Pevsner on Saffron Walden

ST MARY THE VIRGIN. With a total length of nearly 200 ft Saffron Walden is one of the largest parish churches of Essex. It 1s also one of the most lavishly designed - in a style entirely E from across the border, East Anglian of the Suffolk and even more the Cambridge brand. There are indeed certain features which make connexions with King’s College Chapel and Great St Mary more than likely. The whole church was re-built between c. 1450 and c. 1525, with the exception of a crypt partly below the S aisle and partly below the S porch, and  the arcades from the chancel into the N and S chapels, and from these chapels into the aisles. These parts are of the C13 and indicate a church with crossing and transept, narrower aisles and a S porch, corresponding to the crypt. The CRYPT is divided into four bays and has single-chamfered arches and ribs springing from semi-octagonal responds. The chancel arcades have quatrefoil piers and moulded capitals and arches. The rebuilding started with the chancel and ended with the chancel arch, the nave clerestory, alterations to the chancel chapels, and the completion of the tower.

The exterior of the church is as follows. The W tower has setback buttresses, decorated battlements, and at the corners big panelled polygonal pinnacles like turrets. The tall octagonal stone spire with crockets and two tiers of dormers, the lower one of two lights with a transome, was added in 1831 to the designs of Rickman & Hutchinson, the architects, at the same time, of New Court, St John’s College, Cambridge. The aisles, clerestoreys and chancel chapels of the church are all embattled and have pinnacles. There are large, wide four-light windows in both aisles with elaborate but not very interesting panel tracery, equally large windows of different, somewhat closer panel tracery in the chancel chapels, a C19 five-light E window dating from the restoration by Butterfield in 1876, and three-light clerestory windows. At the E end of the nave clerestory are two polygonal turrets with crocketed stone roofs clearly dependent on King’s College Chapel as completed in 1515. The S porch is of two storeys, also embattled and pinnacled. It has an upper window of four lights. The N porch has only one storey. That is the only external difference between the two sides.* The church lies indeed in such a commanding position, on a hill, higher than the surrounding streets, that it can be seen as prominently from the N as the S.

Now for the interior. The arcades of seven bays are very tall with lozenge-shaped piers enriched by four attached shafts and with hollows and finer connecting mouldings in the diagonals. Only the shafts towards the arches have capitals. The shafts to the nave run on unbroken (except for a thickening at the main horizontal course) to the springers of the roof and only there have capitals. The diagonal members have no capitals at all. The spandrels of the arches are closely decorated with tracery as at Great St Mary’s Cambridge and of course also at Lavenham and other Suffolk churches. The horizontal course has fleurons, the clerestory mullions are carried down in panels to the string course. The roofs are original everywhere, low-pitched and adorned variously with bosses, tracery, badges etc. As for other enrichments, the three bays of the N aisle have blank wall-arcades with different intricately carved heads. Especially the easternmost bay is worth studying. The figures in the spandrels represent King David, St John, Doubting Thomas, the Virgin, the Scourging of Christ, the Agony in the Garden. They are clearly earlier than the aisle and must for some reason be re-used material - FONT. Octagonal, C15 to early C16, with quatrefoils and shields. - SCREEN. 1924 by Sir Charles Nicholson. - ORGAN casa. The one side still in the pretty Gothick state of 1825, the other re-done by Bodley in 1885. - PAINTING. Copy of Correggio’s “The Day” by the Rev. W. Peters. -SCULPTURE. Small piece of a C15 alabaster altar in the S porch, N wall. - STAINED GLASS. Good Shepherd, Samaritan etc. S aisle, 1858, whom by ? - Four Evangelists S aisle by Lavers & Barraud, 1859. - N aisle windows (East Anglian Saints, Four Musicians) by Powell. - N Chapel E window by Burlison & Grylls, 1904. - PLATE. Silver-gilt Cup, Paten, and Flagon of 1685; silver gilt Cup and Paten given 1792.

