The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
"Holy Sepulchre"
Parish church
12thc. circular aisled nave with unlighted gallery and central ribbed dome on a lighted drum. To this is attached a rectangular two-bay aisled chancel, originally of the 13thc. The present appearance owes much to Salvin's restoration of 1841: particularly the chancel, the W doorway, the gallery capitals and the entire drum and dome of the nave, which replaced a 15thc. bell-storey. The church is built of ashlar.
Parish church
The core of the church is the original circular nave, now called the Round, with an annular aisle and an arcade supported on eight columns with early Romanesque capitals of various designs. The aisle wall retains one original respond with its capital. The columns now support chamfered pointed arches carrying an octagonal clerestorey wall pierced by square-headed double lights. This upper section belongs to a rebuilding of c.1375. To the E of the Round and reached by steps was originally the Romanesque unaisled chancel, terminating in an apse, and this remains as the nave and chancel of the present church. A two-bay N aisle was added to it c.1200. A second N aisle was added later, and in the 14thc. a S aisle was added. As it stands, therefore, the church has four parallel naves, terminating at their E ends with (from N to S) a vestry, the Chapel of St Thomas, the chancel with an apse, and the Chapel of St George, but it will be seen that much of the fabric is 19thc. At the W end, the original W doorway was demolished and a tower with a spire added in the 14thc. By the 17thc. only the Round was in regular use, and the rest of the church fell into disrepair. The choir and the outer N aisle were demolished. In 1851 the tower was struck by lightning, and in that year George Gilbert Scott was engaged to carry out a thorough restoration of the entire church. He rebuilt what had been lost, including the outer N aisle and the chancel with its flanking chapels, and the church was reopened in 1864. The vestry at the end of the N outer aisle was added in 1887. The Romanesque sculpture falls into two groups. The main arcade piers and their capitals belong to the original fabric of c.1110, as does the single remaining aisle wall vault respond. To these must be attached a small tympanum now set inside the aisle wall, and the corbels of the original chancel (now visible high on the inner walls of the S and inner N aisles). The N doorway of the Round is of c.1170-80.
Parish church
The church is in the ‘old town’, not the fishing port or seaside resort. It is about one mile from the sea and the harbour. It is a large Gothic building although this is merely ten bays of the nave of the medieval priory church. To the W is the late medieval gatehouse of the priory, now the Bayle museum (Pevsner & Neave 1995, 342-6).
Nothing remains standing of the 12thc church; for the priory at that time see Franklin 1983. However, there are the reconstructed remains of what is almost certainly arcading from the cloister of that period. The reconstruction is in two sections, of two bays and three. See Bilson 1910-12, 1913; Franklin 1983, 45; Thurlby 1983; Harrison 2006, 111-116. Additionally to the cloister arcade, further loose capitals of the same types have been fixed on the plinth or wall between the bays.
The two sections of reconstructed arcading are in the N aisle at the W end. In this report, they are called Arcade A and Arcade B, as in Thurlby 1983. Franklin 1983, 46, points out that the plainer face of the arcades would have been the outside face, facing onto the open centre of the cloister. The view offered to the visitor is that from the cloister walk, but both sides can be seen. The arcades and capitals are described and numbered from L to R, seen from that side.
There is also much loose sculpture probably from the same source, and a well-preserved tomb-slab in Tournai stone.
Parish church
St Mary's has an aisled and clerestoreyed nave with four-bay
arcades. In each arcade the two western bays are 12thc., and the two eastern bays 14thc. The short 12thc. nave seems to have been lengthened eastwards in the 14thc., and the clerestorey was added at that time. There are two doorways: the 12thc. S doorway is elaborate and protected by a porch; the 13thc. N doorway very plain and unprotected. The chancel and its arch are also 14thc. The W tower is 15thc. (money was left for the fabric of the 'campanile' in 1453) and of five storeys, the two lowest with ashlar bocks in alternately brown ironstone and grey limestone courses. Above this the ashlar is newer and appears 19thc. The clock is dated 1862. The nave, aisles and chancel are faced in stone rubble. Romanesque sculpture is found in the W bays of both arcades and the S doorway.
