Tuesday 27 February 2018

Herringswell, Suffolk

St Ethelbert, locked, lots of keyholders listed, is, in a nice way, rather plain [the huge south transept chapel stands out, as does the bizarre Davies monument] but contains some fantastic glass by Christopher Whall and pupils. From the web:

Church rebuilt by Arthur Blomfield in 1869-70 when the existing church was destroyed by fire. This church has a remarkable collection of glass by Arts and Crafts artists including three stained glass windows by Whall. These include "The Good Shepherd" of 1902 and the "Resurrection". "The Good Shepherd" is the East window and depicts Christ as the Good Shepherd, with quotations from Psalm 23 in the surrounding scenes. The window was commissioned by Mr.Leonard Davies in memory of his brother Herbert Davies and the black faced sheep in the scenes were drawn by Whall's sister-in-law, Alice Chaplin, who was sculptress to Queen Victoria. It is recorded that the sheep depicted are exact portraits of sheep in the pedigree flock owned by Mr.Davies. The Whall window on the South side of the church is that depicting the "Resurrection". Note the symbolic "fish nimbus" which surrounds the figure of Christ. Whall also designed the window at the back of the choir, this in memory of the late Dr Image, the uncle of Selwyn Image, a fellow stained glass artist and friend of Whall. Also in St Ethelbert is the window titled "Come unto Me,all ye that are weary and heavy laden,and I will give you rest" this done by Jasper Brett,a pupil of Christopher Whall. The church also has two stained glass windows which contain no figures but are studies of Herringswell in Spring and Autumn. They are by the artist James Clark The church also has a window by Paul Woodroffe another pupil of Whall.

ST ETHELBERT. Rebuilt by Blomfield, 1869-70. The W tower arrangement is odd and rather botched, with two big heavy buttresses sticking out N and S, a buttress reaching up the middle of the W side (with two original single-light windows set in), and inside two octagonal piers to carry the E angles of the tower and a kind of inner flying buttresses to make them safer.* - STAINED GLASS. All C20. E window by Christopher Whall. Others by him, by James Clark (the landscape windows), and other artists. (MEDIEVAL CHURCH. Remains include the responds at the E end of the nave. They indicate a Norman date. LG).

* The Rev. J. T. Munday has informed me that an C18 antiquarian MSS notebook at Elvedon Hall describes this arrangement in the tower - so it is not Blomfield’s.

Christopher Whall Resurrection (6)

Herringswell

Peter Woodroffe Suffer the children (3)

 Mee, in my 1949 fourth edition, missed it.

Flickr.

Saxon Street, Cambridgeshire

Holy Trinity, or the Lord Manners Memorial Church, redundant, is a dire 1876 building by JD Sedding.

HOLY TRINITY (Lord Manners Memorial Church). 1876 by J. D. Sedding, that is before he found his own style. Very humble, red and yellow brick, without tower and with a low short chancel. Windows as grouped lancets. Inside the main arches emphasized by exposed red brick. Nice iron candle-holders attached to the pews.

Lord Manners Memorial Church (1)

Mee, sensibly, didn't bother.

Monday 26 February 2018

Kennett, Cambridgeshire

St Nicholas, locked, keyholder listed but with a strange caveat "to phone first" - quite why you should phone first to ask to borrow a church key raises, for me, some odd thoughts...are they secret cross dressers, swingers, perhaps closet Satanists or, perhaps the five minute walk back from the church to their house gives them time to find the key which they placed in a secure place, certain they'd never forget, and then did [another thought: if you're going to keep your church locked but list a keyholder, why not post a keyholder note at the top of the drive instead of posting the notice in the north porch?] and anyway they were out; so no internals.

Putting access aside, St Nicholas is a delight; divorced from the village by a pine wood and surrounded by fields, it's a gem.

ST NICHOLAS. Entirely on its own amongst the trees. Away even from any roads. Flint and pebble rubble. N doorway Transitional (columns with shaftrings and waterleaf capitals, round arch). Chancel E.E. (lancets, and at the E end group of three parallel lancets, shafted inside, with shaftrings). N aisle also with lancets. W tower Perp. Arcade of four bays with C14 octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. - ROOD SCREEN. Slim single-light divisions with little tracery, ascribed to the C14.

St Nicholas (4)

KENNETT. It takes its name from the brook on which it stands, in a lovely wooded corner near to Suffolk. The woods enfold its old church like a mantle, furnishing it with a setting which surprises and charms us by its unexpectedness. It is a church in which everything pleases, and we come into it through a Norman doorway above which rises a medieval tower, shaded by trees.

Very effective is the 600-year-old arcade with its great strength, and charming is the elegant tower arch seen from the chancel, making a perfect frame for the rich medley of colour in the west window. The east window is a group of three tall lancets, all of one height, their deep splays framed by arches on slender shafts with lovely bell capitals and with stone heads of bishops set between. The double piscina in the chancel is a gem, with grape clusters at the ends of the richly moulded arches and with fine pillars and flowered drains.

The oak chancel screen is 15th century and has richly carved bays with roses in the spandrels. We noticed that William Godfrey, lord of the manor, was rector here for the last 65 years of last century.

Chippenham, Cambridgeshire

St Margaret, open, is a perfectly pleasant building in a perfectly pleasant village with a perfectly pleasant interior with some good furnishings [including the rather odd wooden monumental "alabaster" effigy in the north aisle which is, in fact, a rather poor pastiche, Thomas Revett's actual alabaster monument and two not bad wallpaintings] but I was left oddly cold by her. It should, on paper be, if not fabulous then at least stirring, but for me it lacked soul - perhaps it was all the chairs and tables piled in to the west end of the north aisle, hopefully not in preparation for removing the pews!

ST MARGARET. Flint and pebble rubble. Large blocked Norman window in the chancel N wall and jambs of more in the E wall (group of three?). Remains of a further Norman window in the nave S wall close to the E end. This was replaced by a finely moulded C13 arch, The rest of the arcade is also of the C13 and impressive in its length and the closeness of the piers to each other. Seven bays, on the N side with piers alternately circular and octagonal, double-chamfered arches. On the S side the piers were replaced by a curiously bleak design. It may be C17. The tower-arch is Perp as is the whole W tower. Outside it is decorated by three niches round the W window. Battlemented top. The doorways are C13 on the S side (altered, but remains of the fine moulded arch), C14 on the N (double-chamfered; no capitals). The S porch doorway is of a bold design with two big heads to carry the arch - C14. The aisle windows and the clerestory all Perp and renewed. The Perp parts may be connected with an indulgence of 1447 to rebuild the church. - ROOD SCREEN. Single-light openings with ogee arches and Perp tracery above them. - PARCLOSE SCREEN. Remains in arch to the S chancel chapel; perhaps C17 Gothic. - BENCHES with poppy-heads. - PAINTING. Remains of C13 painting on the Norman window reveal in the nave and the C13 piers of the N arcade. - Late wall painting of St Christopher, N aisle. Magnificently bold movement, C15. - E of this Martyrdom of St Erasmus, badly preserved. - N aisle E wall traces of censing angels. - MONUMENT. Sir Thomas Revett d 1582. Two big kneeling figures. The praying-desk between them uncommonly broad so that small relief figures of children are carved on it ; broken pediment with achievement.

Unknown monument

Corbel (1)

St Christopher (2)

CHIPPENHAM. Charming with red roofs, spacious ways, and lovely trees, it lies near a patch of undrained fen where the true fen plants still grow. Near the church are quaint cottages with long gardens, and an equally quaint brick school of 1714.

It was here, at the home of Admiral Russell in the park, that our first King George was entertained by the admiral, who at La Hogue in 1692 won the first great success of the British Fleet since the destruction of the Spanish Armada; and it was in an older house here that Charles Stuart was kept for a while after the raid on Holmby House, the king being very pleasant and cheerful, we are told, taking his recreation daily at tennis and delighting much in the company of Colonel Joyce.

The church is as charming as the village, and wears the dignity of age unspoiled. At the sides of the 15th century porch are heads so huge that they almost touch our shoulders as we enter, and if we prefer to go in through the 500-year-old tower we open an ancient door in a doorway carved with roses. Seen from under the tower arch, the interior makes a most attractive picture, the avenue of battered 14th century arches ending with the fine arch of the chancel. The arcades are in seven bays, the pillars round and clustered and eight-sided, delightful in their oddness. The oldest masonry is in the chancel wall, where there is a big Norman arch, and a small Norman doorway with a carved medieval door. There are old benches with poppyheads, and a beautiful 14th century screen with its canopy gone, leaving the traceried bays like a delicate arcade. Over the entrance are angels, and among the little carvings are lions and grotesque faces.

