Foxearth, Essex

Inspired by my one off visit to Kelvedon on Tuesday last I planned a proper visitation for Friday going to Foxearth, Liston, Borley, Newton, Polstead, Assington, Middleton and Great Henny finishing off the area south and west of Sudbury.

I've been to SS Peter & Paul on a previous occasion but failed to post either a blog or a Flickr entry - perhaps I'd run out of camera disc space.

Both visits found it locked with no keyholder listed and both times I came away thinking the tower looked like a Victorian water tower and that this was a cold and bleak site. A quick Google search shows that the tower was added in 1862 (hence the water tower look) and that most of the interior is a Victorian re-hash.

Pevsner is scathing: ST PETER AND ST PAUL. The main effect is Victorian (1885 by J. Clarke): externally the rather over ornate W tower of 1862 with unusual bell-openings (fine tall cusped lancets in a row on each side), internally the decoration everywhere by wall paintings and under the tower even by mosaics. But the chancel is of c. 1340 with a three-light E window with flowing tracery, and the N arcade may be of the same date: slim octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. The N windows are Perp, the s windows renewed or new. - SCREEN. Only the dado with over-restored painted figures of saints is original. -  STAINED GLASS. Mostly of c. 1860 and good of its date.

Arthur less so: FOXEARTH. A little village in the countryside Gainsborough knew so well, it is notable for a moated 15th century hall that is now a farmhouse, a 15th century cottage that is now a post office, and a medieval church much restored last century when the porch and tower were built, but still keeping some fine old woodwork. The chancel roof is 14th century, the roofs of the nave and aisle are 15th century,and the screen (with figures of Christ,the Madonna, and ten saints painted on its panels) is a treasure 400 years old.

Despite it being locked both times I visited some of the interior has been shot (not by me) and can be found on Flickr here.

Kelvedon, Essex

After almost two months of rain enforced delay I grasped a window of opportunity last Tuesday to visit St Mary the Virgin which, to be honest, left me somewhat indifferent. An 1877 restoration rendered it somewhat sterile and although it retains some items of interest (some good gargoyles and roof angels for example) this, to me, is pretty run of the mill.

Pevsner: ST MARY THE VIRGIN. The NW angle of the nave is evidently Norman. Nothing else of the period is visible. Nave and aisles belong to the C13, see especially the arcades. They have circular piers, except for one N pier with a four-shaft-four-hollow section. The capitals are partly moulded, partly with some stiff-leaf and crocket decoration. The arches are of many mouldings. C14 W tower with diagonal buttresses, battlements and a recessed spire. Also embattled the two aisles. The C14 chancel has a Perp E window put in by Sir Arthur Blomfield in 1876. The N vestry is an early C16 brick addition with a stepped gable and a four-light window with intersected tracery applied to a depressed four-centred head. Between chancel and vestry a C14 window and a C14 doorway made out of the head of a two-light window. - STAINED GLASS. E window by Burlison & Gryll; s chapel, second s window from E by Clayton & Bell 1859; w window by Laver & Westlake 1896; s chapel E window by Powell (belated pre-Raphaelite; designed by L. Davis). - SCULPTURE. Small wooden panel in the Vestry, probably Flemish, early CI7. - PLATE. Cup of 1562; Paten also Early Elizabethan. - MONUMENTS. To the Abdy family especially Sir Thomas d. 1679 with inscription on a draped stone curtain (by W. Stanton?), and Sir Anthony d. 1704 (by Edward Stanton).

KELVEDON. For about a mile it runs along the Roman road to Colchester from London, and under the road at the foot of Feering Hill the Blackwater flows through a five-arched bridge. We may wonder how many villages in England there are with sixty national monuments in them, for sixty old houses in Kelvedon are scheduled for preservation by the nation.

In this historic little place was born last century a boy who grew up to make his name known wherever men listen to sermons or read them, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, for whom no church or chapel in the world was too big to hold his congregations.

The 600-year-old tower of the church is joined on to Norman walls with Roman bricks in them; the tower has grotesques at the corners and we noticed a very comical face grimacing on the walls. Indoors the capitals on two nave columns are very beautiful with stiff leaves carved 700 years ago, among the best of that time in Essex. The roof, well lit up by clerestory windows, is magnificent 15th century work and has supporting it richly carved figures playing hautboys and holding shields, crowns, and books. The church has what is called a weeping chancel, built a little aslant, it is said, in keeping with the legend that Our Lord bowed his head on the Cross. In the vestry is a quaintly carved panel of Esther on her knees before Ahasuerus; it is 16th century, and was brought from one of Kelvedon’s old houses. The best window has the  Annunciation by Louis Davis, recalling Rossetti’s masterpiece in the National Gallery.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon of Kelvedon, son of a minister, preached his first sermon at 16; at 18 he was a Baptist pastor; at 20 he was offered a pulpit in London; and a few months later all London was talking of him.