Castle chapel
The chapel stands at the E of the inner bailey of the castle, and has a circular nave still standing. Its rectangular Norman nave had a polygonal apse, excavated by St John Hope (1903-07). This was replace in the 16thc by a longer chancel that bailey wall and was still standing in 1684 when it was drawn by Thomas Dinely. At that date it was called Prince Arthur's Chapel. The roof is gone but the walls stand to their full height, complete with later crenellations. The Romanesque work consists of an elaborately carved W doorway and a chancel arch, and the interior is decorated all round with blind arcading. Original windows, unmoulded on the exterior, survive on the N, S, and W walls. A billet stringcourse encircles the nave at window sill level.
Cathedral, formerly Benedictine monastery
The church begun by Abbot Simeon in 1082 had a 13-bay aisled nave, four-bay aisled transepts, a crossing with a tower, and a four-bay aisled chancel terminating in an apse. At the W end was a second transept with E chapels and a second tower. A western Galilee porch was added in the 13thc. (1198–1215), and the chancel was extended to the E with a six-bay retrochoir, completed in 1252. In 1321 the Lady Chapel was added to the N of the choir, and a year later the crossing tower collapsed. The octagon, built to replace it, was completed by 1342, and in the same campaign the remaining bays of the 11thc. chancel were replaced. The only above-ground survivals of the original chancel are the two easternmost piers of its straight section. Elsewhere in the building, the N section of the W transept collapsed in the late 15thc., and the NW corner of the N transept in 1699. The former was merely consolidated, the latter rebuilt.
The generally accepted chronology for the standing Norman work dates the lower parts of the entire S transept and the E wall of the N transept to the period between 1082 and the start of the abbatial vacancy in 1093. Stylistic comparisons with work dated between 1118 and 1125 at nearby Peterborough Cathedral suggest that the remainder of the transepts and the nave were completed between the appointment of Abbot Richard in 1100, and the 1120s. The earliest work in the lowest levels of the W transept also belongs to the 1120s, but there is a marked stylistic break above gallery level, and thereafter such late-century features as pointed arches, keeled mouldings and crocket capitals begin to appear. These apparently belong to the campaign of Bishop Geoffrey Ridel (1174–89), who also completed the tower. Not included in this report is the new Galilee porch built, or posthumously funded, by Bishop Eustace (1197–1215). The following description of the various parts of the cathedral roughly follows the building history.
S transept:
This must begin inside the S transept, whose E and W walls have a three-storey, three-bay elevation of arcade, gallery with twin openings and clerestorey with a passage. The three arches of the E arcade were originally entrances to chapels, and the S one still is, but the other two have been blocked off with masonry and combined to form the Old Library, accessible from the S choir aisle. On the W side, the aisle was screened off in the 12thc., but the evidence of two blocked doorways in the E walk of the cloister indicates that entry to the transept was originally possible from the monastic buildings via this aisle. The arcade level to E and W (including the E chapels and W aisle and extending to the first respond of the S nave aisle wall) is the earliest standing fabric of the church. Arches are unmoulded, capitals are of the Norman volute type, some carved with foliage and animals, and the ashlar is coarsely tooled. The same features are noticeable in the lowest level of the S wall, but not in the arcade erected in front of it, which provides a support for the platform linking the E and W galleries. Above the arcade level on all three walls there is a marked change. Tooling is finer, volute capitals have been replaced by cushions, and the orders of arches have acquired angle and soffit rolls. It is normal to connect this disjunction with the abbatial vacancy that lasted from the death of Simeon in 1093 to the appointment of Abbot Richard de Clare in 1100, although Barlow has suggested that the presence of Ranulf Flambard, who managed the abbey's finances from five years before Simeon's death, and throughout the interregnum might have provided a stabilising influence.