A finely preserved monument to an Elizabethan family shows Sir Thomas Revet kneeling in armour opposite his two wives, and four children kneeling below. Another of the 17th century is of wood painted to look like marble, and has the figure of a woman at a prayer desk. It covers an old wall-painting of St Michael weighing a soul, and the figure of Mary can be seen dimly at one side. Among other remains of painting are crude masonry patterns and a patchy St Christopher.

Near the porch lies Sir Thomas Erskine May, who was Clerk of the House of Commons and became Lord Farnborough just before he died in 1886. A learned lawyer and parliamentarian, he was also the author of a standard work on the Constitutional History of England. A sculptured bust of him by Bruce Joy is in the House of Commons.

Thursday 22 February 2018

St Wendreda, March, Cambridgeshire


After the disappointment of Victorian March, St Wendreda was a breath of fresh air - externally stunning, although the largely cleared churchyard is a tragedy - but the triumph here is the hammerbeam roof with its multitude of angels. Ignore that as obvious [difficult] and there's lots more of interest here; the interior repays as much as the exterior.

ST WENDREDA. At the S end of the town, in Church Street. A church almost entirely of the Dec and Perp styles, except for the N arcade which may be as early as 1300 and the chancel which is by W. Smith, 1872. The date of the Dec parts is indicated by a Papal indulgence of 1343 for those giving money to the new building. The Perp parts are of c. 1500 etc. (Date 1528 in the porch.) - Of the earlier period chiefly the lower parts of the W tower, the chancel arch, and the S arcade. The latter differs only in details from the N arcade. Both sides have five bays with octagonal piers. But the N capitals are more broadly moulded and the arches are triple-chamfered. The S arches are double-chamfered. On the N side the W bay was cut into, when the tower was built, on the S side there is a narrower full bay instead. The W tower has a gorgeous three-light W window with flowing tracery and a tall arch towards the nave. Below the W window a narrow N-S passage runs through the tower which reduces the depth of the space inside considerably. The Perp additions are sumptuous throughout. The aisles were renewed, with quatrefoil bases and battlements, and the N aisle received quatrefoil decoration in the battlements as well. A S  porch was added with three-light openings, and a clerestory of flint with some flushwork decoration and brick window voussoirs. Inside, in connexion with this, a new roof  was made, the most splendid timber roof of Cambridgeshire. It is a double hammerbeam roof and has figures of angels with spread-out wings in three tiers, at the corbels supporting the hammerbeam shafts, and at the ends of both hammerbeams (cf. Earl Stonham and Woolpit, Suffolk, and Knapton, Norfolk). - COMMUNION RAIL. Remains at W end of S aisle; C18. - PLATE. Chalice of 1752; Paten of 1703. - MONUMENTS. Brass to Andrew Dredeman d 1501 and his wife; 16 in. figures; in the nave floor. -  Brass to Anthony Hansard d 1507 and his wife 5 kneeling figures with scrolls leading up to an Annunciation; coat of arms below; S aisle.

Anthony Hansard 1507 (2)

Grotesque (2)

Headstone (2)

MARCH. Among the disappearing fens, the high ground crowned by Ely Cathedral is part of an archipelago of islands, on one of which stands this capital of the Isle. Till late last century it was a hamlet of Doddington; now it is a busy little market town and a railway junction, with a long straggling street and buildings befitting its grown-up importance. Three of the four parishes into which it has been divided have each a modern church, St Mary’s, St John's, and St Peter’s; but Old March, away from the stir of the oflicial capital, treasures the beautiful medieval church. A few dwellings gather round it, anda thatched farmhouse near by has 1658 on its chimney stack. A long avenue of venerable elms runs along the road which brings us to it, and at the foot of one of the trees is the square base of an old cross, carved with roses and shields of arms and set on a flight of steps.

The old church was built about the middle of the 14th century as a chapelry of Doddington, and given the rare dedication of St Wendreda, an obscure Saxon saint of whom little is known, but whose relics are said to have been taken in a golden shrine, at the request of King Ethelred, from here to Ely. Fine battlements adorn the walls of this church, except for the new gabled chancel. The parapets of the 15th century aisles have quatrefoil tracery, and a band of quatrefoils runs round the plinth of the aisles and the old south porch, which has big windows, stone seats, a gable cross, and a stoup. There are grotesque gargoyles, and by some of the windows are human and animal heads, one of a woman in horned headdress. The sanctus bell still rings in the bellcot on the eastern gable of the nave, which has a striking 15th century clerestory of nine windows on each side, richly patterned in flint and stone. Crowning it all is a fine tower of about 1400, from which soars a graceful spire with canopied lights. The tower stands on two open arches with a vaulted passage between them, preserving a right-of-way existing here before the tower was built.

The medieval windows which light the fine interior are set in walls carved with arches at the top of which are human figures and angels. Lofty arcades divide the nave and aisles, the north aisle 600 years old and the south side 500. Exceedingly lofty, dwarfing the arcades, are the arches of the tower and chancel, the tower arch having a good Jacobean ringer’s gallery halfway up.

The great glory of the church is the magnificent double hammerbeam roof, whose equal it would be hard to find. It is all richly carved by 15th century craftsmen, with an amazing array of angels hovering over the nave from the arches and the hammerbeams, as well as from the corbels, which support saints standing in niches between the clerestory windows. There are nearly 200 angels in this heavenly host, all with outstretched wings, some with musical instruments, some with shields, and others with emblems of the Passion.

It is thought that William Dredenian, who died in 1503, gave this lovely roof, and two small brass portraits in the floor of the nave, now very worn, are believed to be of him and his wife. Under the tower is another brass with 16th century kneeling figures of Antony Hansart in armour and tabard, his feet gone, his wife in kennel headdress and girdled gown, their small daughter without a head. Below them is their shield, and above them is a striking and unusual Annunciation showing the Madonna kneeling at a desk, the Archangel Gabriel kneeling before her, and a vase of lilies between them.

There is an ancient font, and a modern pulpit with a vine border and figures of the Good Shepherd and the Four Evangelists. A richly coloured window of the south aisle has St Michael, St Etheldreda with her abbey at her feet, and St Wendreda holding her church. The most striking of the windows has a setting of seas and mountains, and a child with a bunch of flowers looking into the sky, where Our Lord is receiving two men at the gate of Heaven. A stone by the chancel door marks the grave of John Wyldboar, who lived through the hundred years from the middle of the reign of Charles Stuart.

Flickr.

Victorian March, Cambridgeshire

A quick entry for the dross of St Mary Magdalene, LNK, St John the Baptist, LNK, and St Peter, surprisingly open. All Victorian and all dull, run of the mill buildings of their time but credit to St Peter for being open and the cemetery is fine but insipid.

ST JOHN. N of the Cemetery. 1872 by T. H. Wyatt. Rock-faced with transverse roofs to the bays of the aisle and a diagonally set bell-cote with timber spirelet.

ST MARY MAGDALENE, on the way to Westry. 1891 by Spiers (GR) Rock-faced, with apse and polygonal bell-cote.

ST PETER, High Street. 1880 by T. H. Wyatt. Rock-faced with NW spire of Cambridgeshire type. Straight E end, plate tracery, arcades on short circular piers with crocket-type capitals.

CEMETERY. The chapels and the spire between them, with a passage through are by  W. Stephenson, 1867-8.

St Mary Magdalene (2)
St Mary Magdalene

St John the Baptist (3)
St John the Baptist

St Peter (2)
St Peter

Chapels (1)
Cemetery chapels

MARCH. Among the disappearing fens, the high ground crowned by Ely Cathedral is part of an archipelago of islands, on one of which stands this capital of the Isle. Till late last century it was a hamlet of Doddington; now it is a busy little market town and a railway junction, with a long straggling street and buildings befitting its grown-up importance. Three of the four parishes into which it has been divided have each a modern church, St Mary’s, St John's, and St Peter’s; but Old March, away from the stir of the oflicial capital, treasures the beautiful medieval church. A few dwellings gather round it, and a thatched farmhouse near by has 1658 on its chimney stack. A long avenue of venerable elms runs along the road which brings us to it, and at the foot of one of the trees is the square base of an old cross, carved with roses and shields of arms and set on a flight of steps.