No chapel could hold the throng which crowded to listen to his sermons; he filled the Surrey Gardens Music Hall, and in the end they built him his own great Tabernacle. It cost £3l,000, and every penny had been subscribed when he had been preaching there a month. Three times a week he preached, and nearly 7000 people pressed in every time to hear him. He spoke at the Crystal Palace at the time of the Indian Mutiny and 24,000 came to listen. But this was nothing to the size of his unseen congregation. He had the biggest unseen congregations before the days of wireless. Once a week a sermon of his was printed, till the sermons ran into thousands and their copies into a hundred millions, read all over the world.

For half a century a shop in Paternoster Buildings existed on the sale of these sermons at a penny each. They were reproduced in newspapers; they were translated into many languages. But when his publishers sent a boy late one night through a snowstorm to deliver the proofs of one of them he could spare the time to write asking them "please to blow somebody up for sending the poor little creature here late tonight in all this snow, with a parcel much heavier than he ought to carry," and then he added: "There was no need at all for it. Do kick somebody for me, so that it may not happen again."

Wit and homely speech forced home the fervour of his sermons. He was no actor carrying people on a wave of emotion, but a deep thinker whose printed word would send a man down on his knees. But his creed was that of the old Puritans, as narrow as the gate of heaven seemed to him. Yet Spurgeon’s sermons were not bought only by Nonconformists. High Churchmen and Low, Roman Catholic and Evangelical, read them, sure that no sermons they could preach were as rich in thought as these. The city man and the shop assistant, the coalheaver and the duchess, bought his penny sermons as now they buy their penny papers; and just as the crowd waits outside the cinema today so they would wait outside Spurgeon’s Tabernacle at the end of last century.

On his tomb at Norwood it is said that he "being dead, yet speaketh." For years that was true; and still his sermons are read, and there are many to say that none are finer yet. But his influence has died down like the lull after a great storm, and we are left wondering at the power of this man.

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Newmarket, Suffolk

Well this is going to be succinct; all three churches I visited were locked with no keyholder. St Agnes is Victorian and drab, All Saints is Victorian and better and St Mary is OK but heavily restored.

Pevsner is brutal:

Finally the CHURCHES, which at Newmarket can indeed be considered last.

ST MARY is the old parish church. It lies close to the old and now dilapidated quarter of MARKET HILL (with some weather-boarded cottages) and is so restored that practically all is new. The chancel was rebuilt entirely in 1856. C14 S arcade with keeled quatrefoil piers and castellated capitals and double-hollow-chamfered arches. Perp W tower with shingled spire. Perp S doorway with an angel in the apex of the arch. - PISCINA. c 13, with the angle shaft so often met with in Suffolk. Found at the time of the restoration. - STAINED GLASS. In the S aisle a window by Kempe  & Tower, 1907. - PAINTINGS. Big Italian or Spanish c 17 painting of the Virgin, with her Mother holding the Child Christ, and the little St John the Baptist. - Christ entering Jerusalem, by J Wood (1801-70).

ALL SAINTS. 1876-7. Bad, Geometrical, with a SW tower. - Inside a CARTOON by Burne-Jones of a large angel holding a bow and sheltering human beings. Inscription from Dante: ‘L’amor che muove . . .’. - STAINED GLASS. W window by Gibbs.

ST AGNES, Bury Road. By Carpenter, 1886. Red brick with an asymmetrically placed spirelet. Inside much decoration with Spanish tiles. The straight E end is made into one composition with the large REREDOS by Boehm, representing the Assumption of the Virgin (curiously Baroque in the treatment of relief), and the E.E. arches above it. - PLATE. Cup, Norwegian, 1707; three Flower Vases 1728.

St Mary

All Saints

St Agnes

Newmarket has three churches that will appeal to a traveller who has no interest in the racecourse: the parish church of St Mary’s tucked away in the comer of a little square; St Agnes, a cosy modern building hiding in trees on the edge of the town, and All Saints, rebuilt last century (on the style of a church Charles Stuart knew well) with attractive arcades of which the capitals are carved with flowers growing hereabouts.

