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St Andrew, Hampton Bishop, Herefordshire

Location
(52°2′19″N, 2°38′39″W)
Hampton Bishop
SO 559 380
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Herefordshire
now Herefordshire
medieval Hereford
now Hereford
medieval St Andrew
now St Andrew
  • George Zarnecki
  • Ron Baxter
06 August 1989, 21 June 2006

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Description

Hampton Bishop is a fair-sized village that straggles along a network of minor roads three miles E of the centre of Hereford, overlooking the river Lugg. It lies in the flat flood plains of the Lugg and the Wye, which form a loop around the village, meeting half a mile SE of the village centre. The church is in the centre of the village.

St Andrew’s has a long nave and chancel, a N nave aisle with a three-bay arcade situated at the E end of the nave, a N tower and a N chancel chapel. The earliest parts are 12thc. Although the nave and chancel form a single block externally, they are separated within by a 12thc chancel arch. A second 12thc arch links the chancel and its chapel. The S doorway is 12thc, under a later porch, and on the N side of the nave towards the W end is a plain 12thc window. The tower, set halfway along the nave on its N side, is 12thc in its stone rubble lower parts, which contain round-headed plain windows to N and W and entirely plain double bell-openings. The upper stage is timber framed with a shingled pyramid roof, and is much later. The ground storey of the tower occupies the westernmost of the three aisle bays, and the W respond and W pier of the N arcade are both 12thc too, having originally supported the S tower arch. The arch itself was rebuilt when the aisle was added in the late 13thc. Around this time too, the chancel was enlarged eastwards – the double piscina is early 14thc. The N chapel arch is said by RCHME to be reset, and indeed the chapel itself contains no fabric earlier than the 14thc E window and some 15thc tracery panelling. Most of the nave and chancel windows were replaced between the 13thc and the 16thc. On the N side of the nave, in the aisle bay E of the tower, a modern vestry has been added, entered from inside the church through the old N doorway. There was a major restoration and 1866, and repairs to the church between 1969 and 1974, carried out by Scriven, Powell and James of Hereford. Romanesque features described here are the S doorway and a carved springer set above it, the chancel and N chapel arches and a plain font.

History

The manor of Hampton Bishop was held by Earl Harold, unjustly according to the Domesday Survey. King William restored it to the Bishop of Hereford, and in 1086 it was mostly in demesne, except for three virgates held by a knight and one virgate held by a radman (a retainer who performed services relating to riding). The manor consisted of four hides of ploughland, 28 acres of meadow and two and a half mills. No church was recorded in 1086.

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Exterior Decoration

Miscellaneous

Interior Features

Arches

Chancel arch/Apse arches

Furnishings

Fonts

Comments/Opinions

The chapel arch may not be in its original position, and the S doorway has apparently been reset. The heavy chip-carved lintel of the doorway dates from the very beginning of the 12thc, and the billet label may be contemporary. The chancel arch has features of the 2nd half of the century, in its multiple mouldings and reeded imposts, and the capital forms of the chapel arch and its chamfered arch profiles must also belong to the later period. The most interesting and enigmatic feature is the reset springer carved with a human head. There is no obvious place from which it might have come: a double springer implies at least a pair of arches and possibly an arcade, and the scale of it points to wall arcading or something like a cloister arcade. No more definite pronouncements can be made unless it is excavated from its present setting for a thorough examination. A date in the 1120s or ’30s is possible.

Bibliography

A. Brooks and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Herefordshire. New Haven and London 2012, 257-58.

W. H. Cooke, Collections towards the history and antiquities of the county of Herefordshire in continuation of Duncumb's History, III (Greytree Hundred) 1882.

Herefordshire Sites and Monuments Record 6836.

G. Marshall, Fonts in Herefordshire. Hereford (Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club), II (1950), 45-46.

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Herefordshire. Harmondsworth 1963, 141.

RCHME, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Herefordshire, 2: East, 1932, 86.