Whatever the date of the change in design, it is clear enough that the upper levels of all three walls, the tall arcade on the S wall, and the blocking of the W aisle all postdate it. Much later comes the addition of the 15thc. Fourth storey window in the S gable. Some evidence for the original arrangement appears on the exterior, where remains of the springing of a wall arcade are visible. The E windows of the E chapels were replaced in the late 13thc., and those of the E and W galleries in the 15thc.
On the exterior the S transept facade reflects the nave and aisle structure within. The gabled, five-storey central section is divided from the two-storey aisles by broad, flat buttresses that transpose, at the bottom of the fifth storey, into two-storey octagonal turrets with pyramidal roofs. The two storeys of the turrets are decorated with blind arcading and there are cusped corbel tables under the eaves and sets of three corbels at the top of the lower storey.
N transept:
The interior of the N transept shows the same change in design as the S, but not in the same places. Only the E arcade and its two southernmost chapels have all the earlier forms, the N chapel has cushion capitals on the vault supports and a roll moulding in its N window. The N and W sides of the transept have the newer forms throughout (although roll-moulded arches do not appear on the W arcade). Examination of this area of the building is complicated by the restoration following the 1699 collapse of the NW corner. This affects the W half of the N wall, inside and out, and the N part of the W arcade and aisle wall. Other changes to the fabric in the N transept are the replacement of the windows of the E chapels, the W gallery and the N clerestorey in the later Middle Ages.
A comparison of the arcades of the two transepts reveals a rather curious disjunction. Both have an alternation of compound and circular piers, but the system has been reversed so that in the S those nearest the crossing are circular, whereas in the N they are compound. The original arrangement, with four-bay transepts and a smaller, square crossing, would have made this inconsistency even more obvious. The reason for the change surely has nothing to do with the balcony at gallery level on the end wall, but might relate to the original roofing arrangements. Both transepts have wooden roofs now, and did originally, but the present roofs date from the 15thc. In the S there is nothing to indicate the original form of the roof beyond the thin buttresses between the bays at clerestorey level only. In the N, however, a half-column respond runs the entire height of the wall between the two northernmost bays only. This would seem to imply a roofing system based on double bays, although it is curious to find the strong roof support here rather than a bay further S.
The N transept facade differs from the S in the treatment of the turrets. A square plan with chamfered and shafted angles is maintained from ground level up to their sixth storey, where they clear the gable. At this point the plan becomes circular, and decorated with a blind arcade syncopated with the cusping of the corbel table above. The E turret is original; the W is a copy.
Nave:
The original 13-bay nave had its easternmost bays communicating with the transept W aisles. This arrangement was lost with the introduction of the Octagon at the crossing, and the present 12 bays are all W of the transept. The elevation is similar to that of the transepts, with alternating round and compound piers, galleries with double openings and triple openings to the clerestorey passage, and it is remarkably regular. Unlike the transepts, however, every pier has a respond running the entire height of the wall as a roof support. Again, too, the original roof is no longer evident; the present ceiling dates from the 19thc. Pevsner finds the ambiguity between a double-bay and a single-bay system indecisive. Within this uniform system there are differences between the N and S elevations. On the N side the roof support responds have the form of half shafts against dosserets, but this system is used only for the first two piers on the S. Further W the main half shafts are flanked by a pair of smaller ones. The treatment of the circular piers also differs between the N and S elevations. In both cases the arch they carry is of three orders, and the piers are supplied with a broad cushion capital for the two inner orders linked to a smaller one for the outer order. On the N side these small capitals simply hang, with no member to support them, whereas on the S they have half-column supports coursed with the piers. These differences suggest that the N arcade was laid out before the S, but above the level of the capitals the two arcades apparently proceeded side by side. The key to this is a change of arch design at bay 5 on both sides, and a change of gallery opening design at bay 4. In the arcade arches the four E bays have angle rolls on their inner and outer orders only, whereas from bay 5 all three orders have angle rolls. In the gallery the change is the addition of a hollow moulding to the face of the inner order. Both changes seem slight, but they provide valuable evidence for the sequence of building.
