Peterchurch is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

in the Golden Valley, Herefordshire,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The countryside around is spectacular, with views of the Black Mountains but the village itself is architecturally undistinguished, except for the award-winning 'church reordering' scheme within the Norman church, carried out in 2012 by the Herefordshire-based architects Communion Design.

Population

In 1848 the population was 745. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 1,091.

Church

The

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

, dedicated to St. Peter, built on the unusual basilica model with four, rather than three chambers. The church's foundations are thought to go back to 786, and parts of the

Saxon The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic * * * * peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...

walls can be seen in the sanctuary. The original stone altar is in place, dating back to well before the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

. The original church spire was removed in about 1950. The modern

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

is made of

fibreglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass clo ...

and was installed in 1972. It was for a time, the tallest fibreglass spire in the country. Robert Jones, recipient of the

Victoria Cross The Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest and most prestigious award of the British honours system. It is awarded for valour "in the presence of the enemy" to members of the British Armed Forces and may be awarded posthumously. It was previously ...

for his role at

Rorke's Drift The Battle of Rorke's Drift (1879), also known as the Defence of Rorke's Drift, was an engagement in the Anglo-Zulu War. The successful British defence of the mission station of Rorke's Drift, under the command of Lieutenants John Chard of the ...

, is buried in St Peter's Churchyard.''Rorke's Drift Men: Heroes of the Zulu War''
/ref>

Railways

The village was formerly served by a station on the

Golden Valley Railway The Golden Valley Railway was a railway company which constructed a branch line from Pontrilas in Herefordshire, England, to Hay on Wye. Pontrilas was on the Great Western Railway main line between Newport, Wales, Newport and Hereford. The Golde ...

from 1881 until its closure in the 1950s.

Well

The well, St. Peter's Well, was supposed to have curative properties with respect to diseases of the eye.

References

External links