The old church was built about the middle of the 14th century as a chapelry of Doddington, and given the rare dedication of St Wendreda, an obscure Saxon saint of whom little is known, but whose relics are said to have been taken in a golden shrine, at the request of King Ethelred, from here to Ely. Fine battlements adorn the walls of this church, except for the new gabled chancel. The parapets of the 15th century aisles have quatrefoil tracery, and a band of quatrefoils runs round the plinth of the aisles and the old south porch, which has big windows, stone seats, a gable cross, and a stoup. There are grotesque gargoyles, and by some of the windows are human and animal heads, one of a woman in horned headdress. The sanctus bell still rings in the bellcot on the eastern gable of the nave, which has a striking 15th century clerestory of nine windows on each side, richly patterned in flint and stone. Crowning it all is a fine tower of about 1400, from which soars a graceful spire with canopied lights. The tower stands on two open arches with a vaulted passage between them, preserving a right-of-way existing here before the tower was built.

The medieval windows which light the fine interior are set in walls carved with arches at the top of which are human figures and angels. Lofty arcades divide the nave and aisles, the north aisle 600 years old and the south side 500. Exceedingly lofty, dwarfing the arcades, are the arches of the tower and chancel, the tower arch having a good Jacobean ringer’s gallery halfway up.

The great glory of the church is the magnificent double hammerbeam roof, whose equal it would be hard to find. It is all richly carved by 15th century craftsmen, with an amazing array of angels hovering over the nave from the arches and the hammerbeams, as well as from the corbels, which support saints standing in niches between the clerestory windows. There are nearly 200 angels in this heavenly host, all with outstretched wings, some with musical instruments, some with shields, and others with emblems of the Passion.

It is thought that William Dredenian, who died in 1503, gave this lovely roof, and two small brass portraits in the floor of the nave, now very worn, are believed to be of him and his wife. Under the tower is another brass with 16th century kneeling figures of Antony Hansart in armour and tabard, his feet gone, his wife in kennel headdress and girdled gown, their small daughter without a head. Below them is their shield, and above them is a striking and unusual Annunciation showing the Madonna kneeling at a desk, the Archangel Gabriel kneeling before her, and a vase of lilies between them.

There is an ancient font, and a modern pulpit with a vine border and figures of the Good Shepherd and the Four Evangelists. A richly coloured window of the south aisle has St Michael, St Etheldreda with her abbey at her feet, and St Wendreda holding her church. The most striking of the windows has a setting of seas and mountains, and a child with a bunch of flowers looking into the sky, where Our Lord is receiving two men at the gate of Heaven. A stone by the chancel door marks the grave of John Wyldboar, who lived through the hundred years from the middle of the reign of Charles Stuart.

Flickr.

Coldham, Cambridgeshire

St Etheldreda, redundant, has been abandoned having been converted to residential occupancy and then marketed in 2007 with the following details: St Etheldreda's Church at Coldham, near Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, dates from the 19th century and is Grade II-listed. It comes with font, pulpit, stained-glass windows and stone pews in the porch, but also contains four bedrooms. Abbotts (01328 738111) is asking £399,950. It didn't sell - I assume subsidence was an issue.

ST ETHELDREDA. 1875. Rock-faced, with W bell-cote. The style chosen is E.E.

British Listed Buildings is more informative:

Church, built 1876 in early English style. Coursed rubblestone with tiled roof. West wall with repaired bell-cote above west window of two trefoil lights with foiled head in two-centred arch. nave of three bays, one with a two light window with a foiled head in a two-centred arch and one with three trefoil lights with a foiled head in a two-centred arch. South porch, gabled, with two-centred outer arch, moulded and with attached shafts. Chancel, tiled. Two windows of one trefoil light in two-centred head and an east window of three trefoil lights with a foiled head. North vestry with a stone stack. Interior. Chancel arch of two moulded orders. Outer roll moulded on attached shafts with foliate capitals and moulded bases, inner chamfered on three grouped, attached colonettes with half octagonal capitals and carried on corbels. In south wall of chancel, piscina and double sedilia. Cinquefoil cusping to two-centred arches to each. Retable of stone. Two-centred arches to five bays divided by shafts of marble.

VCH (Cambs) Vol.IV, p.185.

St Etheldreda (2)

Another church Mee missed.

Guyhirn, Cambridgeshire

Like Parson Drove Guyhirn has two churches - the CCT Guyhirn Chapel, open, and the redundant St Mary Magdalene, obviously locked.

I thought St Mary was in a dire state until I saw the Cambridgeshire Churches entry and Simon Knott's 2015 visit and realised that someone, or some people, are trying to take - or perhaps that should read are taking - this church in hand. This, it seems to me, is a good thing. To kill off, by willful neglect, a perfectly fine Scott building seems mindless.

Meanwhile down the road is the delectable Chapel in the care of the CCT -  it is a simple delight.

In brick and stone and glass and wood
Three centuries has this beacon stood
“Puritan relic of the past”
Built to shine and built to last
Long on its one East Anglian level
It praises God and shames the devil.

Without doubt THE church of the day - until St Wendreda in March.

ST MARY MAGDALENE, by Sir George Gilbert Scott, consecrated in 1878. Yellow brick, with lancet windows, and not at all typically Scottian.

MORTUARY CHAPEL, 1/2 M. NE. The former church, or perhaps a nonconformist church of the Commonwealth. The money for the building was left in 1651. The date above the door is 1660. The church is a plain parallelogram, ashlar-faced, with four-light mullioned windows which have arched lights. The E end has a window in no way different from the others. The W window is higher up. The N and W sides are of brick, or repaired in brick. Thin Gothic bell-cote.

St Mary Magdalene (2)

Guyhirn Chapel (5)

Inexplicably Mee missed Guyhirn in my edition.

Friday Bridge, Cambridgeshire

St Mark, locked no keyholder. Oh dear, I can't imagine what the good people of Friday Bridge were thinking of when, in 1864, they commissioned this monstrosity.

Pevsner is succinct: ST MARK. 1864 by J. B. Owen. Yellow brick, with W tower and spire.

St Mark (2)

Mee didn't bother but did mention a dubious Cromwell story in his Elm coverage viz:

The traveller who finds himself a mile or so away at Friday Bridge may be fortunate enough to see a storied relic of Oliver Cromwell  preserved at Needham Hall. It is an oak table from the old house of that name which stood here, and it is said that Cromwell slept on the table, so that he should be no better lodged than his soldiers.

For what it's worth Flickr.

Elm, Cambridgeshire

All Saints, locked, keyholder listed - well technically yes but... A badly drawn map by the south porch indicates the key being held in the village shop which, despite spending some time doing so, I was unable to locate. It would be churlish of me to note it as LNK but that, to my mind, is what it is. Anyhow I am reliably informed it contains little of interest and I liked the exterior.

ALL SAINTS. The W tower is the earliest and finest part of the church, clearly E.E. and similar to West Walton and Walsoken in Norfolk. The buttresses are of the type called clasping, big and polygonal, as at Leverington. The W door is still round-arched. The W windows are three lancets on a nailhead frieze. They are not shafted but have plain chamfered surrounds. On the N and S sides there is a blank arcading instead, and above tall slim lancets set in tall blank arcades with shafts and shaftrings.* The bell-stage has twin openings, also E.E. The top is later, with battlements, turret pinnacles and a small recessed lead spire. The E side of the tower towards the nave has an arch which goes with the rest. The former roof-line of the nave is visible above it, which proves that the clerestory, in spite of its ten typically C13 lancet windows, must be a little later than the arcade below.* This is of six bays - i.e. does not match the clerestory - with alternating round and octagonal piers (alternating also between N and S). The arches are double-chamfered. The E.E. nave had aisles and they also survive materially, in spite of alterations to the windows. Both doorways are E.E. too, that on the N side with seven orders of colonnettes and very fine arch mouldings. E.E. also the odd sturdy demi-piers against the outer walls of both aisles just E of the doorways. What can their purpose have been? Were they to carry transverse arches? The present arcade does not allow for any and is indeed not in line with them. The rere-arches of windows in the N and S aisles are shafted in the same C13 style. Finally the chancel belongs to the same century, see the chancel arch with the remarkable blank tracery above, the window shapes, the round-headed N doorways and the odd blocked S recess. The windows were filled with simple Dec tracery, probably at the time when most aisle windows were similarly remodelled (E window C19). Perp only a few windows and the double-hammerbeam roof - a modest variation on the more sumptuous theme of March (and many Norfolk and Suffolk churches), also with angels, but again much less splendid ones than at March. - PLATE. Chalice of 1753; Flagon of 1639.

* The three lower stages were refaced in the C19.
* This clerestory seems genuine, though Cole in his drawing at the British Museum shows windows of two lights.

