The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
"St Peters Ipswich"
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 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.
Parish church
Baylham stands in wooded arable land among rolling hills midway between
Ipswich and Stowmarket. The church stands in the centre of the village and
Baylham Hall is 0.7 miles away to the W. St Peter's is a flint church of nave,
chancel with N and S transepts and W tower. The N nave
doorway indicates the 12thc. origin of the fabric, but new windows were
installed on the S in the 14thc. and on the N in the 15thc. All were restored
in the 19thc., and the S doorway and its porch are
19thc. too. The chancel was rebuilt by Frederick Barnes
in 1870, including the chancel arch, and both transepts
were added at that date. The N transept houses the organ and a vestry, and the S is fitted with pews but no altar. The tower
is unbuttressed and of knapped flint; perhaps 13thc. in origin but remodelled
and heightened in the 14thc. It has small lancets high in the lower storey and
a 14thc. W window and bell-openings. The parapet is battlemented. The blocked N
doorway is the only Romanesque
feature.
Museum
The museum contains only one object of interest to this project, but it is an important one. The fragment of a Tournai marble font bowl was discovered eight feet underground in the filling of the Tower Ramparts ditch on the north side of the town when foundations were being dug for Pretty and Co.'s Box factory in 1894. The author is grateful to David Jones, Keeper of Human History at the museum, for arranging access to the store.
Parish church
The small priory of Austin canons at Letheringham was set in low, rolling country alongside the river Deben in east central Suffolk, three miles south of Framlingham. There is no discernable village; only what remains of the church, converted to parish use, and the Abbey Farm alongside it, surrounded by an empty arable landscape.
The present church of St Mary’s incorporates the two western bays and the tower of the priory church. It is tall and boxy, its walls rendered with mortar. It has a 12thc south doorway under a brick porch of 1685, with a Dutch gable, and buttresses have been added on the side walls and at the eastern angles. The 12thc north doorway survives too, but this has been reset facing inside the church. The south windows are of c.1300 with three-light intersecting tracery. There are no windows on the north side. The east end of the church fell into disrepair and was demolished in the 18thc, but part of its north wall survives as the churchyard wall, and to the north of this are ruinous remains of the monastic buildings. The east window, rescued from the rubble and reset, is a three-light affair with cusped intersecting tracery. The 14thc tower is of flint and rubble, unrendered, with diagonal buttresses decorated with flushwork, a polygonal SE stair and an embattled parapet with flushwork panels. The tower arch is tall and incorporates some 12thc material, and the church also has a 12thc capital, loose but displayed behind bars.
Parish church
Hepworth is midway between Bury St Edmunds and Diss, approximately 9 miles from each. The land here is low and rolling and given over to arable cultivation. There are common lands to the NW and SE of the village, which consists largely of houses and farm buildings around a junction of minor roads, with the church, rectory and Grange Farm at the eastern edge. St Peter's was burnt down in 1898 when its thatch caught fire, and only the tower, the walls and the porch survived the blaze. It was rebuilt by J. S. Corder of Ipswich. It is a church of the 13thc. and later, consisting of a nave, chancel and W tower, all of flint. The nave is tall with high 15thc. windows to N and S, and its roof has been raised. The N and S doorways are 14thc.; the S under a flint porch, which is, almost entirely 19thc. work. The nave wall behind and to the W of the S porch has a large brick repair in the shape of an arch, suggesting that the doorway and porch were once further W. Inside is the blocked N entrance to a rood loft. The chancel, almost as high as the nave, is early-14thc., with reticulated E, N and S windows and a contemporary S doorway and piscina. The tower has diagonal buttresses with flushwork at the top, a late 13thc. W doorway and tower arch and a 19thc. W window. The upper part has been rebuilt and the structure strengthened with iron clamps; this work dated to 1677 by ironwork on the W face. More clamps were added at a lower level in 1828. The bell-openings are of brick and date from the 17thc. restoration. The parapet is plain and the pyramid roof is fitted with a W dormer. Inside the church are two loose stones, a capital and a voussoir, from a 12thc. doorway.
Parish church
Elmsett is a large agricultural village 7 miles W of the centre of
Ipswich. The country here is rolling and arable, with much sugar beet grown.
The village suffered casualties in 1941 when a bomb (possibly intended for
Wattisham airfield, 3 miles to the NW) destroyed a row of cottages, and there
has been some new building to replace them. The church is outside the village
centre to the NE, and stands on ground that slopes steeply down to a tributary
of the Belstead Brook to the N. The site has been partially levelled by
building a steep embankment N of the churchyard and cutting into the slope on
the S, for the foundations. Hence the floor inside the nave is much lower than
the ground to the S, where the entrance is.St Peter's has a nave, chancel and W tower. The
nave is 12thc., with blocked lancets in the N and S walls and quoins visible at the SE angle. Other windows and the N and S
doorways indicate campaigns in the 13thc., 14thc. and 15thc. A roofline on the
tower shows that it was once steeper. Inside is a SE rood stair and an 18thc. timber W gallery now housing the organ. The S porch is timber-framed, probably 13thc. The chancel is 14thc., with a flowing three-light E window and
lateral windows of 14thc. and 15thc. types and a 14thc. piscina. The chancel arch jambs may
be 12thc., like the nave; the are plain with the simplest chamfered
imposts. The arch itself is
13th -14thc. Both nave and chancel are of flint, all
mortar rendered except for the chancel E wall. The
tower is 13thc., with diagonal buttresses. It is of flint and the later
battlemented parapet is rendered with mortar. The only Romanesque feature
reported here is the font. The author is grateful to Robert Carr for making his
report on the church available, and to Allan
Mountfield.
