reflecting the internal arrangement, the middle level has a simple wide arched window within and without, and at the lower level a triple opening similar to that at mid-level on the S transept has been blocked and a small three-light Perpendicular window inserted, although the original arrangement is clearly seen on the interior,
In the nave, the first bay is double on both north and south elevations, with compound piers framing the double bay and a heavy cylindrical central shaft, suggesting that an alternating system of giant-order supports may have been envisaged for the entire nave. Fernie (2000), 174-75 presents a good deal of convincing evidence that this was not, in fact, the original scheme, and that the cylindrical pier was intended to mark a feature such as the nave altar. Further west, the elevation reverts to single bays with compound piers; the giant order expressed by the enclosing arches of the gallery which are carried on nook-shafts descending right down to the arcade pier bases. The design of the gallery openings is similar to that found in the chancel and transepts. The nave is seven bays long (counting the double bay as two), but only bays 1-4 of the arcade and gallery are 12thc. The three western bays and the entire clerestory on either side are early 13thc work, and are not included in this report. The south nave aisle has quadripartite rib vaults with wall responds. Bay 1 contains the so-called Abbess’s doorway from the NE angle of the cloister, and bay 2 has intersecting wall arcading but the remaining 12thc bays are undecorated. The north nave aisle of the abbey church was formerly used as the parishchurchofRomsey. In a dispute in 1372, the parishioners asserted that the aisle was too narrow to accommodate them on Sundays and festivals, and a commission of inquiry was appointed by Bishop Wykeham to look into the issue. In 1403 the vicar and his parishioners were granted a faculty to pull down the north wall of the aisle and enlarge it, making it clear that the parish was responsible both for the work and for the maintenance of the enlarged aisle. After the Dissolution the parish bought the entire church, and the north aisle was returned to its original width. In the course of these changes the entire aisle wall was replaced except for the two eastern bays, which appear to have been spared, and which retain their original masonry but not their windows, which were replaced in the 19thc. The north porch is of 1908, by W. D. Caroe.
Romsey contains two important Anglo-Saxon carved stone roods. The smaller, now set over the altar in St Anne’s Chapel shows Christ elevated high on a tall cross with angels above the arms. To either side are the figures ofSt Johnand the Virgin and Longinus and Stephaton amid a sparse tangle ofWinchesterfoliage. The surface is eroded and retains little detail, but Talbot-Rice suggests a Byzantine prototype and offers a date in the early 11thc. Stone takes a similar view. The larger rood, now set in the west wall of the south transept, is generally considered to have been set originally above a chancel arch. Stone dates this to the first half of the 11thc, and Talbot-Rice to 1000-20 and this dating is usually accepted, although Fernie (1983) associated it with the building erected in 967 (see section VII).
The Quarr stone apse of an earlier church was discovered under the floor and reported by Peers (1901). Peers’s important article suggests a building sequence in which an aisleless, cruciform pre-Conquest church received its apse after the Conquest, c.1090-1100. From c.1120 the church was rebuilt starting at the east end. The Anglo-Saxon nave and transepts remained in place initially, and the big new transepts were built immediately to the east of the old ones. When it came to rebuilding the south nave aisle, work began west of the old transept leaving its façade wall in place, and this eastern section was not replaced until the rest of the aisle was complete. This explains the odd alignment of the first two bays of the south nave aisle, and the change in masonry. It also explains why the sculpture of the Abbess’s doorway in bay 1 of this aisle is more elaborate and advanced than that elsewhere in the Romanesque work. Later workers such as the Taylors, Pevsner, Hearn and Fernie have accepted Peers with only slight modifications. Hearn (1975) goes into most detail, identifying five distinct campaigns between c.1120 and c.1230. There are no documents that allow an accurate dating of the Romanesque work at Romsey, and estimates have therefore been based on sculptural forms and mouldings. Unfortunately, the dating of the figural and foliage Romsey chancel capitals was based on their similarities to some in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, and the comparison was made at a time when it was believed that the Canterbury capitals were carved in-situ c.1120. This view has now been discarded, and the Canterbury capitals redated to c.1100, but the old 1120 date has stuck at Romsey. McAleer was aware of the problem in 1983 but retained the later date at that time. Fernie also recognised that the redating at Canterbury constituted a challenge to the traditional dating of Romsey, but accepted an 1120 date on the basis of the chevron ornament which is more complex than that carved at Durham between c.1110 and 1120. This issue will be discussed further in section VIII, but for the present it should be stated that the present author prefers a starting date around 1110.
