page_title: Norwell, Nottinghamshire
section_title: Brief history
hierarchical_section_title: Norwell, Nottinghamshire / Norwell Buildings / St. Laurence Church / Brief history
caption_attribution_description: English: St.Laurence's church nave Three of the four bays of the 14th century north arcade
context_page_description: Norwell is a village and parish about 6 miles from Newark-on-Trent, in central Nottinghamshire, England. The population at the 2011 census was 490. It is close to the border with Lincolnshire and the River Trent, and lies approximately 1.5 miles from the A1 road and 1 mile from the East Coast Main Line.
context_section_description: The first church in Norwell was almost certainly a wooden one, probably erected as a chapel attached to an Anglo-Saxon manor house standing on or near where a later moated manor house was built, immediately to the south of the present church. This may have been the church, with its priest, mentioned in Domesday, but no traces of that chapel or church remain. Shortly after 1100 it was certainly replaced by a small rectangular building like that surviving at Littleborough, Nottinghamshire. Fragmentedasonry associated with this first stone church has been identified in the north aisle.
  During the 12th and 13th centuries other traces were lost through major work creating the church we now see. Around 1180–1200, the south aisle was added and the south door moved to its present position. A tower with three storeys was built shortly after 1200 and by 1250 the north aisle was added. A further expansion took place around 1300, partly paid for by a legacy from Mr John Clarell, prebendary of Overhall (d.1295). The north and south transepts were added, the Chancel lengthened and, a few years later, the south porch built. Finally between about 1450 and 1500, the nave was heightened with a clerestory (a row of flat-headed windows) inserted, the transepts and Chancel were re-roofed and a fourth storey with battlements an gargoyles added to the tower. The 19th century, largely sympathetic, restoration (Chancel, 1857-8, rest of church, 1872-5) by Ewan Christian faithfully preserves St Laurence's medieval appearance. The only major structural change was that Christian restored the Chancel to its 13th century form by removing the low pitched roof that was part of the 15th century refurbishment.
  
  Evidence from the church shows the wide variety of stone available in medieval Norwell. Much of the building is constructed in skerry, a form of pale grey sandstone, quarried locally at Tuxford, Laxton, Kneesall and Maplebeck. Magnesium limestone was brought from Mansfield and other limestone came from Ancaster in Lincolnshire, whilst local lias from Collingham and a light porous tufa, which outcrops in The Beck between Norwell and Caunton, has been identified. For high-quality monuments like tombs and effigies stone was sometimes imported over much longer distances like the Purbeck marble and Caen stone also present.
caption: St. Laurence Church, Norwell
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