Seven Romanesque Churches by Alex Woodcock

Alex Woodcock, the author of King of Dust, takes us to seven unmissable Romanesque churches and explains their significance.

From crumbling abbeys to the Houses of Parliament, Gothic architecture, with its pointed arches and soaring vaults, is familiar to us. But what about the style that preceded it, the Romanesque?

Romanesque, as the name implies, drew upon classical forms and designs and flourished in this country after the Norman Conquest and throughout the twelfth century. For the most part the Victorians understood it as an embarrassing but necessary evolutionary step on the path to Gothic perfection but modernist artists, writers, and a handful of academics, disagreed. They started to reclaim its characteristic bold forms and wayward designs and it is now firmly understood as a complex and powerful international style, both instantly recognisable with its semi-circular arches and geometric decoration as well as regionally distinctive.

In King of Dust I explored the vivid Romanesque sculpture of the southwest of England and its emotional and practical impact upon my life, which ultimately led me to channel my creative endeavours towards stonemasonry, and, in time, become a cathedral stonemason. Yet incredible Romanesque churches are scattered around the country and I’ve selected seven of my favourites here that I hope will open your eyes to the quality, exuberance, and otherworldly atmospherics of this style of sculpture and architecture. Happy exploring!

St Mary and St David, Kilpeck, Herefordshire

Perhaps the best-known Romanesque church in the country, Kilpeck is famous for its wealth of sculpture carved in the Old Red Sandstone of the locality – which despite shouldering over eight centuries of weather is still crisp and detailed. The wonderful, drooping, blousy flower on the tympanum above the doorway is a highlight, as are the myriad creatures around the arch which include wyverns, foliate heads, angels and entangled figures.

St Nicholas, Barfreston, Kent

Rebuilt in the 1180s this beautiful flint and Caen limestone building represents the last gasp of the Romanesque style in England, its smattering of gently pointed arches looking towards the incoming Gothic tide. French influences abound, from the squall of winged sirens around the circular east-end window to the monstrous heads biting the ends of columns. Look out for the tiny monsters (sphinx, mermaid, harpy) next to the feet of Christ above the doorway, occupying the transitional space between human and divine.

St Margaret and St James, Long Marton, Cumbria

The sculptures above the doorways here are powerful and mesmerising and will transport you into a world of the truly bizarre. A mermaid and a wyvern with knotted tails float above a bank of repeating star motifs on one; on another a beaked and winged quadruped stands with a second wyvern and a hovering conglomeration of wings. It’s visionary work, executed with great flair and feeling for design.

St Mary, Kempley, Gloucestershire

Kempley is a time machine, so quiet and so full of the colour of the past that to stand still within its walls for few moments is to fade into the centuries. The wall paintings here are stunning and the chancel alone – a glorious, painted cave that has to be seen to be believed – contains the most complete set of Romanesque frescoes in northern Europe. A stirring reminder of the intensity of twelfth-century decoration that is now, on the whole, lost to us.

St Peter, Northampton, Northamptonshire

Post-punk fans will know Northampton as the town that gave birth to the band Bauhaus but long before ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ was recorded the place had been stalked by a medieval menagerie of monsters on the capitals of the church of St Peter. The carvings are intense, with beasts prowling within a rich geometric field of spirals, zigzags, stars and scrolling patterns. The chancel arch too shimmers with chevrons, the overall effect of the interior one of visual overwhelm.

St Basil, Toller Fratrum, Dorset

John Piper described the sculpted font here as having the ‘bigness and strangeness of all the achievements of Picasso’, aligning the twelfth with the twentieth centuries in one deft sentence. Certainly, it is a highlight of British sculpture, its figures and jumbled scenes carrying a potent, exotic charge. Well worth travelling through the night, as Piper once did, to go and see it.

St Anthony, St Anthony-in-Roseland, Cornwall

You can drive down the Roseland peninsula or you can take the ferry from Falmouth to St Mawes and then St Mawes to Place. I recommend the latter, particularly on a slow, sunny September day, for it will set you up admirably for the short walk through the woodland to discover one of the best twelfth-century doorways in the country. An unusual arrangement of repeating cusps each frames an individual leaf motif, suitably apt in such a location. Sit for a while on the nearby bench and absorb the beauty of the place and the work which truly is an outstanding example of the Romanesque in Cornwall.

May 2024

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King of Dust is published in paperback by Little Toller.