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St Peter, Wentworth, Cambridgeshire

Location
(52°23′7″N, 0°10′23″E)
Wentworth
TL 480 786
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Cambridgeshire
now Cambridgeshire
medieval St Peter
now St Peter
  • Ron Baxter
  • Ron Baxter
05 August 2003

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Description

St Peter's is a small church with aisleless nave and chancel and a W tower with a pyramid roof. The nave has 12thc. N and S doorways, the S under a porch dating from 1868, when the nave was rebuilt. The chancel is 13thc. and the tower 14thc. Construction is of stone and pebble rubble. The nave has recently been converted into a church hall by screening it from the chancel and laying a tiled floor. Benches for the parishioners have been installed in the chancel, which already contained choir stalls and the organ. The nave doorways are described below, but the glory of the church is a 12thc relief of St Peter now set into the interior N chancel wall.

History

In 1086 the manor of 3½ hides was held by the Abbot of Ely. The manor remained with the convent after it became a cathedral in 1109 and remains with it to the present day.

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Interior Features

Interior Decoration

Miscellaneous
Comments/Opinions

The 1952 List Description, the VCH (1954) and Pevsner (1954 and 1970) both simply described the relief as a standing Norman figure of a priest in mass vestments holding a book and an aspergillium, although both the key and the inscription are visible in Pevsner's illustration (12a). Bradley's 2014 revision of Pevsner corrects the mistake and offers a parallel for the composition in a figure of St John Chrysostom in a Hereford manuscript (presumably Hereford Cathedral O.5.XI, f.147). He also offers an early-12thc. date for the relief.

Bibliography

S. Bradley and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire, New Haven and London 2014, 671.

Historic England Listed Building, English Heritage Legacy ID: 49578

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England. Cambridgeshire, Harmondsworth 1954 (2nd ed. 1970), 477.

Victoria County History: Cambridgeshire. IV (1953), 165-67.