Virville (canton of Goderville, Seine-Maritime) Church of Saint-Aubin

    The almost entirely Romanesque little church at Virville is a good example of the late 11th c. country church. It has a single vessel nave with simple timbering, a square plan bay, slightly narrower than the nave, now with intersecting rib vaulting, and a chancel formed with a straight bay with a groin vault roof and a lower apse with a semidome vault.

The square plan bay, between the chancel and the nave, supports an elegant tower topped by an octagonal slated timber spire. On the north and south sides, the tower is stiffened at the corners by two flat buttresses, giving it a robust appearance. Most of the ornament is on the upper storey, on a level with the belfry. Each of the four faces has two blind arcades on either side of two wider and taller arcades, intersected by a colonnette bedded against the grain bounding geminated bays beneath a bare tympanum. All the arcade arches themselves rest on engaged colonnettes. The capitals on the colonnettes bedded against the grain and the engaged colonnettes are decorated in a manner typical of late 11th c. buildings.

Henri Decaëns

Bibliography

- Carment-Lanfry, Anne-Marie. - Les églises romanes dans les anciens archidiaconés du Grand Caux et du Petit Caux au diocèse de Rouen : doyenné de Saint-Romain de Colbosc : Virville. - Revue des Sociétés savantes de Haute-Normandie : lettres et sciences humaines, n° 55, troisième trimestre 1969, p. 20-26