St Mary’s, the oldest building in the town, has lost much of its old work, but its structure is 15th century and so is its embattled tower, with a slender shingle spire and a massive arch. Its best possession is its series of window pictures in a gallery of lovely glass in light rich colouring by Christopher Webb. A red-winged Gabriel is   bringing the good news to Mary, and there is a scene of the marriage of Mary and Joseph, a fine Nativity with angels and shepherds, and the finding of Jesus in the Temple. They are memorials to the Hammond family, who are also remembered in the iron tower screen, at the top of which are two actual swords crossed in memory of a Hammond who fell at Le Cateau when the Great War was 22 days old. A brass tablet tells of another Hammond who was a chorister and sacristan for 70 years, and there is another tablet to Alice Rogers, who worshipped here for 60 years. An inscription tells us that a 17th century rector, Robert Cooke, died in the pulpit. Under the floor of the church lies the father of Cardinal Wolsey, a butcher of Ipswich at Newmarket.

The little church of St Agnes has hanging on each side of the altar lovely curtains of blue and gold brocade 200 years old, and a beautiful reredos by Sir Edgar Boehm with a fine sculpture of the Ascension. Glowing with gold on the sanctuary wall are rich mosaics of the Madonna, St Patrick, and St George, and there is a small panel of the garden of Eden with the serpent round the tree. Hanging on the wall is an oil painting of the Last Supper.

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Snailwell, Cambridgeshire

St Peter is one of two round tower churches in Cambridgeshire - the other being Bartlow - and gives the impression that it is open with a sign saying "Please do go in and feel free to browse" but when I arrived at lunchtime yesterday it was locked. There is, however, a keyholder's phone number listed in the porch but, naturally, I didn't have my phone with me. I'll have to revisit.

I've been back twice since my first visit and found it open last week (Jul 14). It's a disappointing interior with the exception of the nave hammerbeam roof with angels - which I failed to record as I was in a hurry to get home...I'll try again next time I'm up this way.

ST PETER. With one of the only two round towers of Cambridgeshire (cf. Bartlow). The Snailwell tower is Norman throughout, of flint and pebble rubble as is the rest of the church too. Tall short nave with clerestory, lower chancel. Externally much renewed (by Rowe 1878). The chancel and S aisle E.E. (lancet windows), the N aisle early C 14. At that time also some of the chancel lancets were given Dec tracery (windows, especially the very handsome E window, internally shafted and with head-corbels for the hood-mould). C14 arcade of three bays with octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. Chancel arch and window of 1878. - Perp clerestory and hammerbeam roof. Alternately the hammerbeams rest on the usual arched braces, and come out of the wall without them. In the latter case they have figures against their undersides. - ROOD SCREEN. With single-light divisions, ogee arches and little tracery above them. The finial of the doorway arch reaches above the cornice. - PARCLOSE SCREEN. With handsome cusped ogee-arches and very closely set panel tracery above. - SCULPTURE. Elaborately foliated E.E. cross sunk in a spandrel of the S arcade. - MONUMENT. Low tomb-chest with quatrefoil decoration in a recess in the chancel N wall. Cusped and crocketed ogee-arch with pinnacles l. and r.

SNAILWELL. From a dark pool here the Snail creeps forth to become a sluggish river winding to the fens. The pretty little village dreams among fine trees, elms and chestnuts shading the tiny green and keeping company with the creepered walls and rose-bowered porch of the church.

A very curious thing we found in this small shrine of St Peter, a tiny jewelled box on the altar with a few grains of sand in it from Jerusalem. On the wall also hang four Great War medals of Sir Kildare Borrowes, whose brother was vicar here.

The church has one of the two Norman round towers in the county, just topping the high-pitched roof of the nave. The rest of the church comes from the 14th century, but it has been much restored. There are two medieval oak screens, pews with old poppyheads, a 600-year-old font, a jumble of old glass in the modern porch, and a lovely old relic of stone carving set above an arch; it is a stone cross delicately pierced and set in a roundel. The beautiful hammerbeam roof has three rows of carving in its wall-plate, and on the ends of the beams are six old wooden figures, three bishops and three men with shields. A medieval gravestone in the churchyard is that of a 15th century priest. It was found in the wall of the church. On the wall is a memorial to James Baker, who was clerk for 50 years.

From this small place William Flower went out to die for his i faith in 1555; he was martyred in St Margaret’s churchyard, Westminster. It was a bitter sight, for, his hand having been struck off at the stake, he was then knocked down into the fire, there not being enough faggots to burn him.

