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All Saints, Winteringham, Lincolnshire

Location
(53°41′25″N, 0°36′3″W)
Winteringham
SE 92485 22463
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Lincolnshire
now Lincolnshire
  • Thomas E. Russo
24, 25 Aug 2000

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Feature Sets
Description

W tower with Perpendicular bell stage and buttresses, four bay nave with N and S sides aisles, and a 13thc chancel. There were restorations in both 1827 and again in 1849-51. Romanesque features are a reused beakhead in the S transept and both the nave arcades.

History

The Domesday Book records a church and a priest here in 1086. This was on land owned by Gilbert of Ghent. The reuse of massive, millstone grit blocks in the walls, likely from a Roman structure, suggests that the 11thc church here may have been made of stone by 1086. In the 11thc Winteringham played an important transportation role in the county as one of four Lincolnshire ferry sites across the Humber; as such, it was located near the main north-south road through the county, Ermine Street.

Features

Interior Features

Arcades

Nave

Vaulting/Roof Supports

Comments/Opinions

According to one of the current churchwardens, Mr Chris Knowles, the reason the N and S faces of pier 3 capital and the W respond capital are renewed is that a wall once blocked off the N aisle bay here; this wall was removed in a 19thc renovation and these capitals were restored at that time.

The N aisle arcade is problematic. Some of the lower voussoirs are massive, the jointing is irregular, and the treatment of the keystones is extremely erratic. The arch of bay four is more rounded than the other bays. Clearly there has been some serious intervention on these arches. The square capitals and shorter, thicker columns of this arcade suggest that it may be slightly earlier than the S arcade, so what then do we make of the pointed arches on the N compared with the round arches on the S arcade? Perhaps the pointed arches are the result of a later medieval renovation in an attempt to update the style to be more in line with the Gothic. Given the massive springing voussoirs on bays N2, N3, and N4, these arches may have been originally round and later altered into pointed arches. The fact that the pointed arches makes the height of the N arcade symmetrical with that of the S arcade sounds like a concern of 19thc restorers.

In the S arcade of the nave, the imposts are unusually thick, 0.15 m, and visually dominate the capitals beneath them. For comparative purposes, the height of the N arcade from the floor to the top of an impost is 2.36 m; the same unit of measurement on the S arcade is 2.80 m. These thick imposts, along with the taller columns, give extra height to the S arcade as compared to the N arcade. The S arcade, with its octagonal capitals and thinner and taller columns than those of the N arcade, is characteristic of the beginning of the transitional period between Romanesque and Gothic and probably dates from the last two decades of the 12thc.

Because of their height from the floor and their white washed state, it is difficult to suggest a date for the corbels IV.4.a and b. Certainly the beakhead example could be Romanesque and given its similar location, size, and function, the human head corbel may be of the same period.

Bibliography

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire, 2nd ed., London 1990, 802-3.

P. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire. A History of Lincolnshire, vol. 3, Lincoln 1998, 17-18, 165.