St. Lawrence's Church Whitwell - Part 4

 

The monument to Sir Roger Manners in the north transept

Entering the porch of St. Lawrence’s church in Whitwell, having taken a set of general record photos of its exterior and looked for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones in the churchyard, I was immediately interested to see that its floor is made with squares of dolomitic limestone from the Sprotbrough Member of the Cadeby Formation that shows a range of colours.

 

The floor to the porch

 

Looking at my high resolution photos of the exterior, this cream/yellow/red colour variation can be seen throughout the whole fabric of the Norman church and the Whitwell Conservation Area Appraisal refers to High Hill as the source of this stone.

 

The south door

 

Massive yellow/buff coloured limestone is used for the steps and for the surround to the south door, with the lower parts of the jambs being recently restored with a limestone that is quite pale coloured in comparison, but the interior walls of the porch have been plastered.

 

The north arcade

 

Once inside the church, I immediately noted that all of the walling has also been plastered, with the exception of the north aisle and, as I later discovered, the north transept. The four bay north arcade consists of stepped round arches and circular piers and capitals and, although I didn’t notice this at the time and neither Pevsner or Historic England (HE) mention this, the west arch is very slightly pointed.

 

The north arcade with a pointed arch to the west bay (L)

 

Looking east down the south aisle, one of columns to the arcade has been repaired with a stone that is not a very good match with the original massive limestone, although limewash on the original stonework emphasises this; however, I didn’t stop to examine this and continued along the aisle and through a tall pointed arch to the south transept.

 

A view along the south aisle to the south transept

 

Here, there are three large statues attached to the walls, which depict St. Lawrence, the Madonna and Child and St. Paulinus, which were made in Worksop and presented to Canon George Mason, to mark 30 years of his ministry.

 

Statues in the south transept

 

Moving into the chancel, I took a few photos of the sedilia, which the church guide suggests may have come from another church at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, maybe Worksop Priory. As with the piscina on the opposite wall, it is elaborately carved with Decorated Gothic style ogee arches, trefoils, crockets and finials.

 

The sedilia and piscinas in the chancel

 

The font, which was original sited at the traditional position at the west end and was moved during the 1969 restoration, is a large simple stone tub that is thought to be early Norman or Anglo-Saxon. Pevsner refers to it as Norman but, perhaps because it has no decoration, it doesn’t appear in the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture for Britain and Ireland (CRSBI) description.

 

The font

 

The round chancel arch, which Pevsner describes as having finely detailed mouldings that are very late Norman in style, is also considered by HE to be transitional between the Norman and Early English Gothic styles, but the general photographs that I took don’t show these details very well.

 

Views of the chancel arch

 

Taking a closer look at the capitals, which the CRSBI describe with terminology that I have had to look up in their Glossary, the scallops were obvious but I have to say that I really didn’t notice the waterleaf motifs at the time.

 

Capitals on the chancel arch

 

Another interesting feature of the chancel arch, according to Pevsner, are the keeled responds that are apparently a usual feature of the late C12 churches in this part of Derbyshire, but I haven’t seen enough mediaeval churches in Derbyshire to comment.

 

A keeled respond to the chancel arch

 

On the west wall of the C14 north transept is a large wall standing monument to Sir Roger Manners (d.1632), with a recumbent effigy in armour. The pale coloured alabaster with light brown veins is from Chellaston near Derby, which is quite different from the dark veined variety from Tutbury, and it has black columns that could be Ashford Black Marble. 

 

The monument to Sir John Manners

The church website states that the visor on the helmet is very unusual and rare for the 1630s, when the figure was carved, and it further mentions that the carvings on the plinths at the base of the columns refer to military matters and those on the sides appear to be places connected with his life – including Bakewell and Haddon Hall in Derbyshire.

 

The effigy of Sir John Manners

 

A large tomb recess on the north wall has again been made in an elaborate Decorated Gothic style, with a cusped ogee arch and finials, but I only took a few photos of this - including details of the headstops, which I don’t recall seeing in this context before. 

 

A view west along the nave

 

Returning to the nave to take a general record photograph that show the arcades, I had another look at the north arcade, where the west respond has a scalloped capital, before taking another photo of the porch floor in the sunshine and setting off to All Saints Chapel in Steetley. 

 

A few of the porch floor when leaving the nave