Church Heritage Record 618416

Nave with three-bay south aisle and south porch, north transeptal chapel; chancel with vault beneath; detached bell-tower to east of chancel.

The nave and chancel were built in the twelfth century, although two windows in the north nave wall are the only features to survive intact; the south aisle, together with its arcade, was added in the early fourteenth century and shortly after the upper part of the east wall and the chancel arch were rebuilt and the detached bell-tower was built; the north chapel, occupying the position of a transept were added in 1351. Rather later in the same century the west wall of the nave was rebuilt, and early in the fifteenth century the south porch was added; the church was restored in the nineteenth century and again in 1935 (chiefly to the windows).

Detached towers are not uncommon in the county, there being nine in the old county of Hereford. That at Weobley is now attached to the church, but the others (with the exception of Ledbury) all stand to the south of their churches. There is no reason why the tower should not be so placed at Richard's Castle from a geographical point of view, and the church guide book suggests that it was rather in connection with the defence of the castle that the tower was placed to the east of the chancel, to provide an out post for the defenders and yet, if taken by the enemy, no sort of vantage point from which the castle might be threatened; in support of this theory, it is noted that the bell-openings face north, east and south but that the west wall is blind save for the entrance.

The tower is of three stages, roughly square in plan and covered with a pyramidal slated roof. The south-east angle has two small angle buttresses, but otherwise the walls rise sheer from the ground. The ground stage has an entrance door in the west face with chamfered jambs and a two-centred head, and the room within is lit by small slits with chamfered surrounds in the east and south walls. The second stage has a square headed window in the east wall and a blocked window in the south wall, while the bell chamber above has in the east, north and south walls bell openings of paired lights with Y tracery, those on the north and south provided with stone louvres. The present roof replaces a spire which was burnt down during the last century and is capped by a simple weather-vane. Parts of the oak bell-frame inside, housing three bells, are mediaeval.

Having surveyed the bell-tower, a description of the exterior might best continue with the chancel, which is the nearest part of the church. The east window is of four lights with vigorous Decorated tracery; this is complemented by a two-light window in the north wall with trefoiled ogee-headed lights and a pointed quatrefoil above, and by a similar window in the south wall. Further west in the north wall is a west jamb of a vanished window, possibly forming part of the original twelfth-century work, and westward again is a blocked doorway to a former vestry, now removed. Opposite this point in the south wall is a priest's doorway with chamfered jambs and a two-centred head, and west of this is a two light window with ogee-headed lights and a square head. Below the east end of the chancel, where the ground falls away somewhat, is a blocked doorway and a rectangular two-light window both formerly opening into a vault below the sanctuary; they appear to be sixteenth- or seventeenth-century, and have been long blocked. Since the second quarter of the last century the vault has been used as the burial place of the Sawley family. There are no buttresses to the chancel, in spite of the falling ground.

The wall of the south aisle is divided into three bays by buttresses, with a window in each of the two eastern bays and the porch in the west bay. The window in the middle bay is simply a pair of lancets while that to the east has similar lights with the addition of a quatrefoil in plate tracery above. The east gable is pierced by two windows, the lower a three-light design with intersecting tracery of simple form, decorated with rather haphazard ball-flower, and higher in the gable is a roundel containing a quatrefoil which appears to be a nineteenth-century replacement or insertion. The south porch has an outer archway with a two-centred head and of two chamfered orders springing from semi-octagonal responds with chamfered imposts; in the side walls are two-light windows with trefoiled lights under square heads. The west window of the aisle is like that in the middle bay of the south wall.

The west wall of the nave is chiefly taken up by a large four-light window with a two-centred head and panel tracery; the north wall, which was blind until a nineteenth-century restoration, is supported by two large seventeenth-century buttresses towards the west end. During the restoration, two round-headed Norman windows were discovered and opened, one partly obscured by a buttress.

The interior of the church is spacious, subdued in colouring and slightly frigid, some walls plastered and others with stonework exposed. The irregularity of grouping of the various parts of the church which forms such an attractive silhouette externally also provides glimpses and vistas within the church which make it a particularly rewarding visual experience. It is, moreover, virtually untouched by nineteenth-century restoration, and the only addition (apart from minor items of woodwork) since the end of the Georgian period is the brightly coloured east window, in itself a good example of the High Victorian idiom. The texture of the walls, with the silvery grey oak of the exposed roof timbers and the stone flagged floors interspersed with black ledgers all combine to present an authentic picture of an unrestored English parish church.

The nave is chiefly lit by the large west window, below which is a low gallery for the church band or choir, and all the walls in this part of the church are stripped of plaster, showing in the north nave wall the reveals of the two Norman lights which suggest the age of the oldest surviving walls. The roof structure is for the most part exposed, and consists of large tie-beams at frequent intervals, each bearing two queen-posts supported by cross-braces and struts. The lower parts of the slopes are plastered, but the upper are open to the underside of the tiles. The south arcade is of three wide bays, with two-centred arches of two centred arches of two-chamfered orders; the piers and responds continue this pattern down to the floor, and have moulded capitals with ball flower ornament which are so unobtrusive as scarcely to break the line of the chamfers.

The south aisle has plastered walls and vault, the south wall with some wallpainting visible under the top surface, apparently in the form of large circles which may once have framed suitable texts typical of a seventeenth-century date. The inner reveals of the two south windows have been renewed. A feature of particular interest is the series of three timber shores, with crude screw-threads on them, inserted in the seventeenth century to support the wall above the south arcade which leans heavily southward.

Towards the east ond of the north nave wall is a two-bay arcade opening into the north transeptal chapel. The arches, again of two centred profile, have two continuous sunk-chamfers and the pier and responds are of similar section, the moulded imposts again with ball flower ornament. The chapel has been cleared of box-pews, leaving only the canopied family pew of the Salwey family which partly conceals the damaged east side of a large tomb-recess with moulded jambs and cusped arch with crockets, possibly forming part of the tomb of the founder of chapel, Hugh Mortimer, d. 1364.

The chancel arch is similar in style to the arcade of the north chapel, with two sunk chamfers and moulded and embattled imposts, partly cut away for the rood loft supports. On the east side the imposts return to the north and south walls of the chancel. The roof of the chancel is a seventeenth-century replacement of the original, with short wall-posts terminating in moulded pendants, and the tie-beams cutting across the line of the chancel arch and east window; these beams are coarsely moulded on the underside, and support queen-posts which lean outwards so far that they might better be termed struts. The rafters are not visible, being entirely plastered over. In the north wall is evidence of a blocked doorway to a former vestry opposite the position of the priest's door in the south wall, although the internal stonework seems to have been renewed.