The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
"romsey abbey"
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.
Benedictine house, former
The Romanesque abbey church was begun by Abbot Baldwin in 1081, and it thus belongs with the massive building boom that followed the Norman Conquest. Its East Anglian contemporaries were Abbot Simeon's Ely Abbey (begun c.1082) and Bishop Herbert de Losingia's Norwich Cathedral (begun 1096). The abbey church had a 4-bay eastern arm with an apsidal east end surrounded by an ambulatory with 3 radiating chapels. Like the post-Conquest church of St Augustine's Canterbury, begun by Abbot Scotland (1070-87), Baldwin's church had a large crypt underlying its eastern arm, so that the sanctuary was raised above the level of the W part of the church. This plan was well-adapted for churches that held relics and attracted large numbers of pilgrims. It allowed the shrines holding the relics to be arranged around the transept and ambulatory and the chapels opening off them, so that pilgrims could venerate the relics without entering the choir.
The eastern arm was complete by 1095 and in that year the body of St Edmund was translated to the new church. Fernie has argued that the original plan was revised to effectively lengthen the eastern arm by one bay at the W, and that this accounts for the eastern aisle of the transept, and the fact that there appear to be doubled crossing piers at the E, corresponding to the end of the eastern arm and to the line of the transept E arcade a bay to the W. It has also been argued that this lengthening of the eastern arm was a response to the details of Herbert de Losingia's ambitious plan for his new cathedral at Norwich. As part of this enlargement, the entire church was widened, so that the nave is some 14 feet wider than the chancel.
Work proceeded westwards, and the lower part of the W front was reached in the abbacy of Anselm of St Saba (1121-48), an Italian and the nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury of the same name. Anselm of St Saba joined the monastery of Sagra di San Michele (Piedmont) as a young oblate and subsequently became Abbot of Saint Saba in Rome, serving twice as a Papal Legate (1115 and 1117) before his election to the abbacy of Bury in 1121. His connections with Sagra di San Michele, where the celebrated sculptor Nicholaus was to carve the Porto dello Zodiaco, have been suggested as a source for features of the surviving Romanesque sculpture at Bury (Zarnecki (1999)). The W front was very wide but not especially tall. The central section, corresponding to the nave and aisles had three arched recesses, similar to Lincoln cathedral. In these were set bronze doors by Master Hugo, artist of the Bury Bible (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 21). Flanking the central block were two-storey chapels dedicated to Saint Denis (below) and St Faith (above) on the N side, and to St John the Baptist and St Catherine on the S. The facade terminated at either end with an octagonal tower. Abbbot Anselm also built the Norman Tower, whose elaborate carvings give some idea of the splendid original decoration of the W front of the abbey church.
The south side of the west tower fell in 1430, and in 1431 the east side followed. The north side was demolished in 1432. A papal bull granting indulgences for the repair of the `clocher' estimated the cost of repair at 60,000 ducats. Wills of 1457-8, 1460 and 1465 provided money for the fabric of the new tower. Repair work continued until 1465, when the church was seriously damaged by a fire which started in the west tower. More extensive repair work was undertaken, and in 1506 a western spire was completed. After the Dissolution in 1539 most of the church was soon reduced to ruins. What remained of the west front was the rubble core of the three main arches flanked by a smaller arched opening on either side and with an octagonal tower at the southern end. Domestic structures were built into the dilapidated west front in the 17thc., and records show that they were altered several times in the following centuries. In 1863 the S end had become a Registrar's Residence with a Probate Registry in the S tower.
The earliest excavation of the site was by Edward King in 1772-86, and in 1865 Gordon Hills published an account of the abbey written for the British Archaeological Association's visit in the previous year. This was described by Whittingham (1952) as 'the most authoritative account of the site' then available. A documentary study of the library and the fittings was produced by M. R. James (1895). Between 1928 and 1933 a programme of clearance and restoration of the ruins was undertaken by the Bury Corporation and the Ministry of Works, and in 1952 Arthur Whittingham produced his own assessment, including a plan of the site. An excavation of the eastern arm was carried out in 1957-64 by the Ministry of Works under the direction of A. D. Saunders and M. W. Thompson of the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments, resulting in the clearance of the eastern end of the abbey church to its original floor levels, and consolidation of the masonry (see Gilyard Beer (1970)). A programme of conservation and stone replacement was undertaken in 1999-2000, and in 2004-06 the west front was converted into a row of houses with rear gardens. A Heritage Assessment was produced in 2018 by Richard Hoggett Heritage that usefully sums up the history of investigation on the site. As part of the present investigation, access has been gained to several of the West Front properties, and we are most grateful to the residents for welcoming us into their homes.
