Minster Church Of St Peter And St Paul And Chapter House

Minster Church of St Peter and St Paul and Chapter House

This Grade I listed collegiate church with attached chapter house and former grammar school stands at Howden. The building was begun around 1270–1275 with the construction of the transepts. The nave was finished by around 1300, with the west front completed between 1306 and 1311. The choir, also referred to as the chancel, was completed between 1320 and 1340. The chapter house was begun in 1340–1349, then recommenced after a long interruption in 1380, with the addition in the early 15th century of a ground-floor chapel or vestry and its vestibule, two chambers above and an access stair. The tower was begun in the late 14th century, with its upper stage added in the late 15th century. The Grammar School dates from around 1500. The church was restored in the 1840s and 1850s, and restoration of the chapter house was underway at the time of resurvey in 1987.

The church was endowed by John de Howden (died 1272). A bequest of £10 was made by Henry de Snaith, Canon of Howden, Lincoln and Beverley, for the Chapter House in 1380. Walter Skirlaugh, Bishop of Durham, endowed £40 for the tower in 1406.

The building is constructed in Magnesian limestone ashlar with copper and timber roofs. The church comprises a six-bay aisled nave with the grammar school occupying the two westernmost bays on the south side and a porch at the third bay; a central tower with north and south transepts, both with east chapels; and a six-bay aisled choir with the chapter house, linking passage and chapel or vestry to the south.

The west front features a pointed doorway with thin shafts, leaf capitals and thin filleted rolls, flanked by two panels of blind arcading with quatrefoils to the spandrels. Above is a tall four-light window with lights grouped in pairs and an inserted Perpendicular transom; the tracery consists of pointed trefoils and quatrefoils, with a large cusped quatrefoil enclosed in a square with convex sides to the apex. Above the window is a crocketed gable with a cusped statue niche, flanked by two panels of blind arcading with three trefoils to their apexes and crocketed gables. The nave is flanked by gableted buttresses with two-light blind arcading containing figures under canopies. Surmounting the buttresses are hexagonal pierced turrets with crocketed spirelets. The aisles each have three-light windows with tracery circles divided into pointed and rounded trefoils. Blind parapets are flanked by buttresses surmounted by turrets similar to those of the nave but differently aligned. To the extreme right is the west window of the Grammar School, now containing an inserted pointed 19th-century three-light window, with an outer buttress and a low pediment above the parapet.

The aisles have three-light windows throughout. The westernmost bays alternate between Y tracery infilled with quatrefoils and pointed trefoils, and pointed lights with a group of three pointed trefoils above. The easternmost bay has tracery of three encircled quatrefoils. The bays are divided by stepped, gabled buttresses. Above runs a corbel table of heads and foliage, in alternate bays beneath a plain parapet. Paired two-light clerestory windows with quatrefoil tracery are positioned along the nave.

The south porch is two storeys high. Its south doorway has two orders with narrow shafts, leaf capitals and filleted rolls beneath a crocketed gable with beast stops. Above is a square-headed two-light window with trefoils above each light. The porch is flanked by buttresses with crocketed finials. To the left are the two bays of the grammar school with low small trefoiled windows and above them large four-light basket-arched windows with Perpendicular tracery cut by four-centred arches. To the extreme left is a narrow door beneath a four-centred arch.

The south transept has a south doorway of two orders with shafts, stiff leaf capitals and roll-mouldings. Above is a four-light window with lights grouped in pairs, an inserted Perpendicular transom, and encircled quatrefoils and a large encircled sexfoil to the head. A small quatrefoil appears above. Flanking stepped gabled buttresses accent the composition. The west side has two two-light windows with encircled quatrefoils and stepped gabled buttresses. The east side contains a chapel whose south front has two-light windows with encircled quatrefoils, but whose east front has inserted three-light Perpendicular windows.

The north transept's north front is similar to the south transept's south front except that the doorway lacks shafts and capitals, instead featuring continuous roll mouldings. The west side matches that of the south transept. The windows on the east side are blocked and the polygonal east chapel is ruinous.

The tower is octagonal in plan with a stair turret at its north-west angle. Its lower stage has very tall three-light double-transomed windows with flanking stepped and gabled buttresses. The upper stage contains three-light single-transomed windows. String courses separate the stages, and the whole is topped by an embattled parapet.

The choir is now largely ruinous. It has three-light windows with three quatrefoils where tracery survives. The east end features a tall central window with no surviving tracery, beneath which is a gable that breaks into an upper four-centred-arched window. This is flanked by climbing statue niches. The whole composition is flanked by stepped buttresses with statue niches to each stage. The aisles have pointed windows with no surviving tracery, crocketed gables above, and outer stepped buttresses.

The chapter house has three-light windows with Perpendicular tracery where surviving, with crocketed ogee gables above. Stepped buttresses accent the angles with shields to the upper sections. A foliage frieze runs beneath a moulded cornice, and the roof is 20th-century timber.

Interior: The west end of the nave has blind arcading with shafts and leaf capitals to paired trefoiled arches with quatrefoils in the spandrels. The arcade is supported on very tall quadripartite filleted piers with octagonal capitals. A part of a Norman corbel table has been reset in the north-west wall of the arcade. The clerestory is very plain with an inner passage. A decorated octagonal font features ogee gables and finials. Two medieval parish chests are located in the north aisle. A fine 20th-century pulpit with richly carved sounding board was crafted by Elwell of Beverley. The compound crossing piers have round capitals and octagonal abaci.

A very fine Decorated pulpitum features a basket-arched central opening with open-work quatrefoils to the jambs and arch, a crocketed ogee-arched gable with finial and quatrefoil to the tympanum. Flanking pairs of statue niches contain contemporary figures and a balustrade above with open trefoiled lights above the doorway and blind trefoiled lights above the niches. Screens in the transepts are part of the original pulpitum with four-centred-arched doors flanked by statue niches containing figures originally in the east wall of the choir.

The south transept contains a 14th-century statue of the Virgin, a brass to a knight of 1480, and a chest tomb with shields and beasts heads, now supporting a late 13th-century statue. The north transept displays royal arms of 1718.

The Saltmarshe Chapel has a decorated tomb recess with an ogee arch and finial flanked by statue niches with nodding ogees, containing recumbent figures of a knight, possibly Sir John Metham (died 1311) and his lady, not original to the recess. A chest tomb in the centre has trefoiled panels to its sides containing figures and supports a recumbent knight in chain mail, possibly Sir Peter Saltmarshe (died 1338).

The choir interior displays an anomaly at its west end where there are early round capitals to responds which have subsequently been raised and given leaf capitals. These lower capitals may represent the arcade of an earlier choir. Niches flank the jambs of the main east window. A cusped ogee-arched doorway with dogtooth moulding to hollow-moulded jambs leads to a passage to the chapter house, which has quadripartite vaulting.

In the chapter house, the stalls have cusped ogee arches with crockets and finials and quatrefoil diaperwork to their backs. A Perpendicular screen crosses the north window.