All Saints (3)

ELM. Its glory is not in its elms, for we found not one in this trim village of trees and orchards; we remember it for the stately tower which has stood like a fortress for 700 years, except that its top is new, crowned by a small spire. The tower is 70 feet high with beautiful arcading, a west doorway with rich mouldings and three shafts on each side, and turrets climbing with every stage. Its architecture is characteristic of the best type in the county, and may be compared with some of the gateway towers of Cambridge Colleges. We found red snapdragons growing in its crannies.

And not less impressive is the tower inside, for the beauty of its wide arch and the lovely lancets round the walls. In front of the west lancets tall clustered columns form a triforium from the turret stairway to a tiny cell in another turret, below which is another little chamber on the ground floor. High above the tower arch is a primitive little window with a gable top through which the light may have fallen in Saxon days. It is now blocked up.

It is from this fine tower that we see the beauty of these medieval arcades, the 20 medieval clerestory windows, and the impressive roof of double hammerbeams. The clerestory windows have shafts and rich hoods; the roof is adorned with angels, and in the spandrels are dragons and flowers, a pelican with its young, and two rowing ships on the sea.

We come into this impressive place, so little changed since the 13th century, by its original doorways, both richly moulded, one of them with seven shafts on each side, making a beautiful arch.

The traveller who finds himself a mile or so away at Friday Bridge may be fortunate enough to see a storied relic of Oliver Cromwell  preserved at Needham Hall. It is an oak table from the old house of that name which stood here, and it is said that Cromwell slept on the table, so that he should be no better lodged than his soldiers.

Parson Drove, Cambridgeshire

Parson Drove has two churches Emmanuel, locked no keyholder, and St John the Baptist, CCT, keyholder listed. The first was built in 1872 and is not unpleasant but is nothing to write home about either. The latter is, like many CCT churches, agreeably shabby and unkempt both inside and out and wonderfully light and airy - I liked it a lot.

EMMANUEL CHURCH (Southea). Red brick, with some blue bricks. Nave and N aisle on short circular piers. Bell-cote between nave and wide semicircular apse. The brickwork is exposed inside. The window tracery is in imitation of the late C13 or early C14. The date of the church is 1872.

ST JOHN (Church End). Fine Perp W tower with tall panelled arch towards the nave, large three-light windows, tierceron vault with wide circular opening for the bell ropes, and battlements. The N aisle is older. It has a C13 doorway and walls and windows of the earlier C14. The S aisle was largely rebuilt in the C19. Fine interior, even if deprived of its chancel, which was, it is said, destroyed by a flood in 1613. The nave is seven bays long and has Perp arcades with slim piers the main shafts of which are semi-polygonal. The arches are nearly round. The W bays are cut into by E reinforcements of the tower. The clerestory windows are of three lights. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, big with elaborate quatrefoil panels on the bowl, and tracery on the stem. - PULPIT. Dated 1677. - PLATE. Late C15 Paten, the only unaltered piece of medieval plate in a Cambridgeshire church, says the VCH. In its centre the Vernicle. - Chalice of 1599.

Emmanuel Church (3)

Pulpit (1)

Sanctuary

PARSON DROVE. A few years after the war we came here in search of the last woad mill in Cambridgeshire, believed to be the last in England, but, alas, we came to find only a plant of bright yellow flowers and blue-green leaves growing in the corner of a garden. It was all that was left of acres of woadplants which grew here almost to the beginning of our century. The woad mill was no more. It had fallen to pieces and been removed, together with the balls of woad pulp the mill crushed, to Wisbech Museum, where we may see it as a rather melancholy relic.

It was Julius Caesar who first instilled into the minds of civilised people the fact that some of our ancestors dyed their skins with the blue dye obtained from the woad plant. In his Gallic War we read that “ without exception all the Britons stain themselves with woad, which produces a blue tint; and this gives them a wild appearance in a fight.” There is little doubt that Caesar libelled the brave race which so vigorously resisted his legions; if woad was used for staining the bare skin of the warriors it was used quite as much in giving a brilliant colour (rather like a natural indigo) to their clothes. It was the beginning of brighter fashions in dress.

Woad dye was obtained from the crushed leaves of a plant which grows still in many gardens, the botanical name being Isatis tinctoria. Growing from one to six feet high, it has branching flower-stalks with yellow blossoms and small pods. It was from the blue-green leaves that the dye was obtained.

Many people still in Cambridgeshire remember the woad crops of their fertile soil. For over 2000 years the industry thrived until modern discoveries and modern machinery killed it. The young woad plants were delicate and needed much care, and men and women crawled along the field removing the weeds with a tiny spade fitting into the palm of their hands. When the plant was picked the leaves, having been crushed to pulp in a primitive horse-worked mill, were moulded by hand into balls, which were laid out in sheds to dry, and after three months the balls were mixed with water and put in a dark chamber to ferment for about six weeks, when they were ripe for despatch to the cloth manufacturers.

The woad-mill village lies on one of the roads which are so straight hereabouts that we only lose them in the distance, and the church tower, rising in the trees, is like a beacon in the flat countryside. It is a 15th century tower with bosses of roses and men’s heads in the vaulted roof, and a great panelled arch reaching the full height of the nave.

We may come into this light church by a 13th century or a 15th century doorway, both sheltered by massive porches. The nave has striking 15th century arcades of seven bays, with an east window where an arch opened to a chancel till it was swept away in a flood 300 years ago. There is a little old glass set in the clear windows. The font is 15th century and the pulpit Jacobean, and a silver paten with an engraving of the head of Our Lord is the only piece of Communion plate in the county left untouched by the Reformation.

Wisbech St Mary, Cambridgeshire

St Mary, locked no keyholder, is a pretty building in an outstanding churchyard. Finding it locked was a disappointment as I'd, unusually, done some research and knew it contains a fine medieval and continental glass collection. Quite why there's no keyholder is beyond me.

ST MARY. Essentially a Perp church, restored 1894 and 1901. Chancel rebuilt 1872. W tower of the late C14 with large Perp W window. The battlements are renewed in brick. All windows of the church itself C15 without tracery or with only a top of panel tracery. Inside, a late C14 arcade of five bays - short octagonal piers (on Norman bases) and double-chamfered arches. C15 clerestory. Of the same time the pretty three-light window facing E above the chancel arch. - FONT. Octagonal, with seven ogee arches, flatly carved, and one quatrefoil in a circle, perhaps a C17 re-tooling job. - Most of the other furnishings were bought c. 1930-50. They are in the new C20 High Church taste, i.e. foreign and Baroque. - SCULPTURE. Above the spandrels of the arcade on corbels four C17 female figures and two Saints, German, early C16. Against a pier a figure of St Nicholas, c. 1500. - WOODWORK. Finely carved Tudor Altar in the Lady Chapel. Many small bits of the C17 and C18 used in odd ways alien to their original uses, e.g. the Lectern (found in Suffolk; the base is a C17 ship’s figurehead, top parts a reconstruction), some Candle Sconces etc. - CHAIRS. In the chancel three sumptuous gilt chairs from Culford Hall, Suffolk, Italian and of c. 1730. STAINED GLASS. A few fragments that might be English C14 and C15, but mostly collected panels, German, Swiss,  and Netherlandish. Two panels in the chancel are dated 1535 and come from Ashbridge in Hertfordshire. - PLATE. Paten of 1761.

St Mary (5)

WISBECH ST MARY. A modest village of the fens, it has a legacy from medieval England in its church, to which we come by a 15th century porch. Between the nave arcades are faces quaint and grim, one of a woman with a round face and square headdress, another of a woman striking a man with a club, another with a jumble of heads and legs which appear to be in a wrestling bout. On a pillar is a bracket carved with a demon’s head, probably by the masons who did the carving on the ancient font. From those ancient days comes the altar in a chapel made from a chest with front panels pierced and carved, and a back made by a Jacobean carpenter. The modern windows glow with colour, among them the Shepherds, the Wise Men, and other familiar scenes, with a Calvary in the east window from which stand out fine figures of St George in armour and St Michael with a flaming sword.

Wisbech, Cambrigeshire - SS Peter & Paul

SS Peter & Paul, open, is externally pleasing and internally bewildering: it consists of north and south aisles and two naves - a first for me. I need to go back to see the Brass and misericords, which I missed, and to redo most of the glass which didn't work first time round.

