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St Andrew and St Mary, Condover, Shropshire

Location
(52°42′58″N, 2°56′45″W)
Condover
SJ 362 136
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Shropshire
now Shropshire
  • Barbara Zeitler
  • Ron Baxter
  • Barbara Zeitler
  • Ron Baxter
23 June 1999 (BZ), 19 March 2024 (RB)

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=7788.

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Feature Sets
Description

The village is located 4 miles S of Shrewsbury, the nearest large town, with the church sited at the southern end of the village, alongside Condover Hall, described as the grandest Elizabethan house in Shropshire (Newman). The church too is spectacularly big, built of pinkish sandstone with timber framing in the S transept gable. The earlist part is the N transept, which is late-12thc and built on the same grand scale as the later building. This has a broad aisleless nave of 1662-64, a W tower of 1677-78, and a chancel with a N aisle both built in 1868. The S transept dates from c.1600-07 ans so must have been built to match its norethern counterpart. Features described here are the N transept windows and corbel tables, and a plain E doorway.

History

Condover is an Anglo-Saxon foundation and was a collegiate church in that period. After the Norman conquest the church was given to Roger of Montgomery, who gifted it to the Abbey of Shrewsbury. The church was rebuilt in the 12thc, and partly rebuilt in the 17thc. after the crossing tower collapsed.

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Windows

Exterior Decoration

String courses
Corbel tables, corbels
Comments/Opinions

The transept walls are built in a mixture of red and grey sandstone. The presence of waterleaf capitals and keeled shafts in the windows indicates a date at the end of the 12thc, c.1170-90.

Bibliography

R. W Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire, London: J. R. Smith, 1859, Vol.6, 8-20, 27-33.

J. Newman and N. Pevsner, Buildings of England: Shropshire, New Haven and London, 2006, 229-30.

N. Pevsner, Buildings of England: Shropshire, Harmondsworth 1958, 111-12.

W. M. Skinner, The Church of St Andrew and St Mary, Condover: A Short History, 1979.