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.
