Lambourne, Essex

Although the exterior of St Mary & All Saints is fascinating - particularly the Norman north door - it was the interior I particularly wanted to see. Sadly the church was locked with no keyholder listed so this was not to be.

ST MARY AND ALL SAINTS. A church of quite exceptional charm and historical range. It consists of C12 nave and chancel and C15 belfry, but the exterior and interior were re-modelled boldly, naively and very successfully in the Early Georgian age. Norman windows on both sides, a plain Norman S doorway and a more elaborate N doorway, with one order of columns, an arch decorated by zigzag and a fragmentary tympanum diapered with carved stars. The other windows are C18, pointed in the nave, arched in the chancel. The W doorway with a canopy on carved brackets is dated 1726, the W gallery inside 1704 (the gift of an ironmonger of London). This hides much of the substructure of the belfry which outside is crowned by a leaded broach spire. But more unusual and ingenious is the way in which the C15 roof construction was hidden. The tie-beams are plastered and have Greek-key friezes along their undersides, and one king-post with its four-way struts is clothed in rich acanthus leaves. The chancel arch is low and broad, of segmental form and rests on thick coupled brackets. - FONT. C18, with baluster stem. - REREDOS with Corinthian pilasters and a Gothick ogee arch round the E window. — CHANCEL STALLS with fine openwork foliage carving. - PULPIT. Jacobean. - WALL PAINTING. Upper half of a large figure of St Christopher; C14, of high quality. - STAINED GLASS. Fine small panels of C17 Swiss or German glass. - MONUMENTS. Brass to Robert Barfott d. 1546 and wife, with children below; 18 in. figures; chancel floor. - Many C18 and C19 monuments to the Lockwood family, mostly unsigned, the most ambitious that of John Lockwood, erected in 1778. Largish figure of Hope with an anchor and an urn. By Joseph Wilton.

LAMBOURNE. It is at the edge of the ancient forest of Hainault, and from its high ground above the River Roding it looks across to Epping Forest running along the horizon. On this high ground stands the church, with two Norman doorways through which we pass no more. It is the glass of the east window that strikes us as we come in, a modern scene of Bethlehem in memory of Lord Lambourne. In another chancel window are small gems in quieter tones, a group of five panels brought from Basle, painted about 300 years ago. They represent the choice between Good and Evil, the Adoration of the Wise Men, the Incredulity of Thomas, Christ and Peter on the sea, and the Shepherds. A nave window is in memory of a man who loved to ride about these uplands, and lived to ride in that last Wild charge from which he never returned, against the Russian guns at Balaclava. He was George Lockwood, aide-de-camp to Lord Cardigan.

Engraved in brass are the portraits of a Tudor mercer with his wife and their family of nine sons and ten daughters; and there is a wall monument to Thomas Winniffe, who became Dean of St Paul’s and Bishop of Lincoln, and retired here during the Commonwealth. The pulpit is of his day, and some of the old stalls. There is a gallery of 1704.

Lambourne Hall was built in Queen Elizabeth’s day on the site where lived a warrior bishop who fought in Italy for the Pope and crushed the peasant rising against the taxes of Richard the Second. He was Henry le Despenser, of whom perhaps the best that can be said is that he was loyal to Richard after his fall.

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Havering atte Bower, Essex

The setting for St John the Evangelist is stunning; it sits on the green with an unusual semi detached tower but was, sadly, locked. Entirely Victorian but for all that this is pleasing building.

ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST. By Basil Champneys, 1875-8, that is an early work of his. Flint, with Dec windows and an arcade in the Essex tradition. A little freer only the S tower with an open E-W passage through, a higher stair turret, and openwork battlements. - FONT. C12, of Purbeck marble, octagonal, with two shallow blank arches on each side.

HAVERING-ATTE-BOWER. Kings and queens have walked here, and wherever we turn we come upon their memory. Here came Edward the Confessor seeking solitude, praying even that the nightingales might be silent. Here Edward the Third invested little Richard as his successor, and from here Richard as king set out for Pleshey with a band of men to trap his uncle Gloucester. Here, too, lived and died Henry the Fourth’s queen, Joan of Navarre, who sleeps at Canterbury.

The portrait of Joan on her tomb at Canterbury shows her as a woman of outstanding beauty, yet she was regarded as a witch, having been accused by her confessor of plotting the death of her stepson Henry the Fifth. Duchess of Brittany when her husband died, she became Regent for theeldest of her eight children. In 1403 she married Henry the Fourth, was crowned at Westminster, and was voted a dowry of 10,000 marks a year. When the king died Henry the Fifth seems to have continued to love his stepmother, though at Agincourt her son Arthur fought against him and was brought captive to her door. Four years later, however, came this horrible accusation and the Council deprived the Dowager Queen of all she possessed, taking her from Havering-atte-Bower to the security of Leeds Castle in Kent and Pevensey in Sussex. The charge appears now to have been a gross piece of injustice and corruption. Henry the Fifth on his deathbed wrote a letter setting his conscience free from blame for having taken the queen’s dowry, and so Joan was set free and what remained of her dowry was returned to her. For the remaining 15 years of her life she was held in high honour by Henry the Sixth.

