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St Michael and All Angels, Mansell Lacy, Herefordshire

Location
(52°6′20″N, 2°50′22″W)
Mansell Lacy
SO 426 456
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Herefordshire
now Herefordshire
medieval Hereford
now Hereford
  • Ron Baxter
04 September 2012

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Description

Mansell Lacy is a village in central Herefordshire, 6 miles NW of Hereford. The church is in the village centre, and consists of a 12thc nave with a S aisle 3½ bays long, with the half-bay at the E end, pierced by what appears to be a reset 12thc doorway. The aisle and arcade are of the late 13thc. The chancel is long, and has a N vestry of 1878, and there is a W tower, unbuttressed and seemingly 13thc in its lower parts, heightened in the 14thc and given a pyramid roof. The church was restored by John Clayton in 1859-60. In its present arrangement, executed by Rod Robinson Associates in 1996, the nave is screened off at pier 2, and the 1st bay of the arcade is screened from the aisle, leaving a liturgical space at the NE, and a community space consisting of the entire aisle and the W part of the nave (although it does contain a liturgical outlier in the font, at the W end of the S aisle). The font is Romanesque, as are the arch in the arcade wall, the S nave doorway (protected by a 15thc porch, a blocked N doorway, and corbels and carved stones reset over the nave arcade arch and the S doorway.

History

Mansell Lacy was held by Godric in 1066 and by Gruffydd ap Maredudd in 1086. It was assessed at 4 hides. It subsequently passed to Roger de Lacy.

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Exterior Decoration

Corbel tables, corbels
Miscellaneous

Interior Features

Interior Decoration

Miscellaneous

Furnishings

Fonts

Comments/Opinions

According to RCHME, the N doorway is the only surviving fabric from the 12thc church; the S doorway is there dated to the 13thc, ontemporary with the aisle wall. The font is dated to the late-12thc, and the corbels etc. to the 12thc too. Pevsner agrees with most of this, ignoring the font as is to be expected. Brooks dates this c.1200. For the present author the similarities between the N and S doorways cannot be ignored, and both are dated to the 12thc, along with most of the reset carved stones, except for the niche-heads reset above the S doorway which may well be older. Window heads similar to these niche-heads are found e.g. at Aldbrough (Yorkshire, East Riding), where Wood convincingly dates them to the 11thc.

Bibliography

A. Brooks and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Herefordshire. New Haven and London 2012, 502.

Historic England Listed Building 149736

G. Marshall, “Fonts in Herefordshire”, Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club, II (1950), 44-45.

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Herefordshire. Harmondsworth 1963, 249.

RCHME, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Herefordshire, 3 North West, 1934, 145-47.