Church of St Ethelbert Leominster, England

Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

LEOMINSTER

808-1/0/10011 BARGATES 18-JUN-09 86 Church of St Ethelbert

II A Roman Catholic church, designed by Peter Paul Pugin and opened in 1888. MATERIALS: The building is of coursed rubble with ashlar dressings and a plain tiled and slate roof. The sandstone of the plinth is local from Eyton, but above that level it was brought from Godsall, Staffordshire. PLAN: The site on which the church was built appears to have been originally intended for a pair of semi-detached suburban villas and is relatively narrow. The church is consequently oriented N-S, instead of E-W, with North acting as the ritual eastern end. The nave and chancel form one continuous body with a single step to mark the transition. There is a timber-framed porch projecting to the south-east corner, a vestry projecting to the north-west and a chapel dedicated to Roger Cadwallador which projects at the north-east. All have gabled roofs; that over the porch covered with slates. EXTERIOR: the style is Gothic; transitional between Decorated and Perpendicular. There is a four-light window to the ritual west end, below which are shields and the text, in high relief which reads `Ad . Majorem . Dei . Gloriam'. To right of the window is a canopied niche containing the effigy of St. Ethelbert added in 1908 and sculpted by William Storr-Barber and there is a small arched window to the gable. The east window is of three lights and the flank windows, of which there are three to the east side and four to the west, all have two cusped lights with a quatrefoil to the apex. The chapel dedicated to Roger Cadwallador has panel tracery to its two eastern windows. There are buttresses with offsets to the full height of the wall. The porch at the south-east angle is glazed to three sides. It has chamfered timber posts, between which are set panels of diamond-pattern leaded glazing with cusped heads and yellow glass quarries to the margins. INTERIOR: The roof structure has stone corbels carved with apples, pears, hops and other local crops, carved by Wall of Cheltenham, which support wall posts. These rise to join the principals and support arched braces which connect to the collar beam, from the centre of which two small braces arch outwards to join the principals. The reredos, of red, Runcorn sandstone, has a central canopied niche for a monstrance which is flanked by a blind arcade which terminates at either end in two further canopied niches which contain wooden figures of the Virgin and Child and St Joseph, bearing a lily. The stone altar was originally attached to the wall, immediately below the reredos, but it was separated following the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council and moved forward to allow the priest to face the congregation during the Mass. This separation appears to have been managed with the minimum of alteration to the individual parts. The side chapel has stained glass windows showing episodes in the life of Roger Cadwallador and has a fireplace to the south wall. Above this are three memorial tablets to members of the Snead-Cox family killed in the First World War, including one to Herbert Arthur Snead-Cox, carved by Eric Gill removed from Broxwood Church to this position in 1987. The flooring throughout the church is parquet and there are wooden benches of two different patterns, which early photographs show to have been a later insertion. The entrance porch has patterned encaustic tiling to the floor and a bench to the north side. There is no evidence of decorative painting to the walls of the church or in the chancel and the present painting of the stonework of the reredos was undertaken recently by the present incumbent. HISTORY Leominster has associations with two of the Roman Catholic church's sixty-three Beatified Martyrs of England, Wales and Scotland. It was the birthplace of Nicholas Wheeler, who was executed at Tyburn in 1586 and the place of execution of Roger Cadwallador. The town was also a stronghold of recusan