Highways and Byways in LincolnshireRawnsley, W. F. (Willingham Franklin)
History
Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire
Rawnsley, W. F. (Willingham Franklin)
Lincolnshire (England) -- Description and travel
Of the four stages of the tower the lowest has an arcading of dressed
stone, as there is at Bradford-on-Avon, and on the east, south and west
sides a round-headed doorway, and on the north a triangular-headed one,
with massive “Long-and-Short” work. The next stage exhibits triangular
arcading with double lights and a massive baluster and capital under a
triangular arch. The third stage has no arcading, but a similar two-light
window. The fourth stage is not Saxon but early Norman in style. From
the west of the tower projects a sort of annexe, fifteen feet by twelve,
of the same width as the tower and cöeval with it, having quoins of
“Long-and-Short” work, this is pierced with two small rude lights north
and south, and with two circular lights on the west. These circular
lights are of extraordinary interest, for they still have in them,
across the top of the upper opening and at the bottom of the lower one,
a portion of the old original Saxon oak shutter, perforated with round
holes to let in light and air, a thing absolutely unique. A chancel,
whose foundations have been recently discovered, projected from the tower
eastward, and just below the floor, near the north wall, is a curious
bricked chamber, which might have been a small tomb.
[Illustration: _St. Peter’s, Barton-on-Humber._]
[Sidenote: ST. MARY’S, BARTON]
The tower has four doorways irregularly placed and all differing from
each other: it is fitted up for daily morning service, for which it has
been used intermittently for over a thousand years; for no doubt the
original church consisted simply of the tower and the two chambers east
and west of it. At present, from the interior of the spacious Decorated
nave, with its added Perpendicular clerestory, when you look up at the
west end and see the rude round-headed arches of the first and second
stages of the tower, and the double triangular-headed light of the next
stage, all of which come within the nave roof, you see at the same time
two deep grooves cut in the tower face for the early steep-pitched roof.
These start from the double light and finish by cutting through the
upright stone strips which run like elongated pilasters up the whole
height of the tower on either side. The tower and its annexe is of such
absorbing interest that one hardly looks at the rest of the church, or
stops to note its beautifully restored rood screen with a new canopy to
it, which serves to hide the wide ugly chancel arch. But we shall perhaps
be able to make up for this if we go on to St. Mary’s Church, which was
the church of the people of Barton, and served by a secular priest, St.
Peter’s being an appanage of Bardney Abbey. The churches both stand high,
and are quite near one another. St. Mary’s was a Norman building, as
the north arcade testifies; the south arcade was rebuilt in the Early
English period, to which the massive tower also belongs, the parapet
being later. Once the nave and chancel had a continuous roof till the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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