Herne, Kent

Taking advantage of a child collection from Canterbury yesterday I visited St Martin where my 1st cousin 5x removed was buried - I didn't find his grave but did find a monument to his grandson who died aged 2 months in 1874 and also Sir William Thornhurst d. 1606 who also appears in the family tree.

I liked the exterior - it's a stolid foursquare building, a maiden aunt of a church. Unfortunately the interior is a disappointment being over-restored and over carpeted - having said that I rather enjoyed it since, architecturally speaking, it's so diffeent from what I'm used to.

ST MARTIN. The avenue of chestnuts to the N porch almost blots out the view of the church from the road. Pierce the veil, however, and there is a spacious early C14 building, the walls of ragstone, septaria, and flints looking like currant cake. Nave, with aisles continued as chapels almost to the E end of the chancel. Outstandingly fine and substantial NW tower, broad for its height, with angle buttresses carried up to the top. Three stages, the lowest banded with squared flints and ragstone blocks, and lit by a large three-light window on a deeply undercut string-course. Intersecting tracery over trefoiled ogee lights. Within the intersections, encircled ogee cinquefoils at the lowest level, then ogee quatrefoils, and a trefoil at the apex. Pairs of tall trefoiled lancets higher up. Internally the tower is vaulted, the filleted ribs descending to shaftlets on splendidly lively heads. The tower is open on arches to the E and S, and these are given triple circular shafts, one forward and two recessed, with continuous filleted double-wave mouldings between them. Wave mouldings on the arches above the shafts. Altogether the effect is very strong and sumptuous. Colossal moulded relieving arch towards the nave, to reduce the wall thickness, on lion heads and trefoiled squinches. The rest of the church is not a match for the tower, though the N arcade seems to be of the same date, with the same arch-moulding, on slender octagonal piers. S arcade a little later, of five bays, the capitals less undercut, two hollow chamfers round the arches. Mutilated early C14 chancel arch. Chancel chapels, with two-bay arcades, of the same form as the nave S arcade. Cinque-foiled PISCINA; three embattled SEDILIA, with ogee arches foiled nine times. E window of five lights, grand in scale and a most interesting transitional pattern from Dec to Perp. The main feature is a large circle enclosing six ogee quatrefoils in circles. That is the vocabulary of the tower window; but the side pieces are filled up not with mouchettes but with vertical trefoiled panelling. This, like all the N and S windows, has been renewed. The pattern of the N and S aisle window tracery is Dec. Nave W window equally large, with a transom, a Perp insertion. Perp remodelling of the S chapel. The two-storeyed N porch with two stoups can be documentarily dated 1350. Late Perp N chapel windows. - FONT. Perp. Thick, panelled stem. The shields of arms on the bowl date it c.1405—14. - STALLS. All c19, except seven fine poppyheads. — STAINED GLASS. The ‘Suffer the little children’ window of c.1874 in the N aisle shows C19 glass-painting at a nadir to which it rarely sank. - ARMOUR. Fine helm in the chancel. - PLATE. Almsdish, inscribed 1726, but probably C17. - BRASSES. Peter Halle, c.1430. Knight and lady clasping hands. 34 in. figures. - John Darley. 36 in. figure, c.1460, of a priest in academicals. ‘Flos philosophorum’ is what the inscription calls him. - Cristine Phelip d. 1470. Delicately engraved figure, 28 in. long. - (Elizabeth Fyneux d. 1539. Local work.) - John Sea 1- 1604. 22 in. figures. - MONUMENTS. Sir William Thornhurst d. 1606. Small alabaster hanging monument with the usual kneeling figures. - Robert Knowler d. 1631. Heavy tablet. Small kneeling figures. Segmental pediment. - Christopher Milles d. 1700. Standing architectural monument. Putti at the top hold up curtains from the cartouche of arms. - Samuel Milles d. 1727. Fine black and white sarcophagus. Back0plate missing. - Gilbert Knowler d.1737. White and yellow marble tablet. Scrolly open pediment on Ionic columns. - Charles Milles d. 1749. Oval tablet, probably erected after 1773. - Nicholas Ridley, bishop and martyr. He was once vicar of Herne. Memorial erected in 1857, carved by Seale to Ashpitel’s design. Statue in a canopied niche.

