Friday 20 April 2012

Harlowbury Chapel, Essex

I returned to Harlow last week to visit the three churches I missed first time round and some others in the vicinity. Harlowbury Chapel is little more than a cowshed now but retains some noticeably Norman windows and is really rather charming. It is, of course, locked.

Pevsner: FORMER CHAPEL, Harlowbury. Norman. Nave and chancel in one, with a C15 king-post roof. The chapel has its original three E windows and N doorway (with columns with waterleaf capitals). Also two original N and one original S windows.

 Harlowbury Chapel (3)

Harlowbury Chapel (5)

HARLOW. A little old-world town of much delight, it has a church full of fine things, a manor house of great interest, and a fine little Tudor chantry-house with a lovely porch and 16th century glass illustrating the months. The oldest parts of the manor house are Tudor, but it is the successor of a house given by Edward the Confessor, 900 years ago, to the Abbots of Bury St Edmunds. In a corner of the garden is a granary built by the Normans, still with its Norman doorway and windows, and with a kingpost roof of the 15th century. It was built as a chapel, the private shrine of the old abbots, who rested here on their journeys to London.

1 comment:

  1. Hi, Actually the house is considerably older than tudor. It was built by the abbots of Bury St Edmunds. Dendrochronology has yielded a date of 1221-1225 for the major wing of the house.

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