The building is cruciform, with a chancel, nave, transepts and a crossing tower; this last added in the 14thc. The church is essentially late Romanesque but much altered and restored in later times. The S aisle is an addition of c.1190 and the N aisle is early 13thc. The chancel was entirely rebuilt in the 14thc. The three Romanesque doorways predate these alterations and were re-set into the aisles and chancel. Duncumb (1812, 89) states that the fabric was 'completely repaired' in 1806. Williams (1987, pl. 2) illustrates an important 18thc. print showing the church from the SW but does not reveal its source. The font bowl predates the present church.

A Minster existed in Bromyard prior to 840. In 1086 the manor belonged to the Bishop of Hereford and it was valued at the not inconsiderable sum of £45 10s. To the south of the Minster Richard de Capella, Bishop of Hereford (1121-27) founded the town, as he did at Ledbury and Ross (Hillaby 1970, 22-23). However, he was King's Chaplain and Keeper of the Great Seal and could not devote much time to Bromyard. It was not until the last quarter of the 12thc., during the bishopric of Robert Foliot (1174-86), that St Peter's church was built, at first on a modest scale and almost immediately enlarged by the addition of the N and S aisles and the doorways.

Now Parish church

By comparison with the sculpture of the 'Herefordshire School' the decoration of the Bromyard doorways is mediocre. The capitals of the S nave arcade are competent but it is clear that the expense was to be kept to a minimum as is illustrated by the capital of pier 3, richly carved only on the side first seen on entering the church. Taylor and Taylor (1965, II, 716) consider both the relief of St Peter and the consecration cross to be pre-Conquest, and Williams (1987, 60) agrees. However, there is nothing in the style of the St Peter relief to suggest an Anglo-Saxon date. Admittedly it is a rustic work, so incompetent that even the rectangular border of the slab is not straight at the bottom. Henig (1994, no. 254) convincingly compares the St Peter slab to the figure on a relief in Churcham (Gloucestershire) which, following Gethyn-Jones (1979, 71), he dates to the late 11thc. The Bromyard font and a group of tympana with the similar Tree of Life motif were discussed by Zarnecki (1950, 223ff) where they were named 'The Bromyard Group', but since then Gethyn-Jones (1979, 15ff) renamed it 'The Dymock School of Sculpture'. Since the majority of sculptures in this style are in Gloucestershire and the Bromyard font is an isolated example in Herefordshire it is possible that it was imported. Bromyard lies on the River Frome, a tributary of the Lugg, which joins the Wye and flows into the Severn at Chepstow. The font could have been brought by water from Gloucestershire. On the other hand, the 'branching scroll' is absent in Gloucestershire but was used profusely on two tympana in west Herefordshire. The matter can only be solved by the examination of the stone from which the font is made: is it a local stone, or originating from Gloucestershire?

We are grateful to Professor David Parker who drew our attention to the relief in the ringing chamber, and supplied photographs and measurements.