MONUMENTS. All the brasses with figures are collected against the N wall of the N aisle: three Women of c. 1480-90; Priest, perhaps Richard Wild Jr 1484; Civilian of c. 1500; Civilian and wife of c. 1510; Woman of c. 1530; Civilian of c. 1530; Thomas Turner d. 1610 and wife. - Monument to Thomas Lord Audley, Lord Chancellor, d. 1544. Black marble tomb-chest decorated with wreaths round medallions and ornamented pilasters in the taste of the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey; back-plate with splendidly carved coat of arms between pilasters (S chapel). Done probably by the same workshop responsible for the Vyvyan monument at Bodmin, Cornwall, the effigy of Lord Marney at Layer Marney, the Oxford Monument at Castle Hedingham and the North Monument at Kintling, Cambridgeshire. - Tomb-chest for John Leche d. 1521, with lid and inscription but no figures (N chapel). - One side of a tomb-chest, N wall, N aisle.

* Internally the S porch vault is more elaborate than that of the N: a two-bay fan-vault with two bosses (cf. Cambridge customs of the early C16) as against a simple one-bay tierceron vault of star shape.

Simon Jenkins on Accessibility

Access

Accessibility is the single most vexing topic among church enthusiasts. Nothing is more infuriating after a long drive or even longer walk than to feel the cold, unyielding iron of the handle of a locked door. This guide would be useless if readers did not feel its churches could be entered and enjoyed in person. I found roughly half my recommendations were open at reasonable times of the day and year. Most of the rest had a key at an easily discoverable location. Of those that were locked, most indicated the location of the key, though not always the presence of the keyholder. As a general rule I set myself a limit of half an hour to gain entry, with the aid of the latest siege equipment, usually including a car, a mobile phone and a copy of Crockford’s Clerical Directory. If a church resisted even such assault, I have left it out. In particular, a church that demands prior written notice of a visit, as if it were a private house, is in my book ‘not open to the public’.

On this subject the Church of England is institutionally unsympathetic. Almost no church has a sign outside giving opening hours, which might at least preempt a fruitless walk to the door. Vicarage phone numbers, if they are publicised, are frequently on answering machines. Notices giving the address of the keyholder, when they exist, are often illegible and lack a map. I know of no diocese that publishes a list of opening times and keyholders’ addresses, even those, such as Lincoln, that produce admirable guides to their churches. (The Open Churches Trust does publish opening times in London.) The buildings in this book are all outstanding and eagerly sought by a growing band of enthusiasts. None should be inaccessible.

The customary excuse for locking a church is the threat of vandalism and the cost of insurance. Vandalism can be most distressing for those victimised. Fortification may be justified in a few inner city churches, though even they capitulate to vandalism far too easily. Most insurers do not insist on churches being locked, only on their being periodically supervised. In my experience, the chief difference between an accessible and a shut church is not its location or the value of its contents but the attitude of the vicar and churchwardens. Some are true enthusiasts who rightly regard the opening of their church as a pastoral and community obligation. To them and their frequent welcome, I offer heartfelt thanks. To a minority of vicars, sadly a substantial one, I and therefore the general public was a nuisance to be kept at bay.

To close a church is not to forestall trouble - closed churches are almost as vulnerable as open ones - but to let the vandal win. Churches have been ‘robbed’ throughout history: this was once a common reason for deportation to Australia. Rural England is nowadays wealthy enough to afford a keyholder or ‘dropper-in’, or at least the elementary courtesy of clearly displayed instructions on access. One effective defence, security cameras, is not expensive. But no security is as effective as a regular flow of welcomed visitors. A parish church is a church open to all. A church shut except for services is the private meeting house of a sect.

In return, I believe that visitors should pay. Nobody should visit and enjoy a church without contributing to the cost of that enjoyment. I cannot see why popular churches should not charge something for entry, as most cathedrals now do. The only churches in this list that charge are Stratford-upon-Avon for its chancel, and (half-heartedly) the magic shrine of St Clether’s Well

(Cornwall), where a faded 1913 notice still requests threepence to be left on the altar. Churches used to be less shy about asking for donations. As for how much to leave, I can only cite the chapel at Swell (Somerset). Even before the days of inflation and decimalisation, it exhorted visitors:

If aught thou hast to give or lend,

This ancient parish church befriend.

If poor but still in spirit willing

Out with thy purse and give a shilling,

But if its depths should be profound

Think of God and give a pound.

 © Simon Jenkins, England’s Thousand Best Churches.