ST PETER AND ST PAUL. The church is not as impressive as its size would make one expect. Externally it is too varied, and also visually too little connected with the flow of the streets around, and internally it is too curious and unexpected to rouse at once aesthetic reactions - at least to the building as a whole. The curious and, for a while after entering, decidedly baffling fact is that Wisbech church has two naves and two aisles. That is the apt description rather than to say one nave and inner and outer N aisles. The exterior is dominated by a bold tower placed over the N porch ; and in that also irregularities appear which at first prevent an understanding and an appreciation of the church. To understand its history one has to start inside and leave the exterior for later. Inside, the earliest and, after all the later alterations, a somewhat incongruous-looking element is the late C12 N arcade. It is of five bays and has piers with an oddly alternating rhythm of circular and circular with four closely attached shafts in the diagonals. The rhythm is: B (respond)-A-B-B-A-B. The capitals are scalloped, but there is also waterleaf and even in one place something like stiff-leaf. The arches are round and single-stepped. That at the E end is decorated by zigzag. In the spandrels of some of the arches are motifs such as a sunk circle or quatrefoil. It all looks a very reactionary carrying-on of the Norman style into the period of the Earliest Gothic. At the W end the C12-C13 church had a tower. Of this the thicker N and S walls bear witness, with arches opening into former embracing aisles. These arches are pointed and double-chamfered, although even they still use scalloped capitals. Of the Norman chancel nothing can be said. In the first half of the C13 a S chancel chapel was added to it, but of that there is no more proof than one respond with a rich and mature stiff-leaf capital (unless this is re-used from somewhere else).

The next period of building activity is still much in evidence. It is the Dec style of the C14. It was during that time that the church grew to its present size. The most evident witness is the W window of the S nave,* large, of five lights, and with ingeniously devised flowing tracery, the W and the N doorways, the latter now hidden by the tower, and the S porch as a whole. In addition it can be recognized that the whole N chancel was rebuilt. The S wall was kept as it then existed, but the N wall was quite naively pushed out to the N, without bothering about the odd splay which that would give to the last bay of the N arcade. The splayed arch has the same profile as the chancel arch. The N windows also are Dec. The S side opens into the S chancel into which the former S chapel found itself now converted. Its present windows are Perp, but the arcade has typical quatrefoil piers and double-chamfered arches. The same quatrefoil piers and arches also mark the arcade between the S chancel and the S aisle. The clerestory here is partly original. Over the N aisle it is Perp. The S porch is two-storeyed and has a typical outer doorway of the C14. The N doorway to the church was, however, the main entrance from the town, and this must also be C14, though probably a little later. It has nobbly foliage in the innermost order of voussoirs, and divers animals and monsters in the outer order. The hood-mould is carried on good head-corbels. Next to this doorway inside a tall blocked C14 window. This is additional evidence of the date of the N aisle which has otherwise all windows Perp.

The main Perp contribution to the church interior is the somewhat unsatisfactory arcade dividing the N and S naves. Why this had to be renewed and the more solid Norman arcade pulled down, cannot now be said. Perhaps the C13 W tower collapsed and took part of the arcade with it. The new arcade is of only four bays and has thin piers of general lozenge shape, with semi-polygonal shafts, deep to the naves, small to the arches. Only the latter have any capitals, and even above them the mouldings of the shafts are carried on to die into the arches. The N nave clerestory was built or rebuilt at the same time. Perp also the S aisle windows. But most of the money which the Late Middle Ages gave to the church did not go into these alterations. It went to the tower which was now rebuilt N of the N doorway. It was built as an independent structure with a N and S entrance arch, though the S arch is only a few inches N of the N doorway. The tower has a quatrefoil frieze along its base, another below the bell-openings, bell-openings of two lights with a transom, semi-polygonal shafts to the entrance. arches, and on the N side traceried spandrels. Above the bell-openings detail gets more and more sumptuous, sculptured panels with chalice, host, St Katherine’s wheel, the arms of Canterbury and Ely, and so on, and elaborately stepped openwork battlements with pinnacles. To the date when this tower was completed belongs probably the equally ornate SE Vestry, built perhaps as a guild chapel, a low room with an original ceiling and outside again fully decorated battlements. A monogram occurs in the decoration of the chapel which refers to a man whose name appears frequently in the business of the Guild of Holy Trinity between 1469 and 1518. Perhaps he left the money for the building of the chapel. The date c. 1520 seems convincing, especially as documents for the building of the tower date from 1520, 1525, and 1538.

COMMUNION RAIL. Heavily twisted balusters; c. 1700. - CHOIR STALLS. Three with two Misericords. - ROYAL ARMS. Of James I;  carved. - STAINED crass. E window by Hardman 1857; others of the same period (Basset:-Smith’s restoration was in 1856—8). -  MONUMENTS. Brass to Thomas de Braunstone d 1401, very large figure in armour (7 ft long) formerly under thin canopy with ogee top. -  Two large and quite sumptuous monuments with kneeling figures facing each other, in the accepted Jacobean pattern. They are Thomas Parke d 1628 and wife, and Matthias Taylor d 1633 and wife. Mrs Esdaile attributes the Parke Monument to G. Christmas and compares the motif of the small daughter kneeling in front of the prayer-desk between the parents to a monument at Snarford, Lincolnshire. In the upper part of the Parke Monument a recumbent skeleton. - Many pretty, late tablets, from the C17 to the early C19. Signed only E. Southwell d 1787, by Nollekens, with a seated figure of Hope in front of an obelisk.

* The W window of the N nave and the E window of the N chancel are C19 inventions.

Thomas Parke 1630 (3)

Panorama1

J1st arms

WISBECH. It has seen great transformations, for time was when the tides swept over it, coming up the River Nene winding through the fens. It has seen the sea go back, for it was once four miles away and is now eleven. No town has prospered more from the marvellous reclamation work begun by the Romans, continued by the Dutch, and finished by Rennie and Telford, snatching thousands of square miles of fenland from the grip of the sea.

It is the second town in the county, and, its river being navigable for ships of 1700 tons, is busy with merchandise, for it has become the metropolis of the flower gardens and fruit orchards of the Cambridgeshire Fens. Those who would see what the reclamation of land can do should come this way in springtime, when the country round about is like a patchwork quilt. For weeks it is a veritable fairyland ablaze with tulips, and in due season comes the apple blossom, a wondrous sight. As for the great canning industry which has expanded so surprisingly in our time, Wisbech is one of its great centres and the figures of its canning factories (the first in England) are almost astronomical. Hundreds, thousands, millions, seem unequal to the strain.

It may be that the proudest memory of this fenland town is that of the man who struck a mighty blow for human freedom, Thomas Clarkson. His father was headmaster of the grammar school for 17 years. The school carries on in a new building after 600 years of history, but part of its old buildings may be seen; it has given an Archbishop to Canterbury, Thomas Herring. Born here in 1760, Thomas Clarkson looks down on the life of his old town from a monument 68 feet high to the top of the spire which crowns his canopy. He stands near the bridge which takes us over the river to Wisbech St Mary, and on the base of his fine monument (designed by Sir Gilbert Scott), are reliefs of a fettered slave, and of his friends William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp, Wilberforce with whom he worked throughout his life, Granville Sharp who won the historic decision in the courts that slaves cannot breathe in England. “They touch our country and their shackles fall,” wrote William Cowper, but it was Granville Sharp who made it so.

Thomas Clarkson is the most famous man of Wisbech, and rightly the town has given to him the noblest monument in its streets. The subject of human liberty engaged his attention in his early days at Cambridge, where an essay of his was received with great applause in the senate house. He made friends with Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce, and joined a committee on May 22, 1787, to work for the suppression of the slave trade. Within a year the matter was being discussed in Parliament, where it was revealed that rarely less than 50 and often more than 80 in every 100 Negroes died on their voyage into slavery. He once boarded all the ships belonging to the navy at Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, Sheerness, and Portsmouth searching for a witness on the horrors of the trade. He travelled all over the country to keep up the hearts of the reformers after Wilberforce’s defeat in Parliament. He interviewed the Tsar of Russia, helped to found the Anti-Slavery Society, and saw the triumph of the cause. When he was 73 years old he was going blind, but he had 13 years to live, and an operation on his eyes brought back his sight after a short period of total blindness. At 79 he was made a Freeman of the City of London, but perhaps his best recognition is in Wordsworth’s sonnet, which begins Clarkson! it was an obstinate hill to climb, and goes on: -

Duty's intrepid liegeman, see, the palm
Is won, and by all nations shall be worn!
The bloodstained writing is for ever torn;
And thou henceforth wilt have a good man’s calm,
A great man's happiness; thy zeal shall find
Repose at length, firm friend of human kind.


