St. Peter's Church in Kirkthorpe - Part 1

 

A weathered headstop on the porch

Arriving at the Grade II* Listed Church of St. Peter the Apostle in Kirkthorpe, having walked from Heath, I firstly took a photo of the unlisted war memorial, which is made of grey granite from the Cornubian Batholith in south-west England and is in the form of a plain Celtic cross. 

 

Kirkthorpe war memorial

 

Before starting my investigation of the exterior of the church, I had a quick look at the group of 9 Grade II Listed headstones, dated 1814-18, which commemorate Benedictine Nuns who fled from the French Revolution in 1792 and resided at Heath Old Hall from 1811 to 1821. 

 

The headstones of Benedictine Nuns

 

In the Pevsner guide and the Historic England (HE) description, the only information provided about the external fabric is that the Perpendicular Gothic style tower and north aisle date to the C14, with the body of the church being rebuilt c.1875 and the tower parapet renewed c.1904. 

 

The south elevation

 

Walking anticlockwise around the church, I firstly took general record photographs of the nave, where the square headed windows with cusped lights are presumably a like for like replacement of the original C14 design. 

 

The nave

 

The church guide doesn’t say very much about the fabric of the church, except to mention that the church was extended and altered by 3 yards in the 1850’s and Peter Ryder, in his Medieval Churches of West Yorkshire (1993) writes “In 1850-51 the church was ‘almost rebuilt’ at a cost of £1300; both nave and chancel were extended eastward by an extra bay, and most of the external walls refaced”, but there is no mention of later works referred to by HE.

 

The chancel

 

Ryder goes on further to say that it is now very difficult to distinguish between the genuine mediaeval and the C19 work. During my initial very quick walk around its exterior, I didn’t look closely at the stonework but, looking at my high resolution photos, the profiles of very many of the weathered individual blocks look far too irregular for them to be Victorian. 

 

A headstop on the east window of the chancel

I can see sections of walling where there is modern restoration work with both plain ashlar and tooled blocks, especially at the east end of the chancel, which seems to suggest that the sandstone used to extend the church is not very durable. Furthermore, one of the headstops to the east window of the chancel has lost most of its detail and masonry to the east end of the Lady Chapel is very weathered in places, which is exacerbated by hard sand and cement pointing. 

 

Weathered masonry on the east wall of the Lady Chapel

Moving round to the north aisle, I noted that the flat headed windows, which have different patterns of tracery, have the same designs as those on the south elevation, but I didn’t pay that much attention to them and was more interested in the physical characteristics of the stone used. 

 

A view along the north elevation

In the Wakefield area, the best building stone was obtained from the Woolley Edge Rock, which I have seen in several historic buildings, but its characteristic striped appearance is not seen in the fabric of the church The area is underlain by the Oaks Rock from the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation and I assume that this has been used in its construction. 

 

A sandstone block showing soft sediment deformation

The medium grained cross-bedded sandstone is grey/light brown and some orange/red colour variation, with differential weathering highlighting the graded bedding, which is common in the Coal Measures sandstones; however, I was very interested to see a block that displays soft sediment deformation – a feature that I had seen in natural rock outcrops at Wharncliffe Crags and Otley Chevin, but never in a building. 

 

The gargoyle on the Lady Chapel

On the north-east corner of the Lady Chapel, there is a sculpture that looks to be mediaeval, but I presume that this was taken down from the tower along with a couple of pinnacles that decorate the churchyard and reset in its current position. 

 

A buttress on the north aisle with a figurative carving

 

I have seen very many gargoyles and grotesques over the years, where they are usually positioned below parapets to the tower, clerestory, aisles and porch, but a sculpture in human form is built into one of the capping stones to a buttress on the north aisle – a feature that I don’t ever recall seeing before. 

 

A window in the south elevation of the chancel

 

The modern toilet block and the attached church hall prevented me from continuing my walk around the exterior of the church, so I retraced my steps and had another look at the masonry and windows to the south elevation of the chancel. 

 

A weathered headstop

 

Several blocks of stone have been quite recently restored and, if the original masonry is actually Victorian, this again indicates that the sandstone used for the walling is not very good quality and some of the headstops are at an advanced stage of deterioration. 

 

Soft sediment deformation structures

 

Looking closely at the stonework, I could see several more examples of soft sediment deformation and continuing to the porch, where the sandstone is quite orange in colour, both of the headstops are quite badly decayed. 

 

The porch

 

I finished my quick look at the exterior of St. Peter’s church by taking a few photographs of the tower, which is the only part of the church that is unequivocally C14 in date, but which the HE description says had its Perpendicular Gothic style windows renewed in the C19. 

 

The south window of the tower

 

Looking at the south window, the crude headstops do not look Victorian to me and the profiles of the tracery looks very sharp, which suggests that it has been recently restored with a much better quality West Yorkshire sandstone. I finished my quick examination of the exterior by photographing the west window and its headstops, before going to have at a look at the interior.

 

The west window of the tower and details of the headstops