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Denston, Suffolk

I finished the day at St Nicholas which, even before I got out of the car, instantly leapt into my top ten. To quote Cautley "the most beautiful and interesting of the smaller churches in the county".

Inside there is a wealth of woodwork from the roof carvings to screens, stalls and poppyheads as well as tombs, brasses and good glass and a very fine font.

ST NICHOLAS. Short W tower, probably of the late c 14. Excellent church, all Late Perp and of a piece. The building no doubt connected with the founding of a college by Sir John Howard and John Broughton in 1475. Nave, aisles, chapels, and clerestory have three-light windows, only those of the clerestory without transoms. The windows are tall and fairly close to each other. S porch with fan vault inside and a pretty crocketed and vaulted niche and castellated stoup outside. The N rood-stair turret and all the buttresses are of stone, not of flint with stone trim. Arcade of seven bays running without a break from W to E. Piers of lozenge section with concave-sided polygonal shafts without capitals towards the nave, i.e. running right up to the roof. They are crossed by a string-course below the clerestory windows. Good cambered nave and lean to aisle roofs. In the nave subtle alternation in the form of the tie-beams. Wallplate with affronted lions, hounds, hares, and harts. The arched braces of the nave have carving too. - FONT. On the bowl the Seven Sacraments and the Crucifixion in small figures against a rayed background. The figures are defaced. - PULPIT. Elizabethan; very simple. - SCREENS. The dado only of the rood-screen; much restored. - Parclose screens to the chapels. - Above the rood screen the ROOD BEAM, a moulded embattled beam, remains; a rare survival. - STALLS AND BENCHES with animal poppy-heads and animals on the arm-rests. The stalls have traceried fronts. Four MISERICORDS are preserved. One of them has a fine figure of a crane. - C 18 Box Pews in the S aisle.- SOUTH DOOR with tracery, c15. - COMMUNION RAIL. With slender twisted balusters; C18. - STAINED GLASS. The whole E window consists of bits of old glass. - PLATE. Elizabethan Cup; Paten 1640.- MONUMENTS. Unknown couple of Early Tudor date, both represented dead, and both shrouded. Death is shown more frighteningly in him than in her. Good quality. - Brasses to Henry Everard d. 1524 and wife (26 in. figures; chancel floor) and to a Lady of c. 1530 (18 in. figure; nave floor). - ARMOUR suspended in the S chapel. The GATES to this chapel are of wood made to look like iron.

DENSTON. It has the charm of thatched cottages round a green, a fine old hall in a park, and a big 15th century church, with oak trees growing outside and with far older oak trees turned to great purpose within. The array of woodwork is remarkable, touched into life by the imagination of the old carvers. There are old altar rails with twisted balusters, an old door with beautiful tracery, a 17^th century altar table, and a panelled Jacobean pulpit with a battlemented trumpet stem; but the special distinction of Denston’s woodwork shows itself in the fine lofty roofs, on the screens, and on the pews and choir-stalls.

Only the lower part of the old chancel screen has survived, but it is a wonderful piece of work, with a beautiful cornice of foliage, tracery from which little flowers hang down, and a battlemented row of quatrefoils along the bottom. In the chancel are other traceried screens with cresting of foliage. On the ends of the choir-stalls various animals are carved, a hare, a haughty-looking dog, and other odd creatures and on a few misereres are flowers and foliage.

The pews in the nave are of two kinds, those against the walls being tall old  fashioned box-pews and those in the middle a fine set of low oak seats, all but two of them old. On their ends and elbows are animals such as rabbits or hares and dogs, many with heads raised as if to look up at their friends in the roof, where on the cornices are carvings of animals running, some strange and fanciful, but others quite clearly goats, hares, and dogs.

This little menagerie in a church is a fascinating one, but it is not the only attraction Denston has, for there are sights to be seen in stone and glass and brass. The porch is enriched by an elaborate fan-vaulted roof, a pinnacled niche, and two animal-headed gargoyles huge and hideous. The 15th century font has damaged carvings of the Seven Sacraments in which we can still distinguish a Crucifixion and a scene at a font, and below the corners of the bowl are figures of angels. Many fragments of old glass in the east window show two kneeling figures, a knight with raised arm, roses and lilies, shields, and conventional ornament; in modern glass in an aisle window are scenes of St Nicholas, one showing him as a bishop holding a model of the church, another appearing to sailors as they pray in a storm, and another kneeling before three little boys in a tub while a butcher looks on amazed at seeing them brought back to life.

