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| A mask capital on the tower arch |
Leaving the Beighton Board School, I made my way up to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, which is at the centre of Beighton and is set on high ground - overlooking a steep sided valley formed by the Ochre Dyke to the west and commanding views down to the River Rother in the north-east.
Seeing that the church was closed, I started to have a look around the churchyard to see if I could find any Commonwealth War Graves here but, before I could find any, I noticed that someone had come to open up the church for private prayer.
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| A view of the nave |
Introducing myself to explain that I had been investigating the mediaeval churches in and around Rotherham during the past few years, I was invited to have a look around the interior, where I immediately noticed that all the walls had been plastered.
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| The chancel arch |
This was undertaken as part of the major 1867-68 restoration, which included the rebuilding of the chancel and the south aisle on some of the original foundations. The current Victorian Romanesque style arch, with its chevrons and scalloped capitals to the imposts, apparently replaced a C14 arch - which demolition work had revealed to be itself incorporated within the decayed original Norman arch.
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| Scalloped capitals on the chancel arch |
Stopping very briefly to photograph the details of the chancel arch, without taking much note of the sandstone that has been used for rhis and the C14 arcades, I was more interested in the C19 Italian alabaster reredos, which depicts the Last Supper.
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| The reredos |
Little is known about the reredos or its maker, but it is thought that it was first brought to St. Michael and All Saints in Neepsend during the C19, moved to St. Anne’s in Netherthorpe in 1952 when it closed and then brought to Beighton, when this church also closed in 1964.
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| A detail of the reredos |
Returning to the nave, I walked down to the tower arch, which is dated in the Historic England description as being early C14, but which the church guide produced by Rosemary Richards in 1991 asserts that it may be from the C13.
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| The tower arch |
The most interesting features here are the very crude mask capitals and nailhead band, which are Romanesque details that are in typically seen on the arches of churches built from the time of the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066 until the later part of the C12, when the Early English Gothic style of architecture, with its pointed arches, was adopted.
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| A mask capital on the tower arch |
I didn’t have any kind of guide book with me and I just took a few record photos of the various exposed stonework elements of the church, without looking closely at the various architectural details and the interior deserves further exploration at another time – especially to see various grave slabs set into the floor and to take a better look at the marbles used in the war memorial.
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| The war memorial |
With four buildings left on my list to photograph for the British Listed Buildings website, I set off along the public footpath on my way to Robin Lane and, before I had even left the churchyard, I was very surprised to discover that the path immediately dropped steeply down into the valley formed by the Ochre Dyke.
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| The public footpath in the churchyard |
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