Parish church
Salford is 3 miles NW of Chipping Norton in rolling countryside near the Warwickshire border. The small church is situated on a slope to the W of the village. It was rebuilt by G.E. Street in 1854-5, retaining amongst other material the original Romanesque N and S nave doorways. The N doorway has a sculpturedtympanum. There is also a spectacular arcaded Romanesque font.
Parish church
Stutton is an extensive settlement set in the arable farmland on the N bank of the Stour estuary, 6 miles S of the centre of Ipswich. It lies along the B1080 road that follows the estuary a mile inland, and along by-roads running S to the river bank. The church is at the eastern end of the village, with Stutton House (built as the rectory in 1750) immediately S of it. Stutton Hall (built by Sir Edmund Jermy in 1553) is at the SW end of the village, some 1½ miles away. St Peter's is a complex building with many additions. Nave and chancel are similar in height, the chancel slightly taller. On the S side, the tower acts also as a porch into the nave, and a transeptal S vestry has been added to the chancel. On the N is a transept added to the E end of the nave with the Lady Chapel E of this, alongside the chancel. All is of flint and pebbles, but the N wall of the nave has been rendered and whitewashed. The nave is 14thc. with cusped Y-tracery windows. The tower is early 15thc. and of flint with Bath stone dressings with diagonal buttresses on the southern angles and an embatttled parapet decorated with chequered flushwork. The remainder of the church results from various Victorian campaigns. The north transept was added in 1862 to accommodate schoolchildren, and in 1875 the Lady Chapel was added to the E of it. The chancel was rebuilt in the same year. Its three-light cusped intersecting E window is said to be an exact copy of the original, and if so this suggests an early 14thc date. The S vestry dates from 1879 and serves as an organ chamber. It was enlarged to accommodate a bigger organ in 1902. In 1975 the arches separating the N transept and Lady Chapel from the main vessel were blocked with glass panels. In the external E wall of the S vestry is a reset lancet window, 11th-12thc. in date, which is the only Romanesque feature of the church.
Parish church
Sudbourne is a village in SE Suffolk, situated in the so-called Wilford
peninsula between the estuaries of the Alde and the Deben, 3½ miles SW
of Aldeburgh and 9 miles E of Woodbridge. The land here is wooded; Sudbourne
Great Wood is N of the village, and Tunstall Forest to the E and W. The village
itself is substantial. Its centre clusters around a junction on the road from
Snape to Orford. Sudbourne Park and the Hall site are a mile outside the
village to the SW, and the church stands apart on the edge of Tunstall Forest,
0.8 mile SE of the village centre.All Saints stands on a rise between the forest and the flattish arable
land to the S. It consists of a long, broad nave and chancel in one with a W tower with a Hertfordshire spike. The
nave has 15thc. N and S porches, the S now converted to a vestry and the 12thc. S doorway moved to an exterior position
further W, where it is blocked. Further evidence for the 12thc. nave is a
blocked S window, visible on the interior. There is a plain 13thc. lancet in
the S nave wall, but otherwise the windows have Y-tracery ofc.1300 or
are 15thc. There is no chancel arch, the interior
forming a long, broad space under a single roof. On the N and S side of the
chancel are shallow pseudo-chapels; the N housing the
organ and the S a pew. On the N side of the chancel is
the large monument to Sir Michael Stanhope (d.1621). The tower is early 14thc.
, with diagonal W buttresses and Y-tracery bell-openings. The parapet is
embattled and decorated with flushwork. It was renewed
in 1879. On the top is a 19thc. lead Hertfordshire spike. The church suffered a
fire in the 17thc. and was rebuilt in 1676. A sketch by Isaac Johnson of 1818
shows the tower with a pyramid cap. By the 1870s the church was in need of
restoration and this was funded by Sir Richard Wallace, then Lord of the Manor,
and carried out in 1878-79 by the architect Frederick Barnes of Ipswich. He
uncovered the Romanesque S doorway, which had apparently been covered in
plaster. The nave walls were entirely cased with stone rubble, and the
chancel taken down and rebuilt and the two lateral
chapels added. The church was entirely re-roofed at that time, and new benches
and stalls were fitted. The parapet of the tower, formerly of brick, was
rebuilt in stone and rubble with flushwork, and the tower roof was replaced
with the present spike. The only Romanesque sculpture is on the S nave doorway.
A mortar in use as a font and fitted in the 19thc. with neo-Romanesque
shafts is not
12thc.