Norman west door and internal arch in St Mary's church, Ketton.
"ST. MARY consists of chancel 43ft. 9in. by 19ft. 9in., central tower 13ft. sqr, short N. and S. transepts 16ft. wide, clearstoried nave of three bays 59ft. 9in. by 17ft. 6in., N. and S. aisles 8ft. wide, and S. porch 11ft. 3in. by 10ft. 3in., all these measurements being internal. The tower is surmounted by a lofty spire. The width across nave and aisles is 38ft. 8in., and the total internal length of the church is 123ft. 6in. The transepts were formerly larger, but have been reduced in length to 9ft. 6in., their end walls ranging externally with the walls of the aisles.
The church is, in the main, a 13th-century rebuilding of a Norman fabric, which itself may have been a late 12th-century rebuilding of an earlier structure. The existing west front of the nave dates from c.1190, and some botched cheveron work re-used at the east end of the south aisle, which may have come from a tower arch, is probably not much earlier. It would appear, therefore, that a new church was begun upon a large scale, on an aisleless cruciform plan, about the end of the third quarter of the 12th century, and that the nave was completed as far as the west front, c.1190. Of this nave, the roof line still remains on the west side of the tower, but the tower was not finished and the projected transepts were left entirely incomplete. The work probably came to a stop owing to lack of funds, and was not again taken in hand until more than thirty years later, when, with the aid of indulgences, its completion was begun on a still bigger scale. Bishop Hugh de Wells's grant of a release of twenty days' penance in 1232 to those who should help in building the church mentions its 'ruinous' condition at that time, but the term, used rather vaguely in such documents, may mean little more than that the building was unfinished and in need of repair. However this may be, it would seem that the former plan was altered in favour of an aisled nave, and perhaps of transepts of a slighter projection than had been originally intended, though in their present form the transepts are of early 14th-century date.
The west doorway of the nave is well known as a very interesting example of the transition from the Norman to the 13th-century style, and forms an architectural composition of great beauty filling the whole of the lower part of the wall between the nave buttresses. The doorway has a wide semicircular arch of three moulded orders and is flanked by narrow lancet wall arches, all with enriched hood-moulds, on banded jambshafts with moulded bases and early foliated capitals. The inner order of the doorway is continuous and has an edge-roll with cheveron moulding on both the wall and soffit plane, broken only by an impost. The middle order has a double cheveron moulding with square edge and a hollow enriched with a variety of small heads, while the outer order has a large edge-roll between two hollows and hoodmould ornamented with small dog-tooth widely spaced. A larger dog-tooth is carried down the jambs between the supporting shafts of the arch. The capitals of the shafts vary in design, one on the north having fully developed angle volutes; another, on the south, has somewhat elaborate foliage, the others being of earlier type. The shaft bands are thoroughly Gothic in character, but the quirked abaci are square. The side arches are of a single order with cheveron moulding on the wall plane only, upon jambshafts similar to those of the doorway, the hollows of the hood-moulds being enriched with pellets and nailheads. The whole of the work, which is rather a combination of 12th and 13th century features than a typical transitional composition, is much restored. There are stone benches below the wall arches.
There are dividing arches between the aisles and the transepts, that on the north side of two chamfered orders, corbelled out on heads. The south arch, which is higher and springs straight from the wall, has an inner chamfered order on the east side, but towards the aisle has a made-up Norman rear-arch, with cheveron moulding on wall and soffit planes, which carries a passage from the still-existing vice at the junction of the aisle and transept to the tower by means of a wooden stair communicating with the round-headed doorway already referred to over the nave arch. Externally the vice has been rebuilt and the plain chamfered doorway from the aisle restored. A second high-pitched roof line on the west face of the tower is that of the 13th-century roof, which was superseded by the present flat-pitched roof in the 15th century after the erection of the clearstory."
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