Little Chishill, Cambridgeshire

St Nicholas was locked with no keyholder listed, nuff said. It's an attractive little church though so it is a pity its interior is inaccessible.

ST NICHOLAS. Nave, chancel, S porch and short W tower with pyramid roof - all tiled, a surprising sight. The chancel is Norman, built of clunch rubble - see the one formerly nook-shafted N window and the traces of a second inside. The E window is Late Perp and dates  from the time when the chancel was lengthened; other windows Dec. The tower is broad and unbuttressed and probably also older than the Perp tower arch would indicate. The rest Perp. Handsome tall porch with slender blank arcading inside (cf. Isleham, Soham). - FONT.  Perp, octagonal, with pointed quatrefoil panels. - STAINED GLASS. E window by Kempe and Tower, c. 1916. 

LITTLE CHISHALL. Both Great and Little Chishall are newcomers in Cambridgeshire, having crossed the border in 1895. This one brought with it a squat church from ancient days, a little nave and chancel. For 500 years its door has been opening and shutting in its porch, but much of what we see was here before it, for the tower is 13th century (with a pyramid roof just topping the nave), and there are Norman windows. The east and west arches are 15th century; the font was carved by medieval masons. There is a fine old coffin lid under an outside recess in the chancel wall, and in the windows are fragments of ancient glass. The east window has tiny scenes of the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the angel appearing to the shepherds, with a big picture of the Crucixion. Here the lord of the manor at the end of the war set up the reredos in memory of his son Richard Douglas Crossman, who fell in action at Cambrai 14 days before the Armistice.

Flickr set.