HERNE. Four things has the snug village of Herne that every traveller will wish to see: a tower, a screen, a chair, and a collection of brasses.

The chair is that of Nicholas Ridley, who sat in it when he was vicar here. He made this church famous by ordering that the Te Deum should be sung in English, and in these walls there was first heard in the music of our mother tongue those majestic words:

We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.
All the Earth doth worship Thee, the Father everlasting.
O Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine heritage.
Govern them and lift them up for ever.

This beautiful church was one of the last things that came into Ridley’s mind when he gave away his shirt to some poor man and walked into the fire at Oxford. Farewell, Herne," he said, "thou worshipful and wealthy parish, the first whereunto I was called to minister God’s word. I bless God for all that godly virtue the Lord did kindle in the life and heart of that godly woman there, my Lady Fineaux." She lies near the altar where he stood so often, and her brass is over her. It shows her in a flowing dress lined with fur, carrying a gold ball for holding spices to keep off plague. Her lord lies in the nave at Canterbury, having been a man of some importance in his day. His family came to England in a curious way. An English officer imprisoned in the French wars made friends with his gaoler, who helped him to escape on being promised some lands in Kent. He came home and the Frenchman followed him. His name was Fineaux, and he settled near Herne. There are four other brasses in the chancel and the lady chapel. On the right of the altar, by Lady Fineaux’s brass, is that of John Darley, who was vicar in 1450; he has a lion at his feet. Sir John Sea, who lived in the time of Shakespeare, is here with two wives; Lady Phelip, whose husband supplied the jewels for the coronation of Edward the Fourth, is on a brass of 1470, with much rich embroidery and a girdle and rosary; and the brass of Sir Peter and Lady Halle was made in 1420.

The church is worthy of its beautiful possessions. Its nave and its aisles have all good screens. The ancient screen is very finely carved with tracery, a grape vine running along the top, and the modern screen is a splendid copy. The 14th-century font is beautiful with heraldic panels. There is an attractive stone figure of Ridley in a canopied niche. The chancel has magnificent choir stalls, with misereres. On a wall above the sanctuary kneels Sir William Thornhurst, Captain of the Guard of the Archbishop’s palace at Ford, where Cranmer retired on the death of his royal master. He has been here since 1606, and has a friendly little dog on his helmet, which hangs above his tomb.

The church has a deed going back to 1154, an Elizabethan almsdish, and a brass inscription to Samuel Weller May before which thousands of visitors have stopped. He was a friend of Dickens, who borrowed his Christian names and made it impossible for the world to forget them.

The architectural gem of Herne is its flint tower - one of the very few perfect things in the world, said John Ruskin. Inside and out it is beautiful. It has a vaulted roof with a fine stone face at each corner, and a window extremely unusual and remarkably graceful.

Outside, it crowns the west end of the church as a thing of unforgettable beauty. It rises in layers of brown stone and black flint approached by an avenue of horse chestnuts. Close by is a fine old yew, with a sculpture of the Baptism of Christ looking down on it.

Herne has a windmill which has been a lovely sight from the Island of Sheppey for something like two hundred years.

I feel a re-visit is in order since I saw none of the brasses (although they may have been over-carpeted) nor the misericords - this is OK as I'll be going back down in a month.

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Comberton, Cambridgeshire

Tucked well away from the main part of the village I was sure St Mary would be locked but to my delight found it open. The exterior is stunning - I will admit that the weather helped - but the interior is a revelation. As with most churches in this part of Cambridgeshire it was severely puritanised, probably following a visit by Dowsing, but retains an outstanding collection of C15th benches. It's plain, it's simple but is also outstanding.

