Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=7465.
Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.
As a consequence of two 'drastic' (Verey 221) restorations, in 1734 and 1863, very little remains of the medieval church. Part of a Romanesque tympanum over the S door is all that remains of the 12thc building.
In 1086 Driffield was held by Regenbald. Domesday Book speaks of a priest of Driffield but no church. However, in 1133 the church of Driffield was among the former possessions of Regenbald granted by Henry I to the abbey of Cirencester.
The carving is crisply executed, but the composition is less assured. The rows of saltire crosses do not remain consistent in width and the bottom row runs off the edge of the tympanum. The foliage design also escapes from its panel to run down the L side to the bottom edge while remaining contained within the panel on the R side.
Frances Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications: or, England’s Patron Saints, Volume 3, London 1899, 109.
David Verey, The Buildings of England, Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds, Harmondsworth 1974, 221-22.
'Houses of Augustinian canons: The abbey of Cirencester', in Victoria County History, A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 2, ed. William Page, London, 1907, 79-84. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol2/pp79-84 [accessed 09 January 2017].