Wisbech has lost its ancient castle, built by the Normans and made into a palace of the bishops by Cardinal Morton in the 15th century. It covered four acres and was protected by a moat 40 feet wide. It was within the old walls that King John heard the bitter news that his jewels had been lost in the Wash, and here in the troubled days of religious persecution two famous men were held in captivity, Thomas Watson, a great scholar and supporter of Mary Tudor, and John Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster. The history of the castle ended in Cromwellian days, and Cromwell’s Secretary of State, Thomas Thurloe, pulled down the walls and built himself a new house with the materials, Inigo Jones designing it for him. Thurloe was one of the men to whom Oliver was much attached, and with whom he would lay aside his greatness. When Cromwell was raised to the Protectorate Thurloe sent out the order to the sheriffs to proclaim him, and it was his marvellous system of secret intelligence which made it possible for a member of Parliament to say in the House that Cromwell carried the secrets of all the princes in Europe at ln's girdle. Cromwell was truly a hero to this secretary, and Thurloe wished him to accept the crown. After the Restoration he was charged with high treason, but released; it is said that he remarked that if he were to be hanged he had a black book which would hang many that went for Cavaliers.

On the site of the old castle moat now stands the museum, which claims the distinction of being one of the oldest in the country. It has a fine collection of coins, glass, and pottery from Celtic, Roman, and Saxon England, a valuable display of fenland birds, relics of the slave trade and little things associated with Thomas Clarkson; charters of the 16th and 17th centuries, a manuscript written by 12th century monks which Pepys is known to have looked at, many autographs and over 3000 coins, the Dickens manuscript from which Great Expectations was printed, a number of early atlases, specimens of Whieldon ware, and a wonderful little head of Buddha about 1600 years old. Near the museum is an old inn with structural fragments of the 15th century, and we understand that its wine vaults were part of an underground passage to the castle.

In one of the two marketplaces stands the octagon church, a ‘modem chapel of ease, and there is a modern church of St Augustine; but the only ancient church in Wisbech is that of St Peter and St Paul, a remarkable place with three nave arcades built in three centuries. This spacious church with a quaint array of roofs and over 30 windows, has a double nave and a double chancel, each with its own gabled roof, and both naves with aisles. The north nave is separated from its aisle by a Norman arcade of five bays, one of the arches carved with chevron, the others plain. Above this is the 15th century clerestory. Separating the north nave from the south is a lofty arcade from the 15th century, with a Norman arch at the western end facing the western arch of the north arcade, both part of a Norman vanished tower. The arcade separating the south nave from its aisle is 14th century and has clustered pillars; it was probably built at the same time as the arcade dividing the two chancels. One of the pillars of the chancel arch is Norman. The reredos is of stone and alabaster, with a mosaic copy made in Venice of Leonardo's Last Supper; there are canopied figures of St Peter and St Paul at the sides. There is an Elizabethan altar table and a 14th century font.

The tower is the finest feature of the church, and comes from early in the 16th century. Its three stages rise to a rich crown of pierced battlements, with eight pinnacles and a leaded roof like a small spire. Under the parapet is a cornice adorned with shields, flowers, and emblems; angels with symbols are over the belfry windows, and the stringcourses are carved with heraldry. The tower base forms a north porch and shelters a handsome 14th century doorway enriched with a band of carving of animals, birds, foliage, and grotesques, among them being little men, lions, and a dragon chasing a dog. The most interesting memorial in the church is a great brass of Thomas de Braunston, Constable of the Castle in the 14th century. It is one of the biggest brasses in England, over nine feet long, and shows the knight lifesize in armour which is interesting because it illustrates the coming of full plate armour. He has a steel cuirass, a pointed helmet, and an ornamental sword and dagger, his hands are clasped in prayer, and his feet are on a lion. A Constable of the Castle 230 years after him kneels with his wife on a dingy wall-memorial of 1633. He was a linen draper named Matthias Taylor, and both he and his wife are in long gowns and ruffs. Also kneeling on a wall are two Wisbech people who must have bought linen at Matthias Taylor’s shop, for they died a few years before him and left charities to the town. He is Thomas Parke, and kneels in armour and ruff at a desk, his wife being in a flowing gown with a ruff and a broad-brimmed hat, and on a panel of the desk at which they kneel is their daughter, with a skeleton as an unpleasant companion on a shelf above.

In unknown graves in the churchyard lie the two friends who died as prisoners in the castle, Thomas Watson and John Feckenham. Thomas Watson was one of Mary Tudor’s leading bishops, and Roger Ascham paid a high tribute to his scholarship. It has been said that he spoke incautiously of excommunicating Elizabeth, and certainly for his boldness of opinion he was more than once put into the Tower. He was a sincere Roman Catholic, and even as a bishop was allowed to have his own Roman Catholic attendant. His last days were troubled by bitter controversy on theological matters, and he died while in captivity in Wisbech Castle.

John Feckenham was the last abbot of Westminster, the son of poor Worcestershire peasants, and was a popular preacher in Mary Tudor’s reign, preaching to great crowds from St Paul’s Cross during the persecution of the Protestants. Even though he could not forgive heretics his heart moved him to do his utmost to persuade them to save themselves, and it is recorded that at one time he rescued 28 people from the stake. Mary Tudor sent him to try to convert Lady Jane Grey as she lay waiting for death, but he declared himself more fit to be her disciple than her master, and after the execution a dialogue between them was published, drawn up by Lady Jane. He was with her on the scaffold, but the only comfort he could give her was to say that he was sorry for her, for he believed that they would never meet again. When he was made Abbot of Westminster he began the restoration of the abbey. It had been much neglected, shrines pulled down, relics stolen, and it was he who found the Confessor’s coffin in some hidden place and returned it to the shrine with its old splendour. He preached the funeral sermon for Queen Mary. Elizabeth befriended him because he had befriended her in her unhappy days. He found his way to the Tower, however, for “railing against changes,” and was then thrown into prison and finally released to live in a house in Holborn. He was a good friend of the poor and was allowed to live in peace for the last few years of his life.

Leverington, Cambridgeshire

St Leonard, locked, keyholder listed, is externally reminiscent of the Huntingdon vernacular and is magnificent, particularly the tower and spire. Internally it's full of interest not least the mostly medieval NE aisle Jesse tree window [following a restoration it was found to contain more original glass than Pevsner leads us to believe] and the fabulous font.

ST LEONARD. The W tower of Leverington is one of the most impressive in the county. The lower parts are all E.E. The tower arch towards the nave has stiff-leaf capitals. The W doorway is enriched by one order of colonnettes, and a gable with a small trefoiled figure niche below. Then there are lancet windows, tall blank arcades with shafts and shaftrings and big polygonal clasping buttresses as at Elm. Only at the stage of the bell-openings does the Dec style take over. It continued with the battlements, the four recessed polygonal turret-pinnacles and the spire, 162 ft high, with three tiers of dormers (rebuilt 1901). Next comes the chancel, late C13 probably, see its excellent E window with a window in the form of a spheric triangle above, and the two tall quatrefoil piers separating the chancel from the S chapel. The chapel, however, must have been rebuilt early in the C14; for it has an equally excellent E window with flowing tracery. Of the same period probably the S aisle wall and the S porch, the most ornate piece of architecture belonging to the Church. It is two-storeyed and has an ogee-headed doorway with niches l. and r., and on the ground floor two bays, each with two-light openings. The vault is in two bays too, with a ridge-rib and bosses. The ribs rest on thin wall-shafts with castellated capitals. The Perp style of the C15 was responsible for the nave arcades and clerestory, most aisle windows, the chancel arch and the chancel N and S windows. The latter are tall with one transom; the arcades have slim piers much deeper in a N-S direction than they are wide, and with capitals only towards the arch openings. The original roof rises high up on stone-corbels and has tiebeams with much tracery. Below it the restoration of 1901 put in another set of tiebeams on thickly foliated corbels. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with small standing figures against the stem and large seated figures under ogee arches on the bowl; one of the best medieval fonts of Cambridgeshire. - LECTERN, oak, late C15, as usual with the figure of an eagle. - STAINED GLASS Jesse Window, N aisle E, C15, the most important in the county, outside Cambridge; 61 figures of which 13 are completely original and 17 restored; the rest C19 and C20. The figures are in oval medallions formed by vine scrolls. They hold scrolls. The impression is one of great opulence and warmth. - In the S chapel E window C15 kneeling donors (Sir Laurence Everard and Dame Margaret Colville) and a Pieta; not originally belonging to the church. - MONUMENTS. Spelman Swaine d 1761, and Spelman Swaine d 1803 both prettily done with various marbles; in the older a standing putto leaning on an urn, against a grey obelisk; in the later a seated figure against a pink obelisk.