Capitals are mostly cushions, but they are by no means entirely uniform. Common variables include the presence or absence of clearly defined shields, or keels or tucks at the angles, but scattered seemingly at random around the upper levels are a few scallop capitals, capitals decorated with fluting, and decorative imposts.
The interior nave aisle walls are decorated with simple blind arcading and a chevron string course at dado level. On the N side the aisle windows have been replaced, but on the S a change of design can be seen in bays 9–11, where the windows are taller, the chevron units of the string course are longer, and the blind arcade has five units per bay instead of four. The easternmost bay on this side (bay 12) has no window (because of the SW transept chapel alongside it), and is articulated with two rows of blind arcading, the upper with intersecting arches, and with opus reticulatum in the lunette below the vault. The arch into the W transept from bay 12 is richly decorated with chevron ornament. The elaboration of this bay is the only preparation for the riot of surface decoration that breaks out in the SW transept.
The gallery windows on both sides of the nave, and the N aisle windows were replaced in the later Middle Ages.
W transept:
In the SW transept, the E wall is the plainest, having two bays with single openings on the ground storey, twin openings at gallery level and triple openings to the clerestorey passage. The two lower levels of the S bay give onto a two-storey E chapel, dedicated to St Catherine, which was ruinous in the early 19thc. and was rebuilt in 1848. Only the S wall is original. The S and W walls of the transept are much more richly articulated. Each has six storeys of arcading, which include a gallery and a clerestorey with a passage. The S wall also has a triforium passage, and the remaining storeys, three on the S and four on the W, are of blind arcading of various designs. There is a stylistic progression from the lower storeys to the upper. On the lower levels capitals are predominantly simple cushions, there are scallops at gallery level and trefoil, waterleaf and crocket capitals above this. In the clerestorey arcade too the arches are pointed, all suggesting that the upper levels were not completed much before the end of the 12thc. What little remains of the NW transept suggests that it was organisationally a mirror image of its companion, but with some differences in detail, including fret decoration on the E wall gallery arches and cushion capitals where the S transept has crockets, implying that it was built first.
The largely rebuilt transept chapel is built right in the angle of nave and transept, so only two windows are possible. On the exterior, it is divided into eight bays by responds, the third and sixth bays from the S being wider and containing the ground floor and gallery windows. Bays 1, 2, 4 and 5 each contain a blind arch at both levels. The exterior of the transept displays perhaps the most spectacular and satisfying ensemble of superimposed arcading in the country: five storeys of arcading above a plain plinth storey on the main walls, rising by two more arcaded storeys on the decagonal angle turrets.
W Tower:
The cathedral is liberally supplied with corbel tables: at gallery and clerestorey levels on nave and transepts, on the main transept turrets, below the battlements of the west transept and on the turrets there, and at the eaves level of St Catherine's chapel (although these almost all date from the 1847 restoration). The quality is high, although the range of subjects is fairly restricted, including human, animal and grotesque heads and a few exhibitionists. String courses too are limited in type, the carved examples confined to billet, sawtooth, single chevron and chequer ornament.
The same system continues higher on the walls of the W tower, which, in its 12thc. lower part, rises six storeys above the nave battlements. It is square in plan with octagonal angle turrets rising no higher than the tower body. It was completed by around 1200, and provided with a spire some 30 years later. The spire was replaced by an octagon storey in the later 14thc. Presumably the tower arches inside were replaced at the same time, but the original chevron-decorated arches remain visible.
