We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

St Cosmas and St Damian, Stretford, Herefordshire

Location
(52°11′51″N, 2°48′58″W)
Stretford
SO 443 558
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Herefordshire
now Herefordshire
medieval Hereford
now Hereford
  • Ron Baxter
11 July 2012

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=13473.

Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.

Description

Streford is in NW Herefordshire, 4 miles SW of Leominster. Little remains of the village except for a farm with the church standing in the farmyard. The church was declared redundant in 1972, and has been in the cared of the Churches Conservation Trust since 1974. It is a small building of coursed rubble with ashlar dressings, and consists of two parallel naves with chancels sharing a gabled roof with a timber bell-turret over the W gable. The two naves and their chancels are separated by a 3-bay arcade, and timber traceried screens, perhaps 16thc, divide naves from chancels at pier 1. The N nave has 12thc features; a blocked doorway and a plain lancet, while the S belongs to the 13thc, as does the arcade. The construction of the arcade suggests that the two naves originally had separate roofs, and the present structure dates from the early 16thc. The chancels were lengthened in the 14thc. In addition to the N doorway there is a Romanesque font and the bowl of a pillar piscina is set in the S chancel. The church was restored in 1875 and again in 1922.

History

Stretford was held by Earl Harold in 1066 and by Alvred of Marlborough in 1086. At this time it was held by Gilbert, who held it from Turstin who in turn held it from Alvred. It was assessed at 2 hides.

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Furnishings

Fonts

Piscinae/Pillar Piscinae

Comments/Opinions

Pillar piscinas are not rare in the county, and most, like those at Orcop, Pembridge and Brampton Abbots, have bowls in the form of scalloped capitals. The closest to this one, however, would seem to be the crude voluted bowl at Woolhope.

Bibliography

A. Brooks and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Herefordshire. New Haven and London 2012, 612-13.

Herefordshire Sites and Monuments Record 6933

Historic England Listed Building 149868

G. Marshall, “Fonts in Herefordshire”, Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club, II (1950), 35-36.

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Herefordshire. Harmondsworth 1963, 293-94.

RCHME, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Herefordshire, 3: North-west, 1934, 189-90.