Romanesque sculpture is found in the chancel, the crossing and the western part of the nave at Romsey. In addition to the doorways, windows, arches, arcades, capitals and blind arcading mentioned above, there are internal carved stringcourses in the chancel main vessel, in the transepts and crossing and in the nave, and external ones on the nave aisle and transept walls, and corbel tables survive on the nave, chancel and transepts, although many corbels have been replaced. All of this work belongs to a single campaign, which must have extended over several decades, except the heavily restored Abbess’s doorway and the window above it. Both are set in a projecting frontispiece with a drip-course between them, protecting the doorway. The doorway has elaborate twisted shafts and symmetrical foliage motifs typical of the 1140s. The window, less tall than the other aisle windows, has decoration connecting it with the doorway.
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
The church has a W tower (13thc), a large, high nave (Anglo-Saxon), a N
aisle (c.1200) and a long, square-ended chancel
(Anglo-Saxon and later). The W and N doorways are 12thc. (early and late
respectively), but plain.
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
12thc. nave with aisles of seven bays, the W bay curtailed. The clerestorey dates from the 15thc. The one-bay square vaulted chancel originally had aisles, and remains of the S aisle are visible on the exterior. On the N there is a later vestry that continues the line of the nave aisle. The tower is set at the S of the nave's W end, and its erection dates from 1672. The building history is complex and is sketched in section VII, but here it must be noted that the building was originally the hospitium of Ramsey Abbey, and had no W tower. The nave arcades were shortened by just over one bay when the tower was added, and the tower arch appears to have been constructed of parts of the removed arcade including the W respond capitals. Meanwhile the original W doorway, of much the same date as the nave but stylistically unrelated, was presumably moved to its present position as W tower doorway. This is only one of several hypotheses that could be advanced to account for the present appearance of the W end. The tower and the lower parts of the aisle walls and the E façade are of ashlar, while what can be seen of the rest of the chancel is of cobbles. There was an extensive restoration in 1843-44. 12thc work described here comprises the chancel vault and arch, its E windows and the remains of the S chapel; the nave arcades, the W tower arch and the W tower doorway.
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
This well-known building was begun c.1100 as the main church of a Benedictine abbey. It is a very large church in the centre of the town, comprising a C12th aisled nave of eight bays, crossing, transepts and tower, with a later medieval aisled chancel.
The E end of the church was apsed, as found by excavation in 1890-91 (Harrison and Thurlby 1995, 51), but the ends of the chancel aisles are of unknown form. The central tower collapsed onto the S transept in 1690, the N and W arches remaining in place, together with the NW angle of the tower containing the stair vice. It is said the Norman S transept is lost, but there are fragmentary remains to be seen in its interior walls. For example, the restorers put a window in the E wall: this is in place of the opening to a chapel for which the N jamb remains; there would have been a chapel on each transept, Pevsner 1967, 439 says they 'seem to have been square on the outside and apsed inside'.
The N and S transept walls retain evidence of the original triforium and clerestory, and the fenestration can be reconstructed (Harrison and Thurlby 1995, 51-54; Figs. 1-4). This plain 'Early Romanesque' work is the earliest remaining phase (Fernie phase I); 'Later Romanesque' introduces chevron mouldings as in three of the first two bays of the nave and the arches of the crossing (Fernie phase II). Both phases date from the time of Abbot Hugh, 1097-1123. Later work in the nave arcades and N clerestory is Transitional (Fernie phase III), with keel mouldings and shafts (Fernie 1995, Fig. 2; 40-44).
The cruciform church became the parish church without, apparently, any demolition or damage at the Dissolution. In modern times, there was a restoration in 1871-3 and 1889-90, but a fire in 1906 severely damaged the church. The central tower and S transept were restored after this fire (in 1908 and c.1912 respectively). The lead from the roof melted, and some of the interior stonework is still marked by it, for example, SW of the crossing. The upper stages of the west towers were built in 1935. The most detailed plan of the church, in Hodges 1892, pre-dates these major restorations but it shows well the phases of work relevant to the Corpus at ground level; see also Fernie 1995, fig. 2. The post-fire works included the reconstruction of the S transept and W front and the building of a vestry off the W end of the S nave aisle. For restorations and sources, see Harrison and Thurlby 1995, 50-51.