Cloister:
Of the Romanesque cloister nothing remains except sections of wall arcading on the outside of the S nave aisle, and the handsomely carved doorways for which Ely is famous. The Prior's doorway, at the W end of the cloister walk, is deservedly the most celebrated, but the remains of the Monks' and Vestry doorways at the E end of the walk are considerable works by the same carvers. All three must date from around 1130–35, and the remains of an earlier doorway into the S transept aisle also survive at the N end of the E walk.
Tombs:
Only one tomb is included in the survey; the beautiful Tournai marble slab depicting St Michael carrying a naked soul, assumed to be Bishop Nigel's (1131–69), in the N chancel aisle.
In the following descriptions, features such as piers and bays are always numbered starting at the crossing. Hence bay 1 of the N transept is the S bay, while bay 1 of the S transept is the N bay. The interior treatment of windows and doorways is only described when it includes some elaboration.
The author is grateful for the assistance of Stephen Wikner, the Cathedral Bursar, Susan Matthews, the Curator of the Stained Glass Museum, and for the cheerful and unfailing support of the clergy, vergers and cathedral guides.
Parish church
Hayton is just off the Roman road from Brough to York, and about 3km from the Wolds escarpment.
The church has a chancel with a chamber off the N side, a nave with a N aisle, a W tower, and a S porch. Outside, it looks ‘very much of the C14 with Victorian restorations’ (Pevsner & Neave 1995, 451). Inside, there are several twelfth-century features: a simple round-headed arch and a plain doorway off the chancel, with part of a decorated string course reset between them on the N side; a pristine run of corbels seen from the N aisle; and a N arcade of c.1170, also with sculpture.
Parish church, former
This is a simple aisleless church with a tower, nave and chancel. The earliest part is S door and sections of nave wall. There is a modern porch with neo-Romanesque decoration.
Parish church
The small village of Marcross lies approximately four kilometres to the west of Llantwit Major in the Vale of Glamorgan. The parish church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, stands near the southern end of the village, about one kilometre from the Bristol Channel. The church is of simple plan with a saddleback W tower, an aisleless nave with a S porch and a lower, square-ended chancel. Where the fabric is exposed, it is evident that the local Lias limestone was the principal building material. Sutton Stone — a freestone available from nearby quarries — has been identified in the quoins of the chancel and several of the window mouldings (Evans (1988)).
The church’s Norman origins are signalled by the Romanesque chancel arch, the S doorway and, perhaps, the large tub font. The plain, round-headed tower arch may be of a similar date but, like the tower itself, it is devoid of features that can be confidently dated.
Although a fine incised cross slab now in the chancel floor commemorates an unknown early 13thc priest, there is little evidence for further works to the church until the later Middle Ages. The N-W nave window has been dated to the late 13th or early 14thc, and the tomb recess in the N nave wall may be of a similar date (Evans (1988)). A low stone screen rebated for a central door was inserted beneath the chancel arch, perhaps in the 14thc.
The rood screen stair was accessed from the chancel and the upper doorway facing the nave retains portions of the wooden door frame, with a four-centred head surmounted by a slight ogee curve, probably of 15thc date. The chancel windows were renewed in the 15thc. The tall, southern window was provided with a transom to create a low-side, or ‘leper’s’, window.
A cross base and a portion of the shaft, probably dating from the late 15thc, survive in the churchyard. They now support a later sundial.
Parish church
Thornton-in-Lonsdale is a small settlement on the south side of the limestone hills of Craven. It is about three-quarters of a mile W of Ingleton and six miles SE of Kirkby Lonsdale. The church has an aisled nave, chancel and Perpendicular W tower. The church was rebuilt in 1869-90, apart from the tower and the round-headed arches of the N arcade. In 1933 after a fire it was again rebuilt. The three-bay N arcade had not survived but was to some extent reproduced (Pevsner 1967, 513; Leach and Pevsner 2009, 501-2). A fragment of at least one grave-slab of probable 12thc date has also been recorded.