The ruins to the east of the west front contain very little ashlar, although a few well-preserved bases of the roll and hollow chamfer type may be seen and are illustrated here. Within the west front are a few carved stones, described below, and further abbey stones are preserved at Moyses Hall, in the English Heritage store at Wrest Park, and in the British Museum (see Comments below)
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
Boulge is in the E of the county, 2½ miles NW of the centre of Woodbridge. The landscape is the usual arable farmland of the E Anglian plain; not entirely flat and drained by the network of streams running into the Deben estuary at Martlesham Creek, S of Woodbridge. The name is said to derive from the French 'bouge', meaning an uncultivated heathland, although the Domesday survey give a picture of many small parcels of ploughland. The parish covers approximately a square mile in a two-mile long strip running NE to SW, but it is sparsely populated and there is no village. The community now consists of just 13 dwellings in all; just a couple of farms and a few scattered cottages. The church stands to the N of a small wood in the former parkland surrounding the site of Boulge Hall, demolished in 1956. The normal access to the church is from the S, and from this aspect it appears almost entirely Victorian. St Michael's has a W tower, a nave with a S aisle and a chancel with a large S vestry. Nave and chancel are of flint, of equal width and roofed in one. There is no chancel arch. A plain blocked N lancet in the chancel indicates a date in the early 13thc., but for the rest, the N windows of nave and chancel are ofc.1300 (Y-tracery),c.1320 (reticulated) or 15thc., the N nave doorway is 14thc., and the E wall of the chancel dates from 1858. On the south, the nave aisle is of three bays; the two at the E with a normal pentise roof, and the west bay taller and with its own gabled roof, built as a Fitzgerald family chapel. Edward Fitzgerald, translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, is buried in the churchyard. The chancel also has a transeptal vestry and organ chamber. This work on the S of the church was carried out in three campaigns, in 1858 (by W. G. and E. H. Habershon), in 1867 (by W. G. Habershon and A. Pite), and in 1895 (by S. Gambier Parry of Wminster). In each case the patron was the owner of the Hall; J. P. Fitzgerald for the two earlier works and Mr and Mrs Holmes White for the latest campaign. In each case too, knapped flint facings were used. The Tudor tower is of brick with an embattled parapet and a pointed segmental headed tower arch. Maintenance work to the fabric was carried out in 1978-81 by A. W. Anderson of Norwich (roofs), in 1981 (N wall) and in 1983-84 (tower). Boulge has no Romanesque fabric, but is significant in housing a font said to be an export from Tournai.
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.
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
Burmarsh is a village in the Romney marsh area of Kent, 3 miles W of Hythe. The church of All Saints is a twin-cell building with a 13thc W tower, short nave, S porch, and a small chancel. For the most part it presents a later medieval appearance, and the interior owes much to the last century or so. The sole surviving Romanesque sculpture is on the S doorway, although the chancel clearly has early origins.
Public park
The Abbey Gardens occupy a large site bounded by Angel Hill to the W, Mustow Street to the N, the River Lark to the E and the cathedral and abbey ruins to the south. Officially the abbey ruins are part of the Abbey Gardens, but we have found it to convenient to treat them as separate sites. Access is normally through the Great Gate of the abbey on Angel Hill. The area of the Abbey Gardens is approximately 11 acres (4.5 hectares). It is divided into named areas, and carved stones have been found in the Remembrance Garden at the SW of the site, in the Pilgrim's Herb Garden next to it, and alongside the Marquis of Bristol's sundial and fountain in the formal garden just inside the Great Gate.
Museum, formerly merchant's house
Moyses Hall is a late-12thc secular building in the centre of Bury St Edmunds, facing the former Corn Market (now Cornhill) to the S and the Beast Market, or Hog Hill to the E. The main S front has 2 gables; the E with the flat buttresses typical of 12thc work. Construction is of flint rubble with Barnack ashlar dressings; the same expensive materials as were used in the contemporary abbey works, and it has thus been suggested (see Sandon 1977) that it was originally an abbey building. In 1804 the E wall collapsed and was rebuilt. It is now plain but formerly had flat buttresses and round-headed windows (shown in a print of 1748). In 1858 it was restored by G. G. Scott, who added the clock and bell turret to the E gable.
The original plan was a 2 compartment structure on 2 storeys, with a hall (E side) and solar (W side) above unusually tall vaulted undercrofts at ground level. The E undercroft, 2 bays wide and 3 deep, is groin vaulted with cylindrical piers as described below, while the W undercroft has a single row of 3 bays.
In addition to the fabric of Moyses Hall itself, this report includes the Romanesque stone sculpture held by the museum. Most of the objects described here are demonstrably from Bury St Edmunds Abbey, which has its own report. The abbey was in the possession of the Marquises of Bristol from 1806-1953, and the name of the 3rd Marquis, Frederick William John Hervey (1834-1907), is recorded as the donor of several pieces in the collection.
Parish church
English Bicknor is a village located in the Forest of Dean, close to the borders of Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, and occupies an elevated position above the River Wye. The church is situated within the outer bailey of an Anglo-Norman castle, of which only the earthworks survive.
St Mary’s church comprises a chancel, aisled nave and west tower. The original 12thc. church was apparently cruciform in plan with a central tower. The nave arcades and their accompanying sculptures date from the later addition of nave aisles which probably occurred towards the end of the 12thc. The most notable 12thc. Romanesque features are the nave arcades, of which the NE arch is the most richly sculpted.
Many additions and alterations were made to the church after its original foundation. The base of the tower dates from the 13thc., and the upper stages were added at the end of the medieval period. The present-day chancel was a late medieval addition that looks to have been extensively reconstructed during the 19thc. restoration campaign.
The font may also be a product of the 12thc, but without any sculpted decoration it is impossible to be sure.