We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

Yatton Chapel, Yatton, Herefordshire

Location
(51°58′11″N, 2°32′39″W)
Yatton Chapel, Yatton
SO 627 303
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Herefordshire
now Herefordshire
medieval Hereford
now Hereford
  • Ron Baxter
09 May 2017

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=16001.

Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.

Description

Yatton is a small village in the SW of the county, 6 miles NE of Ross-on-Wye. The chapel, now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, is in a remote farmyard ¾ mile to the W. By the 19thc the chapel was little used owing to its remoteness, and a new church dedicated to All Saints was built close to the centre of settlement. By the 1930s the chapel was in a poor state; its roof gone and replaced with corrugated iron. It was put to use as a barn until its rescue by the CCT in 1974. It is reached by a ten-minute walk down a farm track, and no vehicles are allowed. The chapel is a single cell rectangular box of coursed local sandstone rubble with a timber bell-turret with a tiled pyramid roof over the W gable. The S doorway dates it to the middle of the 12thc, but there are 13thc windows in the N, S and W walls, and the piscina is 14thc. The E wall was rebuilt in the 18thc, commemorated by a 1704 datestone and reusing 13thc windows. The church contains 2 fonts of the 12thc: the larger one brought from St Mary Magdalene, Brobury when that church was closed and partially demolished in 1873; the smaller, damaged one always here. The S doorway and both fonts are recorded here.

History

Yatton was among the lands situated in Archenfield in the Domesday Survey. It was assessed at 1 hide and was held by Hwaetmann in 1066 and by Hugh at farm from Humphrey the Chamberlain in 1086. Before the Conquest it was designated thegnland, but its designation was changed to reeveland, to the king’s detriment. In later periods the manor was held by the Lacys, the Bohun and the Mortimers.

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Furnishings

Fonts

Comments/Opinions

The Tree of Life motif on the tympanum of the S doorway is more famously to be seen at Kilpeck, but is also a common feature of the Dymock School, with nearby examples at Kempley, Pauntley, Newnham-on-Severn, Rochford, Yatton, Bulley, Churcham and Preston in Gloucestershire, and Bromyard and Bridstow in Herefordshire. That this might be more significant than any Herefordshire School connection is suggested by the curious form of the lone volute capital with its T-shaped pendant, although there is no doubt that the quality of the work at Yatton is inferior to the main examples of the Dymock school.

Bibliography

A. Brooks and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Herefordshire. New Haven and London 2012, 691.

Historic England Listed Building 154352.

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Herefordshire. Harmondsworth 1963.

A. Pike, Yatton Chapel, Herefordshire, Churches Conservation Trust 1996.

RCHME, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Herefordshire, 2. East, London 1932, 225.