Tympanum & Chancel Arch - St Edmund - Egleton, Rutland, England
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N 52° 39.508 W 000° 42.386
30U E 655122 N 5836747
The Romanesque Tympanum of the south door and the Chancel Arch of St Edmund's church, Egleton, date from the 12th century, and are remnants of the Norman church that once stood here. The church has undergone many modifications since then.
Waymark Code: WMYVE4
Location: East Midlands, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 07/28/2018
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The Romanesque Tympanum of the south door and the Chancel Arch of St Edmund's church, Egleton, date from the 12th century, and are remnants of the Norman church that once stood here. The church has undergone many modifications since then, notably in the 14th and 15th centuries and the 19th.
"You wouldn’t give Egleton Church a second glance. Its perpendicular south windows are too big - especially the one in the south wall which is bigger than the east window! The porch looks like it’s just been tacked on. The north aisle has been removed and the arcade has simply been infilled making it look like a house conversion that the owner couldn’t be bothered to finish. The roof is almost flat. To cap it all, the tower is of surpassing ugliness, constructed of what looks like a load of old breeze blocks!
The church is believed to date from around 1200. Much of the nave and certainly the chancel arch date from around then. Likewise the square font. In c14 the porch, the tower and a north aisle were added, a clerestory being added above the north arcade. The chancel is believed to have been rebuilt in c15, but we don’t know what stood there before. It is unclear when the aisle was removed, but the large and ugly buttress on that side as well as the general state of the church gives us a clue that its removal may have owed something to structural instability.
Amongst this architectural disaster area, however, are a
Romanesque south door of rare exuberance and an attractive Norman chancel arch. It is the south door that gives us the difficulty for it has many characteristics that lead many observers, including both humble beginners like myself and legendary experts such as Nikolaus Pevsner, to believe that it dates from around 1060-1080, the Saxo-Norman period when Norman architecture was still influenced by Saxon. The abaci (flat tops) of the capitals are over-large and crude. The decoration shows distinct Celtic influence. The decoration on the pillars is sophisticated but, again, seems to owe more to Saxon than Norman influence. Its proportions are crude and there is a badly-built feeling to it. Could this really be contemporary with Iffley and Kilpeck? Yet Egleton does not appear in Domesday Book in 1086. I believe the clue is in the ill-fitting nature of the structure. I am not alone in believing that it has possibly been put together from reclaimed pieces from an earlier church here or elsewhere.
Egleton is a bit of a mystery all round - the puzzling south door, the lost north aisle and general lack of precision about building dates. Part of the original timber rood screen is even sited in front of the tower arch! Yet, inside there is a peaceful simplicity and a lightness that is endearing and charming. This is, perversely, the English Parish Church at its best: serving its community for centuries, unpretentious yet hiding architectural treasures. Ugly it may be on the outside, but a warm heart beats within and we loved it!
The south doorway. The pillars have quite different decorations, as do the capitals and their abaci. The tympanum seems oversized compared to the rest of the doorway. There is a mighty lintel decorated with a complex tendril pattern. Inside the plain hood mould are a double course of “star” patterns and one of chevron moulding. At the end of the hood mould are monster heads. Two more heads appear, for no apparently good reason, within the tympanum. The left hand one is human. Note the totally different devices on the abaci and the capitals, and also on the shafts. Also the right hand abacus is considerably bigger than the left. Every way you look at it, this doorway is a fascinating if enchanting mess, perhaps supporting the theory that this is melange of parts recovered from earlier buildings. It really is quite difficult to see it as dating from 1200.
The tympanum eschews such “normal” images as Christ in Majesty and instead gives us two fantastic beasts, perhaps a dragon and lion either side of a circular device that may be a rose. A cable moulding circumnavigates the rose, whilst another joins the mouths of the two beasts.
The north and south capitals of the Norman chancel arch. As with the south door, there is no symmetry between these capitals (nor between the shafts). The over sized abaci and comparatively mean capitals are, it must be said, reminiscent of the south door adding to the mystery that seems to surround this church. Nobody seems to doubt that the church was built late in the Norman period. Could the chancel arch also incorporate recovered parts? Or is it simply the case that both south door and chancel arch are unfashionable for their time?"
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