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St Andrew, Cold Aston (Aston Blank), Gloucestershire

Location
(51°52′39″N, 1°48′55″W)
Cold Aston (Aston Blank)
SP 128 199
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Gloucestershire
now Gloucestershire
medieval Worcester
now Gloucester
medieval St Andrew
now St Andrew
  • John Wand
30 July 2018

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Description

Cold Aston, also known as Aston Blank, is located in the high Cotswolds beside the Foss Way some 14 miles E of Cheltenham. The church, which may have borne a dedication to St Mary in 1545, was dedicated to St Andrew by the late 18thc. It is built of coursed, squared and dressed limestone and consists of a chancel, nave with S porch, and W tower. The chancel and nave date from the 12thc, the nave S doorway being of three orders. The nave N doorway has a badly worn tympanum and was blocked before Sir Stephen Glynne’s visit in 1857. Externally, as observed by Glynne, the nave wall is inset at the E end. The building is one of a small number of Gloucestershire churches with no E window. The church was restored by John Edward Knight Cutts in 1876; architectural fragments found at that time, including parts of a Saxon cross (described in Bryant 2012) and some Romanesque elements, were reset in the porch W wall.

History

Ethelbald, king of Mercia, granted 20 cassati in Aston and Notgrove to Osred, a member of the Hwiccian royal family around 740 (Cart. Sax. ed. Birch, I, 239-40; Herbert 2001, 9-20). The estate, which apparently had 10 cassati in Aston, was given later to the church of Worcester and in 1086 Drogo fitz Pons held ten hides in Aston from the bishop of Worcester's manor of Withington. Drogo's estate descended to his nephew Walter and thence to Walter's successors, the Cliffords (Herbert 2001, 9-20).

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Loose Sculpture

Bibliography

F. Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications, London 1899, III, 37.

R. Bryant, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, vol. X: The Western Midlands, London 2012, 127.

J. E. K Cutts, Lambeth Palace Library ICBS 7842, 1876.

J. E. K. Cutts, 'St Andrew’s Church Aston Blank, Gloucestershire', The Church Builder (1876), 172-4.

N. M. Herbert (ed.), Victoria County History of Gloucestershire, Vol. 9, London 2001, 9-20.

Historic England Building Listing 1089877.

W. P. W Phillimore and J. Melland Hall, Gloucestershire Church Notes by the late Sir Stephen R. Glynne, London 1902, 97-98.

M. Salter,The Old Parish Churches of Gloucestershire, Malvern 2008, 52.

D. Verey and A. Brooks, The Buildings of England, Gloucestershire I: the Cotswolds, London 1999, 293-4.

S. Wade-Gery, St Andrew's, Cold Aston, Private Press 2011.

A. Williams and G.H. Martin (eds.), Domesday Book. A Complete Translation, London 2003, 453.