Twelfth-century remains range in date from 1100-1110 for the N transept to the 1170s for the N porch (Pevsner 1967). Surviving parts include the N transept, much of the crossing and two stages of the central tower, the aisled nave with most of the galleries or triforia, also the lower parts of the west façade, and the N porch, which is on the nave N aisle.
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
Hurley is a village 3 miles NW of Maidenhead and 4 miles E of Henley-on-Thames. The church stands at the N end of the village, alongside the river. The present church is the long, narrow, aisleless nave of the priory church, with 11thc. proportions and plain 12thc. windows. The carved W and S doorways are in 12thc. style, but the former belongs partly and the latter entirely to Henry Hakewill's comprehensive restoration of 1852 as does the W window. To the N of the church stand the cloister and refectory, now a private house, the former containing two plain arches which appear to be c.1100 but are not regarded as medieval by VCH. Further 12thc. sculpture is found inside the two doorways.
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
Of the priory church consecrated by Robert de Bethune in 1130, only the nave, north aisle and west tower survive. Overall the church consists of the Norman nave with its west tower and north aisle and south arcade. To the south of this arcade stands the south, or parish nave of 1239, and to the south of this an aisle with a six-bay arcade, added in 1320. The original east end had transepts, a crossing tower and an apsidal presbytery with an ambulatory and three radiating chapels (as at Reading). All this work was destroyed after the Dissolution of Reading and its cell in 1539, and a wall was erected as the eastern terminal of what was now the parish church. Most of the monastic buildings were demolished too, although a gatehouse chapel and parts of the infirmary survive (Brown and Wilson 1994). At the west end of the church, the tower was heightened and the great west window added in the 15thc. The design of the 12thc nave arcades is unique. At the lowest level, and from the east, they have a stretch of walling, then three bays carried on cylindrical piers, then a long pier or stretch of walling pierced by a narrow round arch, then a further bay at the west. The second storey was originally a gallery, its openings now blocked on both sides and the gallery floor removed on the south. Above this is a clerestory. Smith (1963) has suggested that it was at first intended to roof the nave with a series of three domes, on the model of Saint-Front, Perigueux, but that this scheme was abandoned. The present roof is flat. Romanesque sculptural decoration is found on the capitals and imposts of the nave arcade, the W doorway, and the W window. These last two are decorated on both the external and internal faces. The nave gallery openings and clerestories will also be described, although they include nothing that could be called sculpture.
Parish church, formerly Benedictine house
Lapley lies 7 miles S of Stafford, just off the Roman road from Chester and Whitchurch that joins Watling Street near Water Eaton. There are earthworks to the N of the church, suggesting pre-Roman occupation in the area. The church stands on high ground at the western edge of the village, and is a substantial priory church; aisleless with a central tower and originally cruciform, but the transepts have been taken down, their arches walls blocked and the walls buttressed, presumably to take the strain of the heightening of the towerc.1475-1500. Only the W crossing arch survives in its originalc.1100 form, but it has been extensively restored. The E arch has been replaced; perhapsc.1300, and the lateral arches are built into the 15thc. walls, although traces of both are discernable. Angle buttresses have been added to the tower, and an upper storey added with large late-15thc. three-light bell-openings, a band of quatrefoils and a battlemented parapet. The nave is of uneven 12thc. ashlar, much disturbed and with traces of a blocked round-headed doorway of early Norman form on the S. There are no functioning nave doorways now, and the lateral windows are 19thc. replacements of reticulated (c.1330) originals. Entry is via the W doorway. The chancel is distinctly misaligned towards the S. It is ofc.1100 at the W end, with a plain round-headed S window and a flat buttress, and was extended eastwardsc.1300, based on the evidence of a Y-tracery S window and the sedilia and piscina below it. The church is of greyish or pinkish ashlar; thec.1100 work of irregular, squarish blocks unevenly coursed; the 14thc. work of longer but thinner blocks, uneven in size but coursed regularly, and the 15thc. and later work with larger blocks, more accurately squared. The William Salt Library has three antiquarian views of the exterior; a drawing of 1800 from the S by the Rev. S. Shaw (SV VII 31a), an engraving of the same drawing (SV VII 31b), and a view by Buckler from the SE of 1842 (SV VII 32). They add little to our knowledge of the church. There was a proposal to restore the church in 1950 that would have effectively removed much of its Romanesque character by rebuilding the nave and chancel with stepped buttresses and new gothic windows. It was approved but fortunately the work was not done. The only Romanesque work recorded here is the W crossing arch.