Rotherham Minster - The Interior

 

A detail of a capital with a green man

Following on from a brief general description of the exterior of Rotherham Minster and the stone sculptures on the north aisle, the interior of the church did not particularly interest me when I first visited. As had also been the case when I have since visited the churches of St. Mary in Nottingham and St. John the Baptist in Tideswell, I thought it was quite bland.

 

A view west along the nave from the crossing

Although the Perpendicular style represents the culmination of English Gothic church architecture, and I appreciate its proportions and scale, I have to say that I much prefer to see a greater variety in the various structural elements - which appeal to my interests in standing buildings archaeology.

 

The north arcade and clerestory

The tall arcades and the clerestory provide a lofty space in the nave, which is also apparent in the aisles, but it took a few visits before I managed to appreciate its details – especially the low relief battlemented capitals, where carved foliage and green men are abundant.

 

Battlemented capitals with carved foliage and green men

Moving east along the nave, above the arch to the crossing, a steep old roofline marks the position of the nave roof before the clerestory was added; however, there is no change in the style in the ashlar masonry above and below this and, together with the butted masonry of the arcades, provides evidence of the relative dates of the construction of these architectural elements.

 

The crossing arch at the east end of the nave

Carrying on into the crossing and looking up at the fan vaulting that the Historic England listing describes as early C15 - and the Minster history records as having problems during its construction -  the bosses are decorated with heads and floral details.

 

A view of the crossing from the nave

I only took a couple of quick snaps of the vaulting with my Canon Powershot G16 camera, which didn't always correctly record the precise geometry of the subject matter, but there does appear to be some structural misalignment that I will have to further investigate at another time.

 

A view of the fan vaulting in the crossing

One particularly interesting feature of the crossing is the series of sculpted capitals that punctuate the shaft like mouldings on the tower piers, which have various crudely carved heads and foliage, with castellation like decoration above.

 

A detail of carvings on a tower pier

Continuing into the chancel, the east side of the crossing contains two Perpendicular Gothic windows above the arch that have quite a strange spatial relationship with another old roofline. This presumably marks the position of the C14 chancel roof, which Pevsner describes as being raised with a clerestory in the early C16.

 

An old roofline above the east crossing arch

In the limited time spent in the chancel, I have paid more attention to the poppy heads but, from the single photo that I took of the walling on its north side, the earlier squared but poorly coursed masonry is quite visible. It is contemporary with the Decorated Gothic arcade, with its octagonal column, and there is a clear contrast with the C16 ashlar masonry in the clerestory above it.

 

The north arcade of the chancel

The sedilia, which is of a similar date, is set into the south wall beyond the altar rail and, with this part of a church normally considered to be ‘out of bounds' to the general public, I didn’t investigate this any further.

 

The sedilia

Like many other churches that I have visited, Rotherham Minster has two fonts. The highly weathered and eroded Norman font, which is made from Rotherham Red sandstone, is tucked away in a corner and I only became aware of this during a guided tour by the verger, Martyn Taylor, when I visited with the Treeton Local History Group.

 

The Norman font

The currently used Victorian font, dated to c.1879, is made of another red sandstone, this time a bright red Permo-Triassic sandstone that looks like it could be St. Bees sandstone from the coast of Cumbria, but I didn’t take a very close look with my hand lens on this occasion.

 

The Victorian font

There is a scattering of Georgian marble memorials on the walls, as well as some very fine church brasses, but the highlight is the memorial to the Masbrough boat disaster in 1841, when 50 young people drowned after a new boat that they were on turned over immediately after its launch.

 

The Masbrough boat disaster memorial

At the west end of the nave, several large carved and moulded sections of salvaged stone are on display and, although I have not yet seen it, there is apparently a piece of a Saxon stone coffin lid at the west end of the north aisle.   

 

Various sections of old masonry