The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
"Barnburgh"
Parish church
Barnburgh is seven miles west of Doncaster. The honey-coloured stone church stands high in a village of which the older houses are of the same stone. It has a chancel with a N aisle or chapel, nave with N and S aisles and a porch, and W tower. The tower has four stages, the lower part including ashlar walling with two windows with one-piece heads; it is buttressed to the height of the S aisle, the roofs battlemented. A plan of the church is in the Borthwick Institute (Fac. 1869/2).
The earliest work inside the building is the nave N arcade of two bays with octagonal imposts and pointed arches. The base to pier 1 is the nearest to Romanesque forms.
Apart from two simple windows in the tower, the Romanesque remains are the two reset fragments of a sculpted pillar, formerly outside the church and now erected close to pier 1 in the N arcade.
Parish church
St Leonard is located at the north end of the village, on the edge of a county house estate, Thrybergh Park. The church is partly ashlar, partly rough stone. The nave was built between 11thc-12thc (Pevsner 1967, 516-7); traces of herringbone work are visible at the W end of the N wall of the chancel (Ryder 1982, 98). The chancel is of 14thc, and the W tower with a spire, lying in a wooded churchyard, was built during the 15thc. The church was restored in 1871 and 1894, and by 1970 a vestry block was added. Romanesque sculptural remains consist of a blocked doorway on N side of nave, a stringcourse near the doorway, a former chancel arch, and a stone shaft set close to the churchyard wall.
Cross
Known as ‘Village Green Cross’ (Ryder 1982, 120) or 'Butter Cross', the cross now stands in paving on a corner between the drives which serve modern bungalows in a small estate called Three Hills Close, off School Lane, on the E side of the Doncaster Road (A630). When recorded by the National Monuments Record in 1965 it was on the village green, enclosed by railings. Since that time the green has been built upon; as far as we are aware the cross has not been relocated. The stone is kept clear of the nearby shrubs by the kindness of its nearest neighbour.
Parish church
St Mary's is a large Victorian church from 1839 (Ryder 1982, 96; Borthwick Institute Faculty 1896/10), with blackened stone by past industries. It is on the side of a steep hill in the centre of the village (Rawmarsh High Street). From the S, there is a wide view over the built-up valley towards Rotherham. The approaches to the church still have their Victorian railings on all sides. The interest to the Corpus is the S doorway and a cross-shaft formerly in the churchyard (Pevsner 1967), now inside the S entrance (the base of the W tower).
Parish church
The church lies close to Hickleton Hall and its extensive outbuildings, including lodge, stabling etc, surrounded by trees. The 20th-century lords of the manor, the earls of Halifax, redecorated and refurnished the interior of the church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Externally the church is Perpendicular. Owing to subsidence caused by coal mining, a rescue archaeology project and restoration at the church was funded by the National Coal Board in 1982-6; the report of the excavation was never fully published, but the papers are with South Yorkshire Archaeological Services (see Bibliography below). The Romanesque remains are the chancel arch, and some loose stones housed at the time of our visit in the nearby stable buildings of Hickleton Hall. In Doncaster Museum store is at least one item from the excavation at the church, a star-patterned window-head probably from the east window, recorded for CRSBI in December 2001, YW97(35). According to Raine 1873, 186, the dedication in 'modern' times, was St Denis.
Museum
The Museum is housed in a fine Art Deco building. The best items from the excavations of the Pontefract Priory were on display, although much Romanesque material was omitted. For this see the report on the Pontefract Museum store at Normanton.
The most relevant exhibits are parts of a standing monument and a chevron voussoir. A later stone lectern table has also been photographed and described, as it may be a useful comparison for Romanesque examples.
Parish church
High Melton is a village five miles W of Doncaster. The church set back from the small village, on a hill, up a green lane. It consists of chancel, nave, S aisle and W square embattled tower, with a brownish slate roof; a S Lady Chapel was added during the second half of the 14thc. The nave is curiously tall, narrower than the chancel, and is not set out on the same lines as either the tower or the chancel; it looks as if the nave could be the survivor of a Saxon original. The later S aisle is as wide as the nave.
Romanesque sculptural decoration consists in the S arcade, in the chancel arch, and in a number of reset elements in the exterior of the N wall and in the window to the E of the doorway.