Whepstead, Suffolk

St Petronilla left so little an impression, apart from the fact that, unusually for these parts, it was locked, that I failed to create an entry after I'd visited. Cement rendered, an ugly squat tower but a nice site and churchyard - I don't think I missed much.

ST PETRONILLA. A rare dedication. Fragmentary W tower with three niches round the W window. Nave and chancel c. 1300 (intersected and Y-tracery). But inside, the imposts of the chancel arch with nook-shafts are Norman. Otherwise only to be noted how the rood-stair climbs up in the window recess (cf. Wingfield). - PULPIT. Made up of Elizabethan panels, including some marquetry work. - STAINED GLASS. Fragment in a chancel S window. - PLATE. Silver-gilt Paten 1725; silver-gilt Cup, said to be Parisian, c. 1810.

WHEPSTEAD. Here are cottages with green lawns, a big pond, and a leafy lane bringing us to an ancient church in the trees, by a splendid farmhouse. The spire on the 15th century tower was blown down in the great storm which swept over England the night before Cromwell died, but the man and woman over the doorway of the porch have kept their vigil for 600 years. Some of the stones in the walls are Saxon, but the Normans remade the church, and there are Norman stones in the doorway of the narrow spiral stairs leading to the gallery in the tower. The nave and chancel are mostly 13th century; the chancel arch has been rebuilt in Norman style. Near the altar is the stone of a 14th century priest. The pulpit has old carved panels. By the roodloft stairs is a window with beautiful old heraldic glass, and there are other ancient fragments, with two tiny heads of priests, in the chancel. A window to a rector of our own day shows St Petronilla in green and red with St Peter in blue, and there is a fine blue window in the tower.

This is the only church in England to St Petronilla, and there may never be another. At the time of the dedication she was believed to be the daughter of St Peter, but in 1873 her sarcophagus was found under a half-buried church in Rome, with an inscription showing that she was the daughter of a Roman noble. She suffered martyrdom with two of her servants, to one of whom, Nereus, Paul sends salutations in his Epistle to the Romans. Petronilla now sleeps in St Peter’s in Rome.

Flickr.

Pevsner on Long Melford

HOLY TRINITY. EXTERIOR. Long Melford church is one of the most moving parish churches of England, large, proud, and noble - large certainly with its length inside nave and chancel of 153 ft, proud certainly with the many commemorative inscriptions which distinguish it from all others, and noble also without question with the aristocratic proportions of the exterior of its nave and aisles. The characteristic feature is the two tall transomed three-light windows for each bay, repeated by the tall transomed clerestory windows. So many thin, wiry perpendiculars are rare even in the Perpendicular style. Once this has been said, attention must however be drawn to the many curious impurities which detract from the pleasure one experiences in approaching along the relatively narrow passage from the s. The E chapel of the S aisle (and it is the same on the N side) has different window tracery and a different rhythm, two wider and between them one narrow window above the priest’s doorway. Moreover, the projecting chancel has no clerestory and instead an exceedingly tall window to the S (and N), and as this has a two-centred arch, but all the clerestory windows have four-centred ones, the unity is disturbed here. Then there is the strange Lady Chapel - a long, low attachment with three parallel pitched roofs, that make no sense with the very flat pitches of the church roofs and cut painfully into the E window. Bodley, who in 1898-1903 replaced the C18 brick tower by one designed by himself, knew more about purity than the builders of the late C15. This tower suits the position and proportions of the nave and aisles better than the late C15 E parts.

The dates of Long Melford can be defined more precisely than that. The church which existed was rebuilt between c. 1460 and c. 1495. Of the former church no more survives than the C14 piers of the five W bays of the arcade. They have four major and four minor shafts and unmistakable moulded capitals. Externally nothing is older than c. 1460. The progress of the building can be followed by the detailed inscriptions. These inscriptions record the names of many who gave money to these buildings, and it is illuminating to see how such a major building enterprise was jointly conducted by the rich men of the prosperous little town, clothiers presumably all of them. The inscriptions run as follows: clerestory N side:

Pray for ye sowlis of Roberd Spar’we and Marion his wife, and for Thom’ Cowper, and Ma’el his wif, of quos goodis Mastr Gilis Dent, John Clopton, Jon Smyth, and Roger Smyth, Wyth ye help of ye weel disposyd me’ of this (Town) dede these se’on archis new repare anno domini milesimo cccc (81).

