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St Margaret, Crick, Northamptonshire

Location
(52°20′50″N, 1°8′17″W)
Crick
SP 588 725
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Northamptonshire
now Northamptonshire
  • Ron Baxter

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Feature Sets
Description

St Margaret's has a clerestoreyed and aisled nave with five-bay arcades and a wooden W gallery housing the organ. The arcades are largely 14thc., but the reused E respond and bays 4 and 5 of the S arcade are 13thc. with stiff-leaf capitals. The S doorway is under a porch. The chancel is 14thc., and has a N vestry at the E end. The W tower dates from c.1300, and has a broach spire with three rows of lucarnes. The church is largely faced in ashlar, the chancel and clerestorey in a warm yellow stone, the tower in red ironstone. The aisles are rubble faced. The church was restored by R. C. Hussey in 1840. The fabric, then, is almost entirely Decorated, but St Margaret's boasts an important 12thc. font, unusual in being supported by atlantes.

History

Crick was held by Geoffrey de La Guerche in 1086. A priest was noted, suggesting a church too.

Benefice of Crick and Yelvertoft with Clay Coton and Lilbourne.

Features

Furnishings

Fonts

Comments/Opinions

The use of atlantes suggests inspiration ultimately from Italy, where such supporters were widely employed. The episcopal throne at Bari (Apulia) is the most celebrated example. In England the font at Castle Frome (Herefordshire) also has three figures in the base, but they do not support it as these do. What may be more relevant is the Prior's doorway at Ely cathedral (Cambs) whose jambs were supported on men seated on lions, of which traces remain. This doorway is demonstrably dependent on the Bari throne, or something very like it, and it may be that Ely was the channel through which the motif reached this country. If so, a date in the 1130s or '40s would seem reasonable for the Crick font.

Bibliography
H. P. Maguire, 'A Twelfth-Century workshop in Northampton', Gesta, 9, 1970, 11-25.
J. H. Parker, Architectural Notices of the Churches of the Archdeaconry of Northampton, London and Oxford, 1849, 201-07.
N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Northamptonshire, Harmondsworth, 1961, rev. by B. Cherry, 1973, 169f.