Carlton, Cambridgeshire

St Peter is more like a chapel than a church and is really rather charming. The chief interest in its rather simple interior is the font and the head of what I took to be Wodewose on the west windowsill.

ST PETER. A small church with a nicely unrestored exterior. Chancel windows with not quite common Perp forms; nave S one straight-headed Dec window. Chancel arch also Perp. Bell-cote castellated, of brick. - FONT. Octagonal Perp, with traceried stem and bowl with shields in cusped quatrefoils. - ROOD SCREEN. With one-light divisions. Fragmentary. - PULPIT. Elizabethan or Jacobean.

CARLTON. It lies in open country on the Suffolk border, with a small church from the 14th and 15th centuries and two bells that have been ringing since before the Reformation. The leaning walls are golden inside below a white ceiling and they shelter a simple 15th century chancel screen, a font from the same time, and a Jacobean pulpit. One great old beam with a kingpost supports the nave roof; it is probably as old as the ancient glass in the chancel. On an illuminated parchment are the names of nine men, and of them it is said that "They were a wall unto us both by night and day."

Here lies a man who found fame by curious ways, for he was sent out by the king and some of his manoeuvrings were for the divorce of Catherine of Aragon and some for the arrest of William Tyndale.
He was Sir Thomas Elyot, scholar, diplomat, and author, who died and was buried here in 1546. While abroad on his diplomatic plottings Sir Thomas complained bitterly that he had no replies from his letters home, and that he received an allowance which only half covered his spendings. When he was ambassador to Charles the Fifth it was from the emperor himself at Naples that he learned the bitter news of the execution of his friend Sir Thomas More. He was also an intimate friend of Roger Ascham. He published many learned books, original works, translations, and anthologies, one of them On the Knowledge which Maketh a Wise Man, a dialogue between Plato and Aristippus. Having helped the king to dispose of his unwanted Catherine, he was one of the men who took part in the reception of the king’s unwanted Anne of Cleves.

Flickr set.