Historians have always wondered why, in those days when witchcraft was a dread reality, the queen was never brought to trial. An examination of her household accounts (preserved at the Record Office and at John Rylands Library) reveals that Joan was exceedingly well furnished with food, luxuries, and servants during her three years of restraint; and it is now believed that the charge of witchcraft was trumped up so that the Exchequer, almost emptied by the wars in France, should receive the benefit of her dowry, which was a very substantial sum in those days.

The oldest site identifiable on which these royal homes stood is at Havering Park, where an 18th century house with a tower hides in a splendid group of trees. It was the place for the queens when their kings were hunting in Hainault Forest, and the last king to come was Charles Stuart, who was here to meet his wife’s mother, the notorious Marie de Medici. She hoped to settle in England, and Parliament could only be rid of her by a gift of ten thousand pounds.

It is possible still to make out the terraced walks of the royal gardens, and there stands in Pyrgo Park an oak 20 feet round which, if its story were true, would be one of the most famous trees in England, for the story is that under this tree Queen Elizabeth sat when they brought news that the Great Armada had gone down. We cannot vouch for it.

The big village green is on high ground from which the hills of Kent are sometimes seen. Beside the oldest of its elms are two relics of village life long ago, the stocks and whipping-post of about 1700. The church by the green is a handsome 19th century building, with heads of lions in the porch roof under the tower. The chancel is enriched with panelling, the font is Norman, and there is a memorial showing a sorrowing woman and a scene in a harvest field. The oldest gravestone is that of Thomas Cheek, who was Lieutenant of the Tower and died in 1688, the year of the Revolution which doomed the Stuart dynasty for ever.

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Chigwell Row, Essex

I set out expecting to find most of the churches on this venture into south Essex locked  but was pleasantly surprised to find the majority open. All Saints, however, was not but I was not unduly concerned as it is a Victorian creation and undoubtedly the interior would be as drab as the exterior - not the worst I've seen but nor the best.

ALL SAINTS. 1867 by Seddon ‘excellent of its sort’ (GR). Yellow stone with white stone dressings. NW tower, low three-bay entrance porch with wheel window above. The style of the church is C13. Inside arcades with thickly carved stiff-leaf capitals. The chancel was rebuilt in 1918-19.

CHIGWELL ROW. From its highest point we look out over the Thames valley to the Kent hills, and below us is the famous Hainault Forest where kings and abbots hunted and the LCC now reigns over 1100 acres of rolling fields and woodland. So close it is to London, yet all around is wild and natural, the nightingale sings in the thicket, and many big trees increase their girth undisturbed, though the giant of them all, the Monarch Fairlop Oak, fell a century ago, when it was 45 feet round the trunk and had 17 branches each as big as an ordinary oak.

Thomas Day, author of Sandford and Merton, used to come from his home near by to pay a formal call on the oak every first Friday in July, a practice started by his namesake Daniel, a Wapping pumpmaker who came here to collect rent. The pumpmaker gave his friends an annual feast of bean and bacon under this tent of leaves 300 feet round, and when he died in 1767 his coffin was fashioned from a fallen branch.

An avenue of limes and chestnuts leads to a house close to the 19th century church with a tower of our own century, and it seems fitting that this church among the trees should be graced with much fine woodwork. The east window pictures in lovely colours the opening of the worship of the Lamb. On the wall an arch-angel with grey-blue wings of enamel honours the names of the fallen.

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Cambridgeshire revisits

Last Friday I revisited seven Cambridgeshire churches viz: Landwade, Burwell, Landbeach, Hardwick, Harlton, Little Shelford and Great Shelford. I gained access to all of them except Little Shelford which was firmly locked.

Balcombe, Sussex

St Mary is not without interest but was locked so I have no idea what the interior is like!

Balcombe. Situated in Ashdown Forest and famous for its fine beech trees, a magnificent avenue leads from Lord Cowdray’s estate into the village.

Round the fine village hall is a gallery of paintings by Neville Lytton with scenes of World War I.

The church is tucked away in the corner of the lanes, ringed in by Scots firs and with wonderful views of the forest. It has a sturdy tower and shingled spire, and goes back to the 13th century. The heads of two kings and two queens hold up the chancel arch, and there is a panel of the Crucifixion in old glass. In the chancel are tablets to three rectors who between them held the living for 129 years.

