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St Christopher, Lympsham, Somerset

Location
(51°16′58″N, 2°57′17″W)
Lympsham
ST 335 542
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Somerset
now Somerset
medieval Wells
now Bath & Wells
  • Robin Downes
  • Robin Downes
19 July 2007

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Feature Sets
Description

The manorial village of Lympsham lies on the Somerset Levels (Middle Lias), six miles equidistant from Axbridge and Weston-super-Mare. In geological terms it is about half way between Brent Knoll (Upper Lias) and the W extension of the Mendip Hills at Bleadon (Carboniferous Limestone). Bleadon and Brent Knoll are about 2mi N and S respectively. The Bristol Channel lies about 2.5mi W at Berrow. The important Axe river runs to the N, just S of Bleadon.

The church is mainly 15thc with much 19thc restoration by the Rev. A. J. Stephenson (rector and lord of the manor) in the 1820s to 1840s, and his son Prebendary J. H. Stephenson (died c.1900). There is however a reset 11thc stone Crucifix and also a Romanesque tub font.

History

Lympsham is not separately listed in DB, but was part of the estate of Brent which belonged to Glastonbury Abbey, perhaps from before the Conquest. The component manors were East Brent, Lympsham, Berrow and South Brent; this was the only one of the abbey's estates with access to the sea. (Harrison 1997, p. 11, fig. 1.09).

Features

Furnishings

Fonts

Other

Comments/Opinions

The crucifix is noteworthy. Strangely, it is not mentioned by Pevsner, nor by Cramp in the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture volume on Somerset in 2006.

Bibliography

F. Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications or England’s Patron Saints, III, (London, 1899), 192.

  1. D. Harrison, ‘The composite Manor of Brent: a study of a large wet-land edge estate up to 1350’, Unpublished PhD thesis (University of Leicester, 1997). On-line in the EThOS archive, downloadable as 492668.pdf.

Historic England listing 1262678

  1. N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: South and West Somerset (Harmondsworth, 1958), 226-7.