St Boniface (old Church)

C13 chancel.

Behind is a simple round-headed arched doorway with studded door probably of C17 date.

A c.1900 photograph shows a plain round-headed chancel arch which was embellished by Percy Stone c.1930 with carved impost blocks and dogtooth ornament.

PRINCIPAL FIXTURES: The upper part of the north wall of the nave has remains of Romanesque wall paintings of the first third of the C12 which include parts of two draped figures, a tower-like structure and swags decorated with stars.

The chancel has a C17 Flemish wooden cross behind the altar on a base with winged cherubs, scrolls and swags, brought here in the early C19.

A 1943 photograph shows a circular tooled stone font in the nave.

However the dedication to a Saxon saint, St Boniface, who joined the Benedictine monastery at Nursling in Hampshire in 700 AD, later became Archbishop of Mainz

was martyred at Dokkum in North Holland in 755 AD, suggests there was a Saxon church on the same site.

The parish of Bonchurch first occurs in Domesday Book as Bonecerce, a contraction of Boniface together with 'cerce' the Anglo Saxon for Church.

The list of Rectors of Bonchurch starts in 1283.

In an unmarked grave in the churchyard is buried the Chevalier D'Aux, leader of the French, killed in the 1545 attack on Bonchurch.

SZ5778 : Bonchurch, St. Boniface Old Church: c16th bell cote

© Michael Garlick

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION The Church of St Boniface is designated at Grade II* for the following principal reasons: * Architectural merit: a small Norman church with C12 nave

C13 chancel. * Interior features: it has the only Romanesque wall painting on the Isle of Wight. * Historic interest: this church was visited by King Charles I during his imprisonment at Carisbrooke Castle and the poet Algernon Swinburne was baptised here.