St. Katherine's Loversall - The Interior

 

A view of the nave and arcade

Ever since I started exploring the mediaeval churches of South Yorkshire and the surrounding counties back in 2016 - starting at St. Helen's church in Treeton - I firstly walk around the exterior to make a general photographic record of each elevation and note the various phases of construction. If there are any features that particularly catch my eye, I then return to these and photograph the details. 

 

The guide to St. Katherine's church

 

At St. Katherine’s church in Loversall, I spent less than 15 minutes looking at the exterior from some distance, from which I was able to determine several phases of building by looking at the size, shape and colours of the various stones in the fabric. Entering the church, after the service by the Romanian Orthodox Church had finished, I introduced myself, obtained a church guide and then had a wander around. 

 

A view east along the nave

 

Only when preparing my Language of Stone Blog posts to describe my visit 16 months later, have I looked at my copy of Pevsner for the West Riding of Yorkshire, the Historic England listing description, the entry in the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain & Ireland (CRSBI) and the church guide – where it is said that Sir George Gilbert Scott took down and rebuilt the entire nave and south aisle. 

 

The north wall of the nave

 

Looking at the north wall of the nave and above the chancel arch, the masonry looks original to me and the masonry immediately above the arcade, which is considered to be Perpendicular Gothic (c.1375-1560) is of a similar pattern, with a distinct change in the masonry that coincides with the clerestory. Although the windows look like they have been restored in the Victorian fashion, perhaps the wall has not been completely rebuilt and has been refaced? 

 

A view of the clerestory

 

Although I have acquired a certain amount of knowledge about the dating of arches and arcades, I am not a trained architectural historian and rely on the reference material such as Pevsner and the Historic England listing descriptions, but neither of these adopt a systematic approach to dating the various elements of a mediaeval church. 

 

A view west along the nave

When the masonry is not plastered, as on the exterior, it is very often possible to determine the relative ages of phases of building by observing the way that the shape, size and degree of tooling to the stone blocks and regularity of courses changes over time - with rubble and ashlar masonry being the extremes. 

 

The arcade to the south chapel

Entering the chancel, the walls are plastered and although the CRSBI highlight the remains of the splay of a rounded C12 arch and my observations of the masonry on the exterior suggest that this is possibly of the same date, no archaeological evidence in the interior of the chancel is visible. 

 

The effigy of William de Middleton

 

In the south chapel (c.1530), which has wide pointed arches forming the two bay arcade, the early C14 effigy of a knight immediately caught my eye. The church guide states that it is very probably William de Middleton, who is depicted with his sword and shield but, quite unusually he is not wearing his helmet or armour. 

 

A detail of the effigy of William Middleton

 

As with very many mediaeval churches that I have visited, St. Katherine’s has very limited storage space and the south chapel doubles up as a utility room, where I was very surprised to see what I thought was a kitchen worktop is actually a table tomb - which is decorated with quatrefoils and may commemorate John Wyrall. 

 

The table tomb in the south chapel

Returning to the chancel, I stopped very briefly to look at the quite crudely carved head on the impost to the south side of the chancel arch which, except for the headstop on the arch to the south door, is the only figurative sculpture that I noticed inside the church. 

 

The south impost of the chancel arch

Continuing west along the nave, I took a few more photographs of the arcade, clerestory and the wall of the south aisle which, like the north wall of the nave, looks like it is the original masonry and that it has been refaced and not rebuilt. 

 

A view of the arcade and south aisle

 

Being conscious that I had to catch the hourly No. 22 bus back to Doncaster, I only spent 45 minutes exploring this very interesting church, which I would like to examine again in greater detail with a standing buildings archaeologist. 

 

The C12 font