C15 Pieta (4)

Font (1)

Jesse tree (3)

LEVERINGTON. We found a windmill still working in this pleasant spreading place among the orchards, and beauty and interest in abundance safe in the medieval church. So lovely is its ribbed spire, rising to a height of 162 feet on a majestic tower, that when it showed signs of wear after 700 years it was rebuilt stone for stone with all its dainty gabled lights. The tower and its spire are masterpieces from the l3th century; the two-storeyed porch is a masterpiece from the 14th. It has a pierced crest of wavy carving along its gable ridge, with stepped buttresses niched for statues, heads on its vaulted roof, embattled columns between its four windows, and old doors with a wicket through which we enter.

The doors open into a nave with graceful arcades from the 15th century, a beautiful leafy tower arch, and a font in isolated loveliness. It is one of the best 15th century fonts, with eight saints seated under canopies round the bowl, angels under the bowl, and eight figures standing round the stem, while odd corners are filled with flowers and animal heads. A lofty 15th century tower arch opens into the chancel, and above the old door to the vanished roodloft are stone heads of Edward the Third and his Queen Phillipa. The sedilia and the three arches opening to the side chapel are 13th century. Stone corbels look down from the roofs, a woman in a horned headdress and a demon among the old ones, queens and clerics among the new. The stout altar rails are Jacobean, and there is a curious old oak lectern with six lions crouching below an eagle painted red and gold.

Flowing medieval tracery fills the east windows of the chancel and the chapel, and the third east window has a Jesse tree in 15th century glass, brilliantly restored at the end of the last century. The branches curl round over 60 figures in white and gold, and half of them are original. In a chancel window is more fine old glass given by Sir Lawrence Colville 500 years ago. His arms are here and a picture of Our Lady of Pity mourning the Son lying on her lap, while round them kneel knights and ladies praying. There is more medieval glass with saints under canopies in another chancel window.

A queer and familiar name looks out from a wall memorial here to Captain Anthony Lumpkin, who died in 1780, seven years after Oliver Goldsmith had produced She Stoops to Conquer. It is said that Goldsmith stayed with his friends the Lumpkins here and it is considered probable that he took the name of Tony Lumpkin from Anthony. The suggestion has been made that he may have written some of the play under the village mulberry tree, and it is curiously interesting to reflect that the captain named on these walls may perhaps have been the original of Tony Lumpkin whose figure has so long been familiar to us on the stage.

Newton in the Isle, Cambridgeshire

St James, locked but with access numbers listed [as usual I didn't bother calling, so to me this is ostensibly LNK], is a run of the mill building - pleasant enough but uninspiring. From what I've seen on Flickr I didn't miss much inside although there is a Hugh Easton window and a modern rood loft. On the whole this felt like a dying church.

ST JAMES. The oldest part is the circular piers of the arcade. Their bases seem to be Norman. The rest of the arcade, including the capitals, however, is C14. So are most of the other parts of interest, the lower part of the tower (with angle buttresses) and the tower arch, the big W window displaying flowing tracery, the aisle windows and the handsome S porch. The chancel with the chancel arch and the upper parts of the tower followed Perp. Inside, the rood stairs are arranged in a picturesque way. The access from the upper door to the loft itself was by a short embattled passage. - FONT. Big, octagonal, Perp, with a traceried stem and a bowl with large elaborate quatrefoils carrying shields. - PLATE. Cup, Paten, Flagon, all gilt, all of 1663; Almsdish of 1662.

St James (3)

NEWTON-IN-THE-ISLE. It lies near Wisbech and looks over the wide flats of the fens, but its stone church is apart among fine trees. We come into it through two medieval doorways, one with a king and queen on each side, and the other in a porch with an unusual Nativity scene in a window; it shows a woman and two noblemen with sword and dagger, bringing their gifts, while two angels hold a curtain behind. Like most of the church, the tower and spire are 14th and 15th century, but the round pillars bearing the nave arcades may be Norman. The clerestory is 15th century, and so is the chancel arch, in which is a richly carved modern screen with a vaulted canopy supporting a roodloft gallery with traceried bays. It is reached by the old rood stairs. In the sanctuary floor is an ancient coffin stone carved with three crosses.

Tydd St Giles, Cambridgeshire

St Giles, open, is as far as you can go north in Cambridgeshire and, to me anyway, feels alien to the county - this is in proper fenland, a landscape I don't feel comfortable with. The roads are all over the place, literally, the dismal landscape is, well, dismal and the whole region depresses me beyond expression. Having said that, St Giles is a delight and well worth the long schlep to this outpost which feels nothing like the Cambridgeshire I'm used to.

ST GILES. The church is a surprise in more than one way. It is (or was) very large, it has a tower in an isolated position to the S of the former chancel (which was 50 by 20 ft in size), and an interior quite unexpected after the exterior. The nave arcades of six bays have circular Late Norman or Transitional piers with circular capitals which on the N side are scalloped or have the most elementary upright leaves. The date of this part is probably late C12. The s arcade is a little later, see the alternation of scalloped with simple stiff-leaf capitals (just a band of overhanging leaves along the upper half of the capital). The arches are round on both sides, but already double-chamfered. Then follows the W bay, built perhaps in replacement of a former Norman W tower. Here the arches are pointed. Contemporary the pointed chancel arch with stiff-leaf capitals. To the l. and r. of it elongated round-headed recesses. Could they be former Norman windows? Above the chancel arch a bigger Norman window. Everything to the E of this arch has disappeared, in the restoration of Sir George Gilbert Scott and his son Oldrid Scott. Sir George was the brother of the then rector. What he pulled down was not the medieval chancel, but an C18 successor. The exterior of the nave is not indicative of the C12 and C13 work inside. The W front is Dec with an ogee-headed and crocketed doorway, three niches above and a five-light window. To the l. and r. buttresses and turrets, then the aisle fronts. Both aisles have also Dec (mixed with some Perp) windows and doorways. The clerestory is Perp. With so much Dec work preserved, it seems fortunate that an inscription of the C14 also survives which reads: ‘Cest piler comencat Ricarde le Prestre Primer preyez pur lui’. However, the ‘piler’ in question is one of the N arcade piers and shows no signs of being later than its neighbours. The tower was apparently begun in the early C13. Whatever the reason for its isolated position, it is paralleled in Norfolk at West Walton and Terrington St Clement, both not far from Tydd. The tower was originally open towards all four sides. The buttresses are of the set-back type. The ground-floor arches are triple-chamfered on demi-shafts with moulded capitals. The stage above has large blank arches with nook-shafts. On the inner shaft rests the arch of an arcade of three lancets. The shafts between the lancets are polygonal. The upper parts of the tower with its battlements are of brick and much later. - PLATE. Cup and Cover of 1569. - MONUMENT. Foliated slab of grey marble to Sir john Fysner, C13.

St Giles (9)

Lectern

Panorama

TYDD-ST-GILES. Its sister Tydd St Mary lies over the border in Lincolnshire; all the tale of the Cambridgeshire Tydd is told in its church, which captures attention at once by the fact that its tower stands 50 feet away. It has stood for 700 years, though its upper stages were rebuilt in brick 500 years ago. Its triple lancets are now blocked up, and so are two of its arches. Under the other two we can walk. The rest of the church is the old nave and aisles, with arcades running the whole length from east to west, and with a richly moulded chancel arch framing the east window. The 13th century arches are crowned with 15th century clerestories, and their capitals are of great interest in showing the growth of ornament from the conventional scallop and leaf to the natural foliage and drooping leaves. The finely carved font is 500 years old, and a coffin stone in the floor of an aisle is 700. On a pillar is a worn inscription in old French, saying: “This pillar Richard the Priest first began; pray for him.”

Tydd St Giles claims Nicholas Breakspear as a curate. It is a resounding claim, for he is the only Englishman who ever sat in the chair of St Peter, becoming Adrian the Fourth.

Wednesday 21 February 2018

Outwell, Norfolk

St Clement, locked, keyholder listed, is really rather odd. It is sited by the river Nene on what feels like a fenland island, is externally attractive and internally strange with a north "transept" chapel [with a good hammerbeam roof], aisles that run the full length of the church and to top it all the ugliest, and most ill considered, chancel window I've seen to date. Burnt orange glass which looks like the gates to hell - despite the glass I liked the church a lot, particularly for the Morrisons trolley parked in the nave [having now read Pevsner I realise I missed the medieval glass and the brass - having searched Flickr I'm not sure the brass is extant].