There was in addition an inscription on the same side which was damaged in the fall of the tower and ran as follows:

Pray for ye sowl of Mastr Giles Dent, late parson of Melford, of whose goodis, John Clopton, Maist; Robt’ Coteler and Thomas Elys dede ys arch make and glase, and ye ruf over ye Porch anno domini 14 (81).

Inside, on the N arcade, there was also an inscription, now gone, recording the fact that John Clopton built the first four piers from the E. Outside, on the S clerestory, it says:

Pray for the sowles of Rogere Moryell, Margarete and Kateryn his wyffis, of whose goodis the seyd Kateryn, John Clopton, Mastr Wyllem Qwaytis and John Smyth, ded these VI archis new repare; and ded make the tabill at the hye awtere, anno domini millesimo quadringentesimo octogesio p’mo. Pray for ye sowl of Thomas Couper ye wych ye II arche dede repare. Pray for ye sowl of Law. Martin and Marion hys wif.

Over the N porch the inscription is:

Pray for ye sowlis of William Clopton, Margy and Margy his wifis, and for ye sowle of Alice Clopton and for John Clopto’, and for alle thoo sowlis’ yt ye seyd John is bo’nde to prey for.

On the lower windows on the S side from E to W:

Pray for ye sowl of Rog: Moriell of whos goods yis arch was made. Pray for ye sowle of John Keche, and for his Fad’ and Mod’ of whose goodis yis arche was made. - Pray for ye sowle of Thom’s Elys and Jone his wife, and for ye good sped of Jone Elys maks h’ of. - Pray for ye sowl of John Pie and Aly his wife, of whos good yis arch was made and yes twey wy’sdowy’ glasid. Pray for ye soulis of John Distr and Alis, and for ye good sped of John Distr and X’pian maks h’ of.

On the lower windows of the S chapel:

Pray for ye soulis of Lawrens Martyn and Marion his wyffe, Elysabeth Martyn a’d Jone, and for ye good estat of Richard Martyn and Roger Martyn and ye wyvis and alle ye childri of whose goodis . . . . . . . . . . . .made anno Dni millesimi ccccLxxxIIII.

Finally, roumd the Lady Chapel:

Pray for ye sowle of John Hyll, and for ye sowle of John Clopton Esqwyer, and pray for ye sowle of Rychard Loveday, boteleyr wyth John Clopton, of whose godys this Chappell ys imbaytylled by his excewtors. Pray for the soulis of William Clopto’, Esqwyer, Margery and Marg’y his wifis and for all ther parentis and childri’, and for ye sowle of Alice Clopton, and for John Clopton and for all his childri’ and for all ye soulis that the said John is bonde to p’y for, which ded yis Chapel new repare anno domo mcccclxxxvi. Christ’ sit testis hec me no’exhibuisse ut merear laudes, sed ut spiritus memoretur.

So this gives us 1481 for the clerestory, 1484 for the S chapel, and 1496 for the Lady Chapel.

We can now turn to a more detailed description. The sides have eighteen clerestory windows each, corresponding to twelve lower windows. Flint, with, on the S side - which is of course the show-front towards the green and the village - much flushwork decoration. The decoration does not obtrude itself, which is another proof of the nobility and purity of the designer. The N side is simpler and has no flushwork. It has no porch either. S porch, tall, of two bays, with two-light windows. On the N side at the E end of the aisle a brick rood-stair turret. The chancel projects one bay, and behind it lies a narrow Vestry. This ends in line with the E end of the Clopton Chantry on the N side and a low second Vestry on the S side. This looks like a corridor to the Lady Chapel, which is quite an independently designed, much lower building. It has throughout three-light windows with depressed arches and no tracery at all. Flushwork decoration here is less reticent. The E end is curious, because the ‘nave’ seems to be represented not by one big E window, but by two not at all distinguished from the others. There is an internal reason for this, as we shall see.