Pevsner: ST MARY. E.E. chancel (one N lancet), W tower of the early c 14, S arcade and narrow S aisle probably also early c 14. (e.g. the S doorway and the renewed Dec windows). The piers are octagonal, the arches double-chamfered. The chancel arch goes with the S arcade. The N arcade on the other hand is a Perp alteration with four-centred arches. Nice N aisle roof. Late Perp windows. Perp clerestory. - ROOD SCREEN with four-light openings. The main arch is ogee with tracery above, sub-divided into two arches which are again subdivided. - BENCHES. Few poppy-heads - one showing a combat of knights. Ends, backs, and fronts traceried.

COMBERTON. Two items of underground news we came upon here: a buried Roman house and a playground under a playground. It was a wealthy Roman who built the house at Fox’s Bridge by the Bourn Brook, for it had a heated bath and must have been occupied for generations. Roman coins of 300 years were dug up in its foundations. A relic of a later time was the curious maze, one of the odd features of our countryside in medieval days, which was at least 400 years old when it was covered over by the school playground.

The old thatched cottages by the Tit Brook remain to make a pleasant picture, and away on the little hill by the fields an old church looks over the plain to the towers and spires of Cambridge. Its warm cobble walls stand out against its plastered 14th century tower, where the monk and the devil look from beside the west window. Four medieval folk look down inside the tower, two by the richly moulded arch. The many 15th century benches catch the eye with their traceried ends, and among their few worn poppyheads is one carved with lions and another with two men fighting. The medieval roof of the north aisle has carved beams, three old stalls and a new one have angels on them, and the rood stairs still lead to the top of the 15th century screen. The 700-year-old font has a Jacobean cover. A 13th century arch and a 14th century priest’s doorway open into the chancel, where are two lovely medieval windows with leaf tracery, one with fragments of old glass and at its side the smiling face of a lady of 600 years ago.

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Barton, Cambridgeshire

St Peter plays host to a collection of rather dilapidated wallpaintings which, although very faded, still hold a wealth of interest. As well as the paintings there's a fine rood screen, a nice brass dating to 1593 and much else of interest, On top of that it's a lovely building in a fantastic location.

Pevsner is rather less enamoured: ST PETER. Of brown rubble, aisleless. The W tower E.E., the rest too much restored to be of particular interest. The window tracery, renewed correctly (see the Cole and Relhan drawings), points to the late c I3 and early c 14. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with blank arcading of the stem and plain bowl. - ROOD SCREEN. Traces of colour on the dado. One light openings with thickly cusped and crocketed ogee arches and little tracery above. - PULPIT. Dated 1635. The tester (with pendants) preserved. The decoration of the bowl characteristic of the date, i.e. no longer Jacobean, and not yet classical. - WALL PAINTINGS. Too defaced to be a pleasure to the eye. N wall of nave above the doorway Weighing of the Souls. Also St Christopher, St Anthony and the Pig, St John and the Lamb. On the S wall Last Supper below another representation. Above the S door Annunciation. - BRASS John Martin d. 1593 and wife, 8 in. figures (Chancel floor).

BARTON. It has in its 14th century church a very interesting collection of wall-paintings, long hidden under whitewash before they were uncovered a generation ago. They are simple pictures in red, some clear and others hard to make out, telling the stories of the Bible and the saints in the way medieval folk could understand. Adorning the south doorway is the Annunciation, and two scenes on the south wall show the Last Supper and what is thought to be the Baptism in Jordan, with bare legs showing in the water. Over the north door we see St Michael weighing a soul, with the kindly Virgin laying her rosary in the scale to help the poor sinner, while a demon sitting on the other scale is being attacked by a knight with a lance. Beside the doorway is Bishop Cantelupe who died in 1282 and was canonised as St Thomas of Hereford, and farther west is the Madonna crowned, with the Holy Child. John the Baptist is here with the Lamb in his upraised hand, and near him a horseman with birds and a dog; and there is a scene of St Anthony with his hog, reminding us that he was the patron saint of the Hospitallers, who, when others had to keep their pigs confined, had the privilege of letting theirs run loose with bells round their necks.

The oldest possessions of the church are a Norman piscina and a Norman font, the font framed by a beautiful tower arch. There is a fine canopied pulpit of 1635, a good Jacobean chair, and a 15th century screen rich with tracery, heraