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St Mary le Wigford, Lincoln, Lincolnshire

Location
(53°13′34″N, 0°32′32″W)
Lincoln, St Mary
SK 974 709
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Lincolnshire
now Lincolnshire
medieval St Mary
now St Mary
  • Thomas E. Russo
  • Thomas E. Russo
15 July 1996

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Description

St Mary-le-Wigford is named for the suburb on the S side of Lincoln city centre; its church reputedly the oldest in the city. It has a tall tower with a W doorway; an aisled nave, and a chancel with a N chapel and a S vestry. The tower is Anglo-Saxon in its lower storey with an early Norman bell stage. Nave and chancel are under a single roof and date from the 13thc. The 4 bay N aisle is 13thc, and the S aisle was added by Leach in 1877. The chapel dates from the 13thc., and the vestry was added in 1872. In the 1970s a chuch hall was added to the SE, accessed from the church via the vestry. The church was restored in 1872 by R. C. Clarke of Nottingham (who added the vestry) and the tower in 1908 by Watkins and Son. Several Romanesque fragments are reset in two areas of the church: at the W end of the interior N aisle wall and on the exterior W wall of the new vestry on the S side of the church.

History

On the W wall of the tower is a Roman gravestone bearing the inscription:

DIS MANIBUS / NOMINI SACRI /BRUSCI FILI(I) CIVIS / SENONI ET CARSSO / UNAE CONIUGIS / EIUS ET QUINTI F(ILII)

and also a later Anglo-Saxon inscription recording the building of the church:

EIRTIG ME LET WIRCEAN / AND FIOS GODIAN / CRISTE TO / LOFE AND SANCTA / MARIE XP

This translates:

Eirtig had me built and endowed to the glory of Christ and St. Mary, XP

The Lacock tombstone, which rests on the beakhead corbels, came from St. Mark’s church (High St.) when it was demolished in the early 1970's. This raises the possibility that the corbels came from St. Mark’s as well.

Features

Exterior Features

Exterior Decoration

Miscellaneous

Interior Features

Interior Decoration

Miscellaneous
Comments/Opinions

The chevron voussoirs are irregular in size and shape, but all but one have the same profile and similar heights. They are therefiore assumed to come from the same order of a doorway. The 11thc tower predates the Conquest and belongs to a group of tall, unbuttressed Lincolnshire towers from this period which also includes St Peter at Gowts, Lincoln (see Stocker and Everson (2006)).

Bibliography

Historic England Listed Building. English Heritage Legacy ID: 486042

Lincolnshire Historic Environment Record MLI89088

  1. N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire, Harmondsworth 1990, 497-98.

D. Stocker and P. Everson, Summoning St Michael : early Romanesque towers in Lincolnshire, Oxford 2006.