The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Redundant parish church
Redundant parish church
Edworth is a small hamlet near the Great North Road about 2 miles SSE of Biggleswade and adjacent to Hinxworth, just inside the Bedfordshire county border. The church of St George has a 13thc nave, 14thc aisles, chancel and west tower, and 15thc porches. The chancel was shortened in the 19thc but the church is otherwise unrestored. The church has been redundant since 1976 and is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. Unexpectedly perhaps for a Gothic building with no 12thc history at all, Romanesque material survives in the form of a re-set pillar piscina and two ex-situ capitals.
Redundant parish church
The area around St Peter's is historically one of the most interesting in the town. On College Street stood the Augustinian Priory of St Peter and St Paul until 1527, when Cardinal Wolsey founded his Cardinal College of St Mary on the site. It was not completed, but a gateway survives. St Peter's Street itself runs S from the town centre and boasts a good collection of timber-framed shops and houses. St Peter's is at the southern end of the street, at an intersection of the inner ring road. Beyond it to the S are derelict waterfront warehouses standing on the dockside. Its present position is by no means attractive, therefore, but work is under way on the regeneration of the waterfront, and St Peter's is likely to benefit from them. It was made redundant in 1979 along with three other town centre churches, and the Ipswich Historic Churches Trust was founded at the same time to ensure their maintenance and preservation. In 1981 these four churches, St Lawrence, St Peter, St Clement and St Stephen, were passed to the Borough Council by the Church Commissioners for a nominal sum and then offered to the Ipswich Historic Churches Trust on long leases. The intention was that the Trust would undertake repairs and find appropriate new uses.
The church is largely 14th -15thc., with a four-bay aisled nave with 14thc. arcades and aisle windows. It has N and S doorways, the S under a 15thc. porch. The N clerestory is 14thc. with sexfoils, the S 15thc.. The chancel is early 15thc. and Scott extended the aisles alongside it in 1881 and he was also responsible for the great E window. A surpassingly unattractive vestry has been added at the E end, reached through the S chancel aisle. The 15thc. W tower is of knapped flint with diagonal buttresses and a polygonal N stair turret. It has a battlemented parapet with flushwork ornament. The N aisle windows are all boarded up, and other windows are protected by wire mesh grilles except those in the porch, which are broken. The church is home to an important Tournai marble font.
Redundant parish church
The church is set in woodland, alongside the stables of Blatherwycke Hall (the house was demolished in 1948). The nave has an early 12thc. S doorway, and must date from that time. A two-bay N aisle has been added, the arcade of c.1200 but the aisle itself widened in the 19thc. There is no clerestorey, but the interior is bright owing to the large 14thc. windows in the S wall. The chancel has a three-bay N aisle, the arcade 13thc. The W tower is slender and unbuttressed, dating from early in the 12thc. The plain W doorway and plain windows in the N, Sand W walls (not described) attest to this, as does the E bell-opening (the rest are later). Construction is of grey stone blocks, roughly shaped and coursed.
Redundant parish church
The only surviving Romanesque feature is a doorway incorporated in the N wall of the nave.
Redundant parish church
The church stands on Franciscan Way, part of the Ipswich inner ring road, in an area of office buildings between the town centre and the docks. It became redundantc.1980 and came into the possession of Ipswich Borough Council, who rented it to the Ipswich Historic Churches Trust. In 2001 the Diocese bought it from the Council for £1, in order to convert it into a flexible meeting place in the centre of Ipswich for the church, community, business and charities. It includes a conference, meeting and performance space, a bookshop and a restaurant. The church consists of a nave with aisles of flint and rubble construction, of four bays without a clerestorey but with 15thc. dormers at the east end to light the rood area. The arcade, S doorway and aisle windows suggest a date ofc.1300. The aisles were extended for one bay alongside the chancel in the 15thc., and on the N side a knapped flint gabled chapel was added E of this, which is now the Revelations bookshop. On the S side of the chancel, a passage leads to the glass-walled restaurant of 2004-05. The S nave doorway is protected by a brick porch. The W tower is 15thc, of knapped flint with diagonal buttresses and an embattled parapet with elaborate flushwork and crocketed pinnacles. It was rebuilt in 1886. St Nicholas's has no Romanesque fabric but houses the most celebrated Romanesque sculpture in the county: a tympanum carved with a boar, a relief of St Michael and the Dragon and three reliefs of apostles.
