St Paul's Church, Stamford

The Church of St Paul in Stamford, Lincolnshire, England, was one of the town's fourteen Medieval parish churches until its deconsecration and extensive demolition during the Reformation when the remaining part became used as the schoolroom of Stamford School. It was then restored and extended in 1929-30 for use as the school chapel in commemoration of those old boys and staff who had died in the First World War. The medieval remains were the eastern part of the south aisle and adjacent fragments of the nave of the church.

The parish church dedicated to St Paul lay just within the town walls in the north-eastern corner of the Medieval town and contains some of the earliest fabric of all Stamford churches having been built no later than 1152. It was in the patronage of the Priory of Saint-Fromond in Normandy in the mid eleventh century but had come into the hands of lay patrons by 1413.

Of what remains, the two east bays of the south wall are first half of the twelfth century and although the proportions suggest the church was large, with a nave of four or five bays, the plan of the church at that time is unknown; it may have been rectangular without a chancel. "Externally the arched corbel table, the flat east buttress, and the freize at sill level of the windows show this south wall at once to be Norman." The walls are of Barnack stone, coursed rubble with ashlar dressings and incorporate miniature arches and rounded corbels, supporting a later battlemented parapet. Reset between the bays is a (sealed) fifteenth-century doorway. The two east-most windows in the south wall are early fourteenth century and those in the east wall, which is c. 1200, are late fifteenth century. The north aisle, comprising two medieval (the east-most) and two modern arches, has stiff-leaf decoration on the capitals of the former. St Paul's had a tower and belfry and there was a room over the church door. Inside, there is a fourteenth-century doorway to a former rood loft stair.

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