ST CLEMENT. Of Barnack stone and ragstone, embattled and quite ambitiously detailed, e.g. with decoration along the base. The oldest part is the W tower. This is of the C13 below up to the lower (former) bell-openings with two lights separated by a round shaft and a circle pierced in the spandrel. The upper bell-stage is Dec; the W doorway, the W window, and the tall tower arch are Perp. The pyramid roof is said to be of the later C18. Dec also one S window, the first from the W. All the rest is Perp. Two-storeyed S porch, the front mutilated, rib-vaulted in two bays inside. S aisle with two wide segment-headed windows with embattled transoms, one of seven, the other of six lights. Arches below the transoms too. This pattern recurs in other windows. Buttresses with shields and pinnacles. Tall three-light clerestory. Chancel projecting one bay, largely rebuilt in 1863. Five-light E, three-light N and S windows, all with embattled transoms. N chapel with E window similar to those of the S aisle. Small niches high up to its l. and r. A N chapel in a transeptal position is of brick. It was built by John Fincham, who died in 1527 (arms on the stone corbels inside), and was the last part to be built. The N side on the whole is more modestly appointed. The interior has five-bay arcades with octagonal piers and arches on the S side with two wave mouldings, on the N side with a chamfer and a hollow chamfer. Both arcades are of the early C14. Tall chancel arch with a window over. One-bay N and S chapels separated by arches from the aisles too. Good roofs. In the nave with alternating tie-beams and hammerbeams and tracery in the spandrels. Angels on tie-beams, hammerbeams, and wall-plates. Against the wall-posts figures under canopies. S aisle roof and N transept roof with hammerbeams, the latter with angels. The same type of roof in the chancel S chapel. The N chancel chapel has moulded beams and angels with shields. - FONT. Perp, simple, octagonal, with blank panelling. - LECTERN. Of brass, late C15. - POOR BOX. Jacobean, of unusual design. A shape like a Venetian lantern placed on a tall baluster. - GATES to the S chapel. Of wrought iron; C18. - STAINED GLASS. Of the early C16 many small figures in the head of the S chapel E window; one large bearded figure in a N chapel N window. - PLATE. Cup, inscribed 1593, and Cover Paten; Flagon, 1652; Paten, unmarked. - MONUMENTS. Brass to Richard Quadryng d 1511, a 2 ft 3 in. figure. - In the S chapel a round-arched and cusped and subcusped recess of the C14. Also in the S chapel the Purbeck marble tomb-chest and recess of Nicholas de Beaupré d  1511. The recess has spiral-fluted colonnettes, a top frieze of quatrefoils, and a cresting. - In 1567 Edmund de Beaupré died, and for him an alabaster tablet was put up above the other. At the same time the inscription recording Nicholas was set into the back wall of the recess. Both tablets have strapwork and good garlands.

Grotesque (2)

Weather vane

Jacobean poor box

OUTWELL. There are perhaps no longer twin villages in the land than Outwell linked with Upwell, and through the heart of both flows the River Nene. Where the road widens stands Outwell’s medieval church, and half a mile away are the old brick walls and clustered chimneys of the Elizabethan home of this family of the Beauprés, the fair meadow standing in the trees.

The 13th-century tower was given its top storey when it was a century old. A rich band of quatrefoils runs along the base of the south aisle and the chancel walls, and a porch with a vaulted roof leads us in. The 14th-century nave has a roof adorned with angels and is supported by fine wooden figures. Angels look down from the south aisle roof and from the roof of the Beaupré chapel, where there are also quaint figures in foliage. Shining in the window tracery over the old altar table in the chapel are figures of Christ and saints and martyrs set in clear 15th-century glass, and here is the Tudor monument of Nicholas and Margaret Beaupré, their son, and his wife. A granddaughter of Margaret married Sir Robert Bell, Speaker of the House of Commons under Queen Elizabeth, and one of their descendants was Beaupré Bell, the 18th-century antiquarian who was a great authority on ancient coins.

The Haultoft Chapel, now the vestry, was built by Gilbert Haultoft, Baron of the Exchequer to Henry the Sixth. The Finchams followed the Haultofts as lords of the manor, and in their chapel, north of the chancel, is a roof with carved beams, and a saint holding a chalice in the old glass of a window. The brass portrait showing a 16th-century knight in armour is of Richard Qwadring. The six-sided font is 15th century, there are two old chest-like travelling trunks, and a quaint old almsbox carved with faces through whose mouths we slip a coin for charity.

Upwell, Norfolk

On my way to record twelve north Cambridgeshire churches my satnav took me through Upwell and past St Peter, locked, keyholder listed, and I couldn't resist stopping - the exterior alone was too tempting to resist. The tower is topped by an octagon, there are some fine C18th headstones and inside is full of interest, I particularly like the west and north aisle galleries and the absurd lectern which looks more like a cockerel than an eagle.

ST PETER. Of Barnack stone and ragstone, mostly Perp and embattled. E. E. NW tower. Two-light bell-openings with a dividing round shaft and pierced trefoils in the spandrels. The top storey is octagonal and Perp. The tower arch to the E is a powerful piece and shows that the C13 church lay where the N aisle now is. However, by about 1300 the present nave had been begun. Its W doorway and W window (cusped intersected tracery; renewed) show that. Embattled Perp aisles. Perp also the tall arch from the tower into the nave. Perp clerestory, and at its SE end a very pretty brick turret with a top for the sanctus bell. Two-storeyed,Perp N porch with a tierceron-vault inside. The centre is a figure of four ogee leaves. The upper porch window is straight-headed. Long chancel with C19 E window. Perp five-bay arcades. Slender piers without any capitals except for the thin shafts towards the arches. The chancel arch, nearly straight-sided, has the same type of mouldings. The church still has its early C19 W and N galleries, a rare survival. Nave roof with alternating tie-beams and hammerbeams, the latter with angels with spread wings. The aisle roofs also with hammerbeams and also with angels; quite splendid. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with demi-figures of angels holding shields. - LECTERN. C15, of brass, East Anglian, of the same type as the lecterns at Woolpit and Cavendish in Suffolk, Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, Corpus Christi College at Oxford, and Crofts in Lincolnshire. - ROYAL ARMS. Splendidly carved. - PLATE. Cup and Paten, 1629; Flagon, 1639; Almsdish, 1770. - MONUMENTS. Two early C15 brasses to priests, one with a 3 ft 10 in. figure under a tripartite canopy, the other a 2 ft 6 in. figure. They commemorate William Mowbray d 1428 (chancel S) and Henry Martyn d 1435 (chancel N). - In the churchyard many carved headstones. The churchyard GATES with fine large gateposts and iron gates; C18.

Lectern (1)

Headstone (6)

Crane brass matrix

UPWELL. The River Nene comes here from Cambridgeshire into Norfolk, and the pleasant old houses and the cottages make most of it, disposing themselves in a long broken line on each side of the slow-moving stream. At the Outwell end of the village is a windmill, the two neighbours making together perhaps the longest village in the land, spreading for nearly five miles.

In the heyday of Upwell’s prosperity, when it was a market town, the big church of St Peter was built by the river, and its square tower with the octagonal top, standing among the trees and looking down on orchards, has been since the 13th century the symbol of steadfastness among changing fortunes.

Gates of delicately wrought iron lead to the church, which is for the most part 200 years younger than the tower. The fine porch has a vaulted roof supporting an upper room, and the lovely door letting us in has traceried panels and a border with 16 pelicans. The beauty inside is marred by galleries and the crowd of pews, though the odd block of seats for two down the middle of the nave, between the high shut-in pews, is quaint and unusual. About 25 oak angels with outspread wings look down from the striking old roofs of the nave and aisles, which have richly carved beams and angels on the borders. The chancel roof has hammerbeams and saints. The canopied sedilia are carved with tracery, the font has angels holding shields, and part of a coffin stone is in the wall. One of the oldest of about 50 old brass eagles left in England is the 14th-century lectern; it has a comb like a cock, and three lions at the foot.

There are brass portraits of 500 years ago, one big and one small, of two priests in their copes. A brass plate of 1621 is engraved with kneeling figures of Jane and Linolphus Bell and their 11 children, the boys in cloaks, the girls in bonnets and ruffs. An inscription recording the outbreak of cholera last century when 67 people died in a few weeks ends with a moral question: Reader, why hast thou been spared? To what purpose hast thou been left until now?

Upwell’s peace memorial window has figures of St George, St Michael, and St Nicholas, and scenes of the Crucifixion, three soldiers by the trenches, and three sailors by the sea.