Details
SY 39 NE
2/179
5.9.60
WHITCHURCH CANONICORUM
WHITCHURCH VILIAGE
Whitchurch Canonicorum Church (St Candida and Holy Cross)
G.V.
I
Parish Church and former Minster Church. Church has material of C12, C13,
C14 and C15 and modern additions and restorations. West Tower, nave with
clerestory, north and south aisles, south porch, north and south transepts,
chancel, south vestry. Lias stone ashlar walls, slate roofs. Tower C15.
4 stages. Set back buttresses, crenellated parapet and renewed crocketed
finials. West door with heavily moulded jambs intersecting the plinth
mouldings. Plant-motifs in spandrels and quatrefoil shielded frieze over.
Two statue niches left and right of cross-transomed west window. 2-light
bell openings with quatrefoil head over. Carved panels on south wall of
Tower, one with Viking ship. South elevation: south aisle wall C12,
C13 with renewed reticulated window tracery. Porch C15, one storey, diagonal
buttresses, massive carved grotesques. Pointed arch-entrance with 2 respond
orders. Cambered tie beam roof inside. Inside: late C12 doorway, with nook
shafts, late water leaf capitals, arch-moulds include projecting dog tooth and
hood-roll with gripping beak-head at apex and with beak-head terminals. South
transept, C13, west face with E.E. lancets, straight chamfered, deep hollow
and big roll, keeled roll-label over. South window: 3-light trefoil-cusped
with intersecting ogees leading up to a mandorla-head with quatrefoil fill, C14.
South vestry, rebuilt 1822 in coursed knapped flint. Chancel with 2 EE lancets
with original labels. Blocked trefoil-headed priest's doorway with heavy keeled
roll over. East wall of chancel rebuilt 1847-8, 3 stepped lancets. Late C12
keeled angle shafts from carved faces at top incorporated. North elevation,
North transept shows back of St Wite's shrine projecting. East wall has a
window c 1300. North aisle rebuilt, has plain parapets. Interior: nave of
5 bays plus one for transepts. South arcade, c 1170, round piers with scallop
and water-leaf capitals. Labels with one beak-head and large naturalistic
heads as spandrel-stops. North arcade, c 1190 4-respond shafts, standing on
bases and plinths. Capitals, derived from transept-scallops with conventional
and more naturalistic foliage. Heavily moulded pointed arches, one with free-
standing double-chevron. Nave extended one bay west in c C14. Clerestorey
windows, quatrefoils with rere-arches over arcade-spandrels. Wooden waggon-
roof, bossed at intersections, C15. North transept with clustered respond-
shafts, with similar capitals to above and rings. South transept windows with
respond-framing. Chancel-arch with triple-respond shafts, naturalistic foliage
and wide pointed arch. Segmental barrel-vault. Fittings: Shrine of St Wite
(north transept), stone with Purbeck marble top. Tomb chest built over 3
mandorla-shaped openings for pilgrims' offerings, healing, C13. Font, late C12,
stone bowl with intersecting arcading, chip-carved saltire band over, rope-
moulded base. Purbeck marble stem. Pulpit, c 1630, wood, octagonal on trumpet-
stem, with Carolean ornament. Wall tomb, early C17 to Sir J Jeffery of
Catherston, d 1611. Tomb chest, stone effigy and fine carved framing. "RCHM
Dorset I", p 260 (1) ff.
Listing NGR: SY3968195442
