Breamore, Hampshire - St Mary's Church
11th Century
Click on photos to enlarge.
Notes in italics from Hampshire and the Isle of Wight by Nikolaus Pevsner
and David Lloyd (1967)
Yale University Press, New Haven and London. |
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Breamore is by far the most important and interesting Anglo-Saxon
monument in Hampshire. There are no documentary indications of its date,
but c.1000 is likely. The church is what one would call in a Romanesque,
i.e. in England a Norman, church cruciform, but the Anglo-Saxon mason was
not aware of the order which a true Romanesque church the square of the
crossing imposes on the rest. At Breamore the crossing is a square, and
the nave is of the same width, but neither the chancel nor the transepts
are. Of the chancel only the W ends of N and S walls are Anglo-Saxon, but
the S transept survives complete, and that is considerably smaller and
lower than the nave, a characteristic of Early Christian (Milan) and early
medieval churches on the Continent as well - as against Romanesque
ones. Moreover, the surviving arch from the crossing to the S transept is
narrow, thereby destroying the spatial unity which is implied in the
cruciform Romanesque plan ...
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Anglo-Saxon
long-and-short quoins on crossing tower and south transept. The entire
masonry of the south transept is Anglo-Saxon except for the east doorway
which is Norman. |
Early 14th century chancel with
reticulated east window. Roof-line of the original Saxon chancel can be seen. On
the north side of the nave two deeply splayed
Saxon windows. On crossing tower roof-line of original
north transept. |
West end of church,
no Saxon remains. |
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The south porch
entrance and the doorway inside are Norman (12th century). Upper part of
the porch is 15th century but the re-set arch is 13th century. The
half-timbered gable is modern. Above the S doorway, i.e. in the porch,
is a monumental Saxon rood in relief. The figures are all laboriously
hacked off, but it is clear that we have here exactly the same kind of
rood as at Headbourne
Worthy, only that Christ here, as against Headbourne and Romsey, is
bent by suffering in a way which anticipates the Gothic. especially the
arms, raised like wings, are unforgettable, though the bent body is even
more like the C13 or early C14. |
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The
chancel arch and the W arch of the crossing tower are four-centred and
probably late C14. They have much decoration with large nobbly leaves. The
chancel itself is over-restored, but the reticulated tracery of the E
window indicates an early C14 date.
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The
Anglo-Saxon S transept arch has a square capital-cum-abacus with a rope
motif along top and bottom and an inscription round the unmoulded arch
reading: 'HER SPUTELAD
SEO GECPYDRAEDNEC DE' (Here the covenant is explained to thee). |
Deeply splayed Saxon window on north
side
of nave. |
Looking
west from
crossing tower. |
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View of the Breamore House
from the church - Elizabethan |
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Cottage by the
church |
Map
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