INTERIOR. Nine-bay arcades and the chancel bay. The earlier W bays have already been described. The others are similar but slimmer and quite characteristically turned Perp. The upper parts are Perp throughout. Roll mouldings to the shafts which rise up to the roof principals. The wall below the clerestory windows is panelled so as to seem a blank continuation of the windows. For the Clopton Chantry see below. The Lady Chapel is internally very strange. It is as though the whole was a shrine surrounded by a processional way. It seems externally a five-bay building with aisles. In fact it is a three-bay sanctuary with, instead of aisles, an ambulatory on the W and E sides as well. So the altar has a solid E wall behind, and the first bay is separated from the second by a wall with a doorway (with fleuron decoration) and two two-light windows. Big frieze with shields in quatrefoils above this group. The arcade of the ‘nave’ or shrine is low, but above it there are blank panelling and niches with canopies. One must think of all this in its original gay colouring to appreciate it fully. Exquisite cambered roofs, especially that of the ambulatory, where the beams rest on corbels with little figures. The ambulatory character is expressed by the four corner bays having beams set diagonally.

FURNISHINGS. FONT. Octagonal, Perp, simple, of Purbeck marble, which is rare in Perp Suffolk. - REREDOS. 1879. - PULPIT with figure carving of about the same time. - SEAT (nave, S side). Given in 1948. Spanish; from Granada Cathedral. With the arms of the Reyes Catolicos, i.e. of c. 1500. - SCULPTURE. Fine alabaster relief of the Adoration of the Magi, the Virgin reclining on a couch. Probably late C14. - STAINED GLASS. All late C15. A unique collection of kneeling donors in the W windows of the aisles. In the E window St Andrew, Pieta, St and St Edmund, with small kneeling donors at their feet, two more saints with small kneeling donors, and two large kneeling donors. Over the N doorway small panel with Lily Crucifixus. Many bits in the N aisle tracery. The glass is probably Norwich made. Later bits also in the N aisle. One S window signed by Ward & Hughes, 1885. - PLATE. Set 1775. MONUMENTS. The capital monument is the CLOPTON CHANTRY. It is a whole room E of the N aisle E chapel, which was the Clopton Chapel. From there it is approached by a tiny vestibule or priest’s room with a stone fan-vault so flat that it is almost a panelled ceiling. The room has a fireplace. The chantry has a seven-light E window and towards the chancel the monument to John Clopton d. 1497. This is a plain sturdy tomb-chest of Purbeck marble with cusped quatrefoils containing shields. No effigy at all. Ogee arch open to the chancel. In the vault beneath this arch and above the tomb-chest paintings, especially a Christ carrying a staff with a cross. Also kneeling figures of John Clopton and his wife. To this arch correspond, as part of the same composition, the Sedilia and Piscina. Above this a frieze of shields all along the wall in foiled fields (cf. Lady Chapel), and then a frieze of niches with canopies. Flat ceiling, the cornice painted with a long poem by Lydgate, rope and foliage between the sheets of writing. In the Clopton Chapel proper, that is the N chancel chapel, a series of Brasses: Lady with long hair, c. 1420, 18 in. figure. - Civilian, c. 1420, 19 in. - Lady with butterfly head-dress, c. 1480, 3 ft. 1 Another Lady with butterfly head-dress, same date, same size, probably Mrs Harleston, John Clopton’s half-sister. - Francis Clopton d. 1558, 3 ft. 1 In the same chapel monument to Sir William Clopton d. 1446, father of John Clopton. Knight on a tomb-chest with quatrefoil decoration. Low arch, almost like a lintel; cresting. In the S chapel (or Martyn Chapel or Chapel of the Jesus Guild) two Martyn Brasses of 1615 and 1624 (the Martyns owned Melford Place) and a simple Purbeck tomb-chest with three shields in lozenges. - Finally, in the chancel the grandest monument in the church, to Sir William Cordell d. 1580 who built Melford Hall and was Speaker and Master of the Rolls. Alabaster. Recumbent effigy on a partly rolled-up mat. - Front and back and to the l. and r. black columns carrying two coffered arches. Back wall with two figures in niches; walls also between the back and the columns to his head and feet. They are pierced by arches with two more figures. The four represent Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude.

Little Wigborough, Essex

St Nicholas is a pretty little church situated in the grounds of Copt Hall which contains little of interest but does contain a strut from the Zeppelin L33.

