Helpringham (original) (raw)

Helpringham, Lincolnshire - St Andrew's Church 13th-14th Century Click on photos to enlarge. Notes in italics from Lincolnshire by Nikolaus Pevsner with John Harris (1964) Yale University Press, New Haven and London.
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A fine church, all ashlar-faced, with a W tower embraced by the aisles. W doorway with four orders of shafts. W window with flowing tracery. Bell-openings of two lights with fine rolls. Square panelled pinnacles connected with the spire by flying buttresses. Two tiers of lucarnes in alternating directions. Spire and pinnacles, the spire crocketed. S aisle windows reticulated tracery. N aisle cusped intersecting tracery. Clerestory of three-light windows also probably Dec. The clerestory is embattled.
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The S porch is Perp. The S and N doorways of the same style as the W doorway, both under a gable. At its SE end a little rood-stair turret with pinnacles. The chancel may be somewhat earlier than the rest. Low side lancets, also Y-tracery, and the E window of three stepped lancet lights under an arch. This window is shafted outside and inside.
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Inside, the sedilia in the chancel are indeed decidedly C13 and not C14. Trefoil arches, only that of the adjoining piscina pointed. Hoodmould with capitals with naturalistic leaf, a safe sign of c.1275-1300. The four-bay arcades and the tower arches Dec, the latter with deep continuous hollows between the shafts, the former quatrefoil with thin shafts in the diagonals and all foils and shafts with fillets. The arches with sunk quadrant mouldings. Restoration 1871-3. Nave roof renewed 1890, chancel roof renewed 1891. - Screen. With one-light divisions.
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Font. Circular, with four polygonal corner shafts; c. 1200. On three sides plain blank pointed arcading, on the fourth a tree, a bird, a quadruped (Tree of Life?)

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