St Andrew's church - Quidenham, Norfolk - Romanesque Architecture on Waymarking.com

Norman north doorway and round tower of St Andrew's church, Quidenham.

"Here is another church within a few miles of Diss, distinguished by another round tower with an octagonal belfry, about which both the church guide and The Buildings of England are typically misleading.

Of the round lower stage, Pevsner and/or Bill Wilson wrote in the latter (Northwest and South Norfolk volume, Yale University Press, 1999), "Is this... Anglo-Saxon, or early C12? It could be either." Yet Stephen Hart, writing in The Round Church Towers of England (Lucas Books, 2003), proved immediately otherwise by observing that "coursed flints in the nave west wall [and the courses are sharply defined] match exactly and align with those in the fillet and tower wall", thus showing the tower and the nave to be part of the same build and so dateable by the nave's Norman N. doorway. In addition, the tower cuts into the nave and, besides, the age of the tower is surely evident anyway from the tall round arch to the nave, which is supported only on abaci with chamfered under-edges, with no responds to the jambs below. The octagonal bell-stage appears to be early Perpendicular judging from the bell-openings in its cardinal faces and its mock flushwork bell-openings in the ordinal directions, all of which have the straightened reticulation units typical of the late fourteenth century. Thus, since there is no evidence of blocked bell-openings in the round part of the tower below (the blocked round windows are much too low ever to have served this purpose), it seems reasonable to assume this bell-stage must replace an earlier one. The surmounting shingled spire apparently replaced a former, taller one in 1867. although it was reconstructed again as recently as 1930. "

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"Three Romanesque colonnette fragments are reset in the N wall of the 14thc chancel.

Three colonnettes with integral bases and capitals are sunk into the masonry of the N wall of the chancel. It is not possible to tell how much survives beneath the visible surface. The westernmost of the three colonnettes has a bulbous base, cut back at either side. Each colonnette has a flat-leaf voluted capital with necking. All have been cut back, the R capital most severely. The central capital has a central projecting angle volute, the L and R capitals each have two volutes in profile."

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Web site proof of Romanesque or Pre-Romanesque features: [Web Link] Type of building (structure): Church Address: St Andrew Quidenham Rd Quidenham Norfolk England NR16 2PJ Date of origin: Not listed Architect(s) if known: Not listed Romanesque or Pre-Romanesque: Not listed

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