Wendy, Cambridgeshire

Oh dear, I really should research my visits. All Saints was demolished in the early 1950s and all that remains is the churchyard and footings. The replacement church is down the road and at first glance I thought it was the village hall - not an inspiring building!

ALL SAINTS. By Rowe 1867. Recently had to be pulled down as unsafe. A new church is to be built. In the same unfortunate district the church of CLOPTON nearby has disappeared and is now only represented by a long low mound in the fields, and SHINGAY was demolished in 1697. Of the Preceptory of Knights Hospitallers at Shingay nothing remains either.

WENDY. It shelters off the Roman Ermine Street, a cluster of cottages and a church of last century overtopped by a cedar. It has for a neighbour the once important place of Shingay, an old home of the Knights Hospitallers of which nothing is now left but a dry moat and a row of limes which led to it. The arms from Shingay’s vanished chapel are over the doorway of Wendy’s church. It is a simple aisleless place with floral paintings covering its walls from floor to ceiling, and the best thing it has is the fine hammerbeam roof of the nave with tracery in the spandrels; it was brought from an old church in Cambridge.

In the churchyard we hear the splash of a natural fountain in the vicarage garden, one of the many springs in the neighbourhood.