St. Peter's Church in Thorpe Salvin

 

Details of the south door

At the end of a very quick exploration of some of the stone built architecture in Thorpe Salvin, I finished by having another look at the exterior of St. Peter’s church, which I had last visited in the summer of 2016.

A general view of St. Peter's church

The church is usually locked and this, together with its remote location and difficulty in getting there by bus, has prevented me from surveying it in any great depth. Although I was able to gain access during the Thorpe Salvin Garden Trail, there were so many visitors going in and out that I couldn't easily photograph the most interesting architectural details.

The porch

The most interesting part of the fabric is the C12 south door, protected by an ungated Tudor porch, which is always available to view close up. Although the shafts of the colonnettes have been renewed quite recently, the Romanesque carvings to the arch and scalloped capitals – which have a zigzag pattern and foliate details respectively - are all well preserved.

The Romanesque south door

In the description in the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture of Britain and Ireland, the yellow colour of the dolomitic limestone used for the south door, compared to the paler colour of the rest of the external masonry, has been noted. I haven’t spent enough time looking at the masonry of the exterior to confirm this, but the stone used to restore the colonnettes lacks this yellow colouration.

A detail of the south door

A few metres to the south-east of the porch, there is a sundial of probable C18 date, which has been refixed to a plinth that has a date of 1841. It is also made from dolomitic limestone and there is a carved face on each side of it, but no gnomons remain.

Faces on the sundial

I had taken several photographs of the exterior of the church during my previous visit and, with no real reason to further examine its fabric, I just had a quick wander around the churchyard before leaving it by the entrance on Lady Field Road.

In the churchyard