On the night of 23/24 September 1916, Zeppelins set out to bomb London. These were newly designed and built Zeppelins, superior to the Zeppelins which had previously flown over England.

Zeppelin L33 was damaged by anti-aircraft fire and was forced to land at New Hall Farm, Little Wigborough, only twenty yards from a nearby house. The occupants of the house, a man, his wife and three children, ran for their lives as the airship hit the ground. The crew ran from the craft (the only time armed Germans set foot in England during the war)and shortly after it exploded.

Special Constable Edgar Nicholas, who lived nearby, made his way to the scene and came across the crew walking along a road. They identified themselves as the Zeppelin crew and he arrested them. Other officers later joined them and the local constable, PC 354 Charles Smith, arranged for the prisoners to be handed over to the military to be taken off to a prisoner-of-war camp.

The airship was the subject of great attention by spectators, but the guarding of it was expeditiously arranged by the military as parts of the airship were still relatively undamaged. Indeed, she was later studied in great detail and many aspects of her design were incorporated into later British airship designs.

It also has a monument to Zeppelina Williams 1916-2004. She was born shortly after L33 crashed in Great Wigborough and the doctor who delivered suggested the name to commemorate the occasion!

ST NICHOLAS. Late C15 nave, chancel and narrower W tower heightened insufficiently in 1888. The S side lies open towards the estuary of the Blackwater. Inside a nice display of Victorian church ironwork; Communion Rail, Lectern, Font Cover support - all scrolly and artistic.

LITTLE WIGBOROUGH. Its medieval stone church has little enough to keep it company -  few cottages, a farm or two in fields running into marshland penetrated by creeks of the Blackwater river, that is all.

Yet it has a memory of something that had hardly ever happened in the world before when it happened here, for one September night in the Great War, when the Zeppelins were striking terror all over England, one of them came down, spread its 680 feet across the farm track leading to this church, and set up such a blaze as was never seen before in these flat Essex fields. It was the L33, one of a fleet of 12 Zeppelins which raided this country on September 23, 1916. Struck while trying to reach London, she at first tried to cross the sea, flying low and chased by our planes; then she came down, thundering like a score of goods trains and settling a few yards from a wooden cottage. The 22 Germans in her shouted a warning to the terrified inhabitants and then set fire to the Zeppelin, using their incendiary bombs; so fierce was the fire that the paint of the cottage was scorched. Carrying one of the crew who was wounded, the Germans threw away their arms and marched on the road towards Colchester, where they met a constable, to whom they made formal surrender.

Flickr.

Virley, Essex

Lying just over a mile west of the Wigboroughs, Virley is a small village that appears to owe its name to its Norman owner at the time of the Domesday Book, Robert de Verli. St Mary's Church at Virley was one of the buildings most heavily damaged by the earthquake of 1884 with towers, parapets and roofs partially collapsing. Whilst St Mary the Virgin in Salcott was rebuilt St Mary, which was already in poor repair before being finished off by the earthquake, was left ruined.

More information can be found here.

ST MARY. A ruin, but a ruin kept visually attractive. The remaining walls all in ivy, herbaceous borders inside the nave. The only feature of strictly architectural interest is the chancel arch. Transitional style, i.e. round arch with two slight chamfers, resting on semi-octagonal responds.

The Hertfordshire Spike

Generally Hertfordshire was lacking stone to build spires so adopted an alternative - a thin leaded spirelet which was built from within the parapet of the tower. This style of building became so popular in the County that such spirelets are known as 'Hertfordshire Spikes'.

Of course this explanation is a pragmatic solution but the real origins of the Herts spike lie in antiquity. When Christianity took hold in Hertfordshire and the first church architects were looking for sites it transpired that the Devil pre-owned all the prime locations. A meeting was arranged between the site owner and church leaders to negotiate a land takeover agreement.

After a lengthy parley the Devil agreed to hand over his lands so long as the churches built on them had no steeples - he can only enter a church through the tower, and leave it by the north door, but a steeple prevents his entry.

The architects, being wily, replaced the steeples with spikes on which he would be impaled if he attempted entry and thus circumvented the deal and so lawyers were born.

Spikes appear elsewhere but they're a Hertfordshire specialty.