Witchford, Cambridgeshire

St Andrew, locked no keyholder, is an attractively ramshackle building but I suspect a dull interior [with no evidence] is hidden behind the locked door. Why it is locked is a mystery since it's in the middle of the village on a very busy road.

ST ANDREW. Nave, lower chancel, low W tower. The latter is unbuttressed and has lancet windows and a narrow doorway towards the nave. The tower evidently is C13. But the historical importance of the church lies in its C14 work, its special interest being the fact that the consecration date is known - 1376. Yet the motifs seem all still of the early C14 - the Dec tracery of the three-light E window, the tracery of the three-light S window, the much simpler tracery of the two-light N windows, and the double-chamfered N and S doorways without any capitals. The nave is heavily buttressed (with one set-off), and its W walls are canted to connect with the older and narrower tower. The chancel arch has two ogee-headed niches to the l. and r. - PLATE. Chalice and Paten of 1694-5.

WITCHFORD. It was here that the monks of Ely to their sorrow met the Conqueror. In the absence of Hereward the Wake, the Isle’s defender, the monks were prepared to make their submission, but William, the story goes, came unawares to the abbey when the monks were at their meal, and, meeting none of the custodians, placed a mark of gold on the altar and quietly departed. The perturbed monks learning of the visit from a Norman knight, hastened after the king to make their apologies. They caught him up at Witchford, where he laid on them a fine so heavy that all their church ornaments had to be melted down to pay it.

The church comes from our three great building centuries, its low embattled tower from the 13th, the porch from the 15th, and the rest of the neat little structure from the 14th. The font is medieval. There is a touch of pathos in a lonely patch of glass in a window showing the three-masted ship John Temperley being lashed by waves, its sails reefed. It is in memory of someone lost at sea in 1872.

Flickr.