One morning towards the end of the last century a labourer in a Balcombe field known as Stock Croft struck his spade against something hard while levelling for a tennis court. He brought up a 14th-century water-jug with 756 coins of silver and gold which had lain in the earth 500 years, and are now in the British Museum.

From Ardingly, the village is approached by grass-covered ways through the trees, and old houses dotted here and there. It was in the forest of Balcombe and Tilgate that Dr Mantell of Lewes discovered the remains of the Iguanodon. Dr Mantell combined a busy medical practice with the studies of a scientist and antiquary. His collections are now in the British Museum.

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Cuckfield, Sussex

Holy Trinity is fascinating; I had it pegged as a Victorian rebuild but apparently it's C15th, no doubt with later restoration. The vernacular  architecture in Sussex makes me see Victoriana in every church I visit down there - perhaps the Gothic cult emanated from there?

The exterior not so much but a fascinating graveyard and a great interior.

Cuckfield. It stands 400 feet high on the Forest Ridge, and has a park that lives in Harrison Ainsworth’s books. It has a fine 17th-century gateway at the end of an avenue of limes, a charming peep from the road. The house was the home of the Sergisons, one of whom, we read, was an honest man and an M.P. 200 years ago, and now lies in the church beneath a monument by Flaxman showing his portrait and the figure of Truth as a woman with a mirror.

The 17th-century house near the church, Ockenden, was the home of Timothy Burrell, who kept a diary of much curious information from 1683 to 1714. One of his ancestors was vicar here, and another went with Henry the Fifth to France with one ship, 20 men-at-arms, and 40 archers.

The church, in which are monuments by Flaxman and Westacott, is 15th century with a fine 13th  century tower crowned by a tall spire seen in many Sussex pictures. The columns on the south of the nave are from the 13th century church. The roof of the nave and chancel is very unusual, with 80 elaborately painted panels and painted beams supported by angels. The roof is 500 years old and has carved bosses with the badges of the Nevills.

In the church there are two brasses for one man, Henry Bower, who died in the year of the Armada (1588), and in both brasses he wears armour. In one his wife is kneeling with their five children.

The font has been here about 600 years. The chancel has some ancient woodwork, and there is a neatly carved modern pulpit.

On the wall of the tower is still hanging a printed card headed WATERLO0, which reads something like this:

A collection will be made in the church on Sunday 30th July after morning service for the benefit of the families of the brave men killed and the wounded sufferers of the British Army under the command of the Duke of Wellington in the signal victory of Waterloo, when the very smallest contribution will be acceptable.

From the churchyard is a magnificent view of the Downs with two famous windmills centred on the skyline, Jack and Jill of Clayton. A monument nine feet high commemorates Henry Kingsley, Charles Kingsley’s younger brother who was also a novelist best known for his book Ravenshoe about the Crimean campaign.

About the year 1490 Andrew Boorde was born in the pleasant country round the village of Cuckfield. He was a very intelligent lad, was brought up at Oxford, and persuaded the Carthusian monks to admit him into their order before he had reached the regulation age. In 1521 he was invited to become Suffragan Bishop of Chichester but he declined, and seven years later, after 20 years under the hard rule of the monks, he secured his freedom from his vows.

Andrew then spent two years travelling from university to university in Europe learning all he could about medicine. He came back to cure the Duke of Norfolk, who introduced him to Henry the Eighth.

After another journey abroad he returned home to find his royal master in full fury against his old Order. He followed his prior’s example, refused to bow to the King’s will, and was sent to the Tower with him; but a few days later he submitted, and looked to Thomas Cromwell as his patron. Cromwell made use of him, sending him abroad to test the opinion of Europe on his king’s actions. He wrote home that only the French King favoured him. On this journey he sent from Spain the first seeds of rhubarb to come here, with directions for their cultivation. But not for another 200 years was rhubarb grown in this country.

In I538 Andrew Boorde set out for the Holy Sepulchre, and on his way back settled at Montpelier to devote himself to the work by which he lives. There he wrote books on Health, but, most remarkable of all, he wrote the first printed guidebook to Europe. He called it the First Book of the Introduction of Knowledge, and in verse and prose tried to teach the languages, customs, and coinages of 39 countries. The first printed example of gipsy language is in this book. Shakespeare knew of it, and the lines in King John which end:

Nought shall make us rue

If England to itself do rest but true

echo Boorde’s description of Englishmen as bold, strong and mighty, who if they were true within themselves need not to fear although all nations were set against them.

The rest of his life was spent in Winchester and London practising medicine and writing. He wrote a book on astronomy and another travel book, this time on England. But these books did not suffice as outlets for his sparkling vivacity, and so this merry Andrew compiled those Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham which have delighted young and old to this day.