Redundant parish church
The church consists of nave, chancel, N vestry, S porch, and timber-framed W bell-turret with shingled spire. The medieval lower timbers of the turret appear in the nave. The church was largely re-built in 1879 by Preedy. Surviving 12thc. features are N and S doorways to the nave, and an early to mid 12thc.
corbel table on N and S sides of the nave. There is also a small plain round-headed window with an arcuated lintel just E of the S doorway. All the stonework is local red sandstone, except the modern N vestry.
Redundant parish church
Wordwell lies alongside the B1106 Bury St Edmunds to Brandon road, just over five miles N of the centre of Bury. The tiny village lies at the SE corner of the enormous coniferous plantation of the King's Forest, and consists of just the church, a few houses, Wordwell Hall and the hall farm. The living was abolished in the 18thc. and the rectory demolished in 1736; after that date the church was served by priests from neighbouring parishes until the parish was combined with that of West Stow.All Saints is a two-cell church of flint, substantially dating fromc.1100 but heavily restored, having a bell-cote on the W gable and an oak S porch. The nave is tall with 12thc. N and S doorways. Both have carved tympana but that of the N doorway now faces inside the church. There are no windows on the N side of the nave, and later medieval ones on the S. The W wall has a tall trefoil-headed lancet and gabled buttresses supporting the double bell-cote. The chancel arch dates fromc.1100 and is flanked by 15thc. niches with cusped heads. The chancel retains its 12thc. eastern quoins and much of its flint masonry is original, especially on the N side, but the ogee-headed priest's doorway and flowing E window are 19thc. work.The church was very run down in 1757, 'a very mean fabrick and kept in a most nasty condition - tis almost quite un-tiled, but materials lye ready to repair it', according to Tom Martin. By 1829, when David Davy saw it, it had been put into good order. At this date it had already received 14thc. and 15thc. windows replacing the old 12thc. lancets, the nave had been given a crow-stepped gable, and there was a brick porch ofc.1500. Plans for the restoration that gives it its present appearance date from 1857, and were drawn up by S.S. Teulon, but the work was not completed until 1866 (date on bell-cote. Teulon's contributions were the present W front and bell-cote, the S porch, the priest's doorway, the scissor-beam roofs and the pulpit and reredos.Important Romanesque sculpture is found on the two nave doorways and the chancel arch.
Redundant parish church
Wroxeter is a village 5 niles SE of Shrewsbury on the River Severn, best known for the Roman city on the N side of the modern village. The church is in the centre of the village, on the E bank of the river. It consists of a chancel that is Anglo-Saxon in orgin (see N wall) but largely late-12thc, with an 18thc S vestry, a 12thc unaisled nave, wider on the S side than the N, a 19thc S porch and a W tower. According to Pevsner (1958) there was a S nave arcade that was removed. The aisle must date to c.1300 (see S nave windows), and the aisle removed and the S wall rebuilt in 1763. The font is of interest, being formed of the base of a Roman column, and a photograph is included. The church was closed on 1980, and came under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust in 1987.
Romanesque features recorded here are the S chancel doorway, now blocked; the chancel arch; the tower arch, and two animal reliefs in the exterior S nave wall.
Redundant parish church
The rectangular aisleless nave has a transept on the easterly end of the south side, which served as a vestry. A gallery at the west end is accessed by an open tread stairway. The chancel is apsidal with a diameter 0.7m less than the width between the exterior of the present nave walls. The chancel arch is approximately semi-circular, but probably of c 1692, the date Pevsner gives for this present church. The west respond of a Norman north arcade was discovered in 1980-81, partly buried in the north wall and visible through the open treads of the gallery stairway, but inaccessible. There is an area of herring-bone work in an area under the south-east window of the nave. The main Romanesque features are two loose sculptures, held firmly by metal bands for security both in the vestry.
Redundant parish church
West Bergholt is a village in the Colne valley, 2 miles W of Colchester. It is a substantial settlement on the N side of the river, and the church and hall stand just outside the main village to the NW. St Mary’s was decribed as damp by the later 19thc, and after the consecration of a new church, also dedicated to St Mary, in the centre of the village in 1904 it was used increasingly seldom, first becoming a chapel of ease and then being declared redundant in 1976 when it was taken over by the Churches Conservation Trust.
Old St Mary’s is substantially an 11thc building, with masonry of this period obvious in the N wall. It has a nave with a separately roofed S aisle separated from it by a 3-bay arcade, and a S porch. It is separated from the chancel by a beam with a paited coat of arms above it, rather than the usual chancel arch. At the W end of the nave is a timber gallery and there is a timber W bell turret with a pyramid roof. Construction is the usual Essex mixed rubble, including Roman tiles, puddingstone, pebbles and flint. The only Romanesque feature is the plain font.