On the nave floor is a brass portrait of Felice Drury as she was in the 15th century, with a veil headdress and a tight-waisted gown with a long sash. A very quaint pair of brasses in the chancel shows Henry Everard of 1524 and his wife, rather like two figures from an old pack of cards. She has a triangular headdress and a long heraldic cloak; he is in armour and has by him another head in a curious leaf-like design, perhaps a portrait of a second wife or daughter. Near the altar are two stone figures, shrouded and emaciated, lying under a marble table; and far more interesting as a nameless memorial is a group of things on one of the walls - a pair of lances, a funeral helm topped by a high-stepping horse, and a gay heraldic tabard on which three golden harts appear; it is known as the Robinson tabard.

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Stansfield, Suffolk

With no noticeboard, but lots of thieves beware signs, I had to Google All Saints to find its dedication and was unsurprised to find it locked. This is a shame as it's an attractive church, large and, if it follows the pattern of its immediate neighbours (Hawkedon & Denston), is probably rather interesting inside.

ALL SAINTS. Quite big; not in the village. Nave of c. 1300, W tower (with three niches round the W window) Dec. Chancel Dec. The side windows with tracery including the motif of the four-petalled flower. E end with two niches outside to the l. and r. of the window and a Piscina with ogee arch squeezed into the corner of the SE window.- PULPIT. Jacobean. - SCREEN. The base only. - CHEST. c 14; iron-bound. - STAINED GLASS. Fragments in the chancel. - PLATE. Elizabethan Cup and Cover; Patens 1666 and 1685.

STANSFIELD. It wanders up to a hilltop church looking over the countryside through the trees. Most of the church is 500 years old, though the work of Norman builders is in its walls, and the chancel (still with its consecration crosses) is 14th century. The fine tower, 75 feet high, and the lofty nave both have old roofs. Some of the windows have a medley of ancient glass. There is a Jacobean pulpit, a rough old ironbound chest, and panels of the ancient screen. The screen has rare carving in its spandrels, lovely flowers, a pair of birds, and two smiling lions.

The village had a queer parson in the 18th century, Samuel Ogden, described by a clever contemporary as exhibiting "a black and scowling figure, a lowering visage, embrowed by the honours of a sable periwig." He preached brilliant sermons in a growling voice, peppered with epigrams which were probably not understood by anybody in his congregation. He mourned the death of George the Second in Latin, heralded the wedding of George the Third in English, and announced the birth of the Prince of Wales in Arabic, but with all his eccentricities he was a popular preacher, and Dr Johnson, who admired his solemnity, said of him that "he fought infidels with their own weapons."

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Hawkedon, Suffolk

St Mary impresses as you approach on the narrow road from Somerton but stuns when you arrive at the village. Situated in a walled churchyard in the middle of the village green, dominating the village the church immediately attracts you.

The interior matches the exterior with interesting glass, poppyheads, a recycled Queen Anne royal arms (converted to GIIR) and a Norman font amongst other furnishings.

Whilst in many ways this is a modest church it is utterly charming and must be somewhere on my favourite list, not top ten but definitely somewhere.

ST MARY. The church lies in the middle of a wide green surrounded by houses. Its only noteworthy feature is its S porch with a brick top. Pretty trefoil frieze. The porch has an outer stoup. - FONT. Square, Norman, with angle-shafts and big coarse leaf motifs. - PULPIT. Plain, Jacobean. - SCREEN. Dado with fine tracery. The painted figures are almost obliterated. - STALLS. The front of the stalls with tracery survives on the S side. - BENCHES. A whole set, with poppy-heads and unusual seat details. - COMMUNION RAIL. With twisted balusters; C18. - PAINTING. Transfiguration; above the E window, almost unrecognisable *. - STAINED GLASS. Considerable fragments in the E window. - PLATE. Silver gilt Cup and Cover, undated; silver-gilt Flagon 1659. - BRASS. Civilian and Wife, c. 1510, 17 in. figures, much rubbed off.

* I saw no signs of either the wall painting or the brass.

HAWKEDON. We may look down on it from sloping fields and see the landscape with fair cottages and barns and haystacks huddled together, and a little 15th century church standing boldly on the green, watching over all. Within the lofty nave are old benches, their poppyheads adorned with flowers; the chancel has stalls with traceried panels from the ancient screen, and fragments of glass in the east window have flowers and heraldry, heads and saints, which have seen the passing of many centuries. In our own time has been discovered a queer medieval painting of the Transfiguration; it is above the east window. The font is the patriarch of the village, with foliage probably carved by a Norman mason, the gem of all hereabouts is Thurston Hall, a lovely timbered century house with many gables.

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