For some sad and forgotten offence Merry Andrew was put in the Fleet Prison, where he died in 1549.

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Hurstpierpoint, Sussex

I tried to visit Holy Trinity in April, as mentioned in my Albourne entry, but was thwarted by a wedding; this time it was closed due to refurbishment.

The exterior is not to my taste, but was built by Sir Charles Barry in 1834-5 so that might be a bit churlish, it's the interior It's the interior furnishings I'm interested in. Hopefully better luck next time.

Hurstpierpoint. The church built by Sir Charles Barry 1834-5 has a spire which can be seen for miles and the fine views stretch from Devil’s Dyke to Ditchling Beacon. At Wolstonbury Hill is an ancient camp.

In the church is a Norman font, two old figures on 14th-century tombs; and one of the east windows has some 15th-century medallions. One of the battered figures on the tombs is a 13th-century knight with shield and sword; the other, in armour with a lion at his feet, is Simon de Pierpoint, who was with Richard the First at the Siege of Acre.

There is a brass with a lifelike portrait of Bishop Hannington, born in the village and curate here for seven years.

In 1882 he headed a party of six missionaries to Uganda and at the age of 37 he was consecrated Bishop in charge of the Church Missionary Society’s Churches in Eastern Equatorial Africa. In October 1885 he was murdered by the natives when leading an expedition to open up a shorter route to Lake Victoria Nyanza.

At Hurstpierpoint lived Elizabeth Hitchener, a schoolmistress, who enters into the tempestuous career of Percy Bysshe Shelley. He became acquainted with her in 1811 when he paid a visit to his uncle, Captain Pilford, at Cuckfield.

With his habit of idealising his acquaintances, Shelley saw in Elizabeth a paragon of virtue, wisdom, and exalted genius, and embarked on an ecstatic year’s correspondence with her, which, opening on a high philosophical note, quickly centred about the personality of Elizabeth herself. She was 29 and Shelley was 19 and he was busy writing and talking about ‘the Necessity of Atheism and reform of society in general and his parents in particular. She was steeped in the stilted convention of the novels of the period.

From his “Dear Madam” she progresses rapidly to the dear friend, the dearest friend, and the “soul’s sister” of the poet, with whom he must share his fortune, once he attains it. She, he says, having raised herself from poverty to intellectual eminence, is his superior, and he sets himself the breathless task of emulating the simple splendour of her life.

The letters begin in June of I811; within two months Shelley has taken pity on the sorrows of pretty Harriet Westbrook, his sister’s schoolfellow, and has married her, a girl of 16; two months later he writes to Elizabeth the one full account we have of the unhappy marriage that was to drive Harriet to suicide. It does not make gallant reading.

Shelley has no secrets from Elizabeth; he discusses with her his family, his friends, his politics, and tells her the full story of the treachery of Hogg, who had been the brother of his soul. The letters grow in fervour and frequency; it is Elizabeth and not Harriet who has the bridegroom’s heart. Elizabeth, at ease in the diction of the current fiction, on reading of the baseness of Hogg, finds her blood frozen and is prompted “to forswear her kindred with mankind.”

The upshot of the correspondence is that Elizabeth must forsake her school and join the Shelley household, now including Harriet’s sister. This impossible group held together for five months and then was split by insatiable jealousies and by Shelley’s discovery that his goddess of wisdom was a very ordinary fallible creature, daily contact with whom dispels illusions and turns idolatry into indifference and indifference into hate.

The inevitable parting came, Elizabeth being compensated with a promise of £100 a year to make good the loss of her school. Shelley now transferred his affections to Mary Godwin. He was drowned in 1822, and in that year Elizabeth, then 40, published a poem on the Weald of Kent, which reflects her political opinions and fondly commemorates her friendship with the poet. Soon afterwards she married an Austrian officer, deposited Shelley’s letters and copies of her own with a solicitor, and vanished from knowledge in the country of her husband.

There is one letter of poor Harriet’s, written to Elizabeth from Dublin in 1812, which is curious enough to quote:

“I believe I have mentioned a new acquaintance of ours, a Mrs Nugent, who is sitting in the room now and talking to Percy about Virtue, while the poor of the city are drinking whiskey because they cannot afford bread and being hanged for stealing 13:4d.”

Hurstpierpoint has one of the three schools founded by Nathaniel Woodard, sister to those at Lancing and Ardingly. The huge east window in the panelled chapel has seven large lights with about 100 figures and there are six other stained-glass windows. There are benches with poppy heads and carved arm rests, a screen with a rich cornice and a pulpit with carved angels under canopies.

Intriguing, no?

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