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Aston Eyre Chapel, Aston Eyre, Shropshire

Location
(52°32′37″N, 2°30′47″W)
Aston Eyre Chapel, Aston Eyre
SO 653 941
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Shropshire
now Shropshire
medieval Hereford
now Hereford
  • Ron Baxter
16 May 2019

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Description

Aston Eyre is a hamlet in the southern part of Shropshire, consisting of a few houses, the church and Hall Farm scattered along a stretch of the B4368, a minor road linking Bridgnorth with the Corve Dale and Wenlock Edge. The nearest towns are Bridgnorth, 4 miles to the E, and Much Wenlock, a similar distance to the NW. The church stands on the N side of the road and is built of local red and grey sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings. It consists of a chancel with a taller and wider nave, having a S porch and a W bellcote. Under the porch is a rebuilt doorway of 2 periods in the 12thc, containing a clebrated Romanesque tympanum. The nave is 12thc, with lateral plain lancets and a 12thc chancel arch, and the chancel was rebuilt in the 13thc.

To the N of the church stand the remains of the Hall, a 14thc manor house now converted for use as a farm (Hall Farm House).

History

Aston Eyre was held by Ealhhere from Reginald the Sheriff in 1086, and by Saxi, a free man, in 1066. It was assessed at 2 hides. Sometime around 1086, Ealhere conferred the manor on the Abbey of Shrewsbury, and in 1132-33 his son, Robert FitzAer founded the church as a chapel of ease of St Gregory's, Morville, which it remains. It has no dedication.

Robert was succeeded by his son of the same name, first mentioned in the account of a dispute with Abbot Adam of Shrewsbury over burial rights in 1167. He had died by 1198 to be succeeded by his son of the same name, and that family continued to hold rights in the manor until well into the 14thc. Meanwhile at some time between 1222 and 1234, William FitzAer, then Lord of Aston, quitted all claim to the chapel to the Abbey of Shrewsbury.

The church was founded in 1132 as a chapel-of-ease to St Gregory's, Morville. It has no dedication.

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Interior Features

Arches

Chancel arch/Apse arches
Comments/Opinions

The Romanesque features described here all postdate the 1132 foundation. The tympanum showing the Entry into Jerusalem was dated to the late-12thc by Zarnecki. His attribution to the mid-12thc Herefordhshire School, given in Pevsner (1958), was based on a misunderstanding and is corrected in Newman (2006). The chancel arch could well be contemporary. The church was rebuilt not long before 1855, and the restored features noted in the description of the S doorway may date from that restoration. The subject of the Entry into Jerusalem also appears on a capital in Southwell Minster (Notts) and on the font at West Haddon (Northants).

Bibliography

D. C. Cox (ed.), Sir Stephen Glynne's Church Notes for Shropshire, 1997, 8.

R. W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire, 12 vols, London 1854-60, 1, 199-210.

Historic England Listed Building, English Heritage Legacy ID 254311.

C. E. Keyser, A list of Norman tympana and lintels : with figure or symbolical sculpture still or till recently existing in the churches of Great Britain, London 1904, li-lii, 2, fig. 90.

J. Newman and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Shropshire New Haven and London 2006, 122.

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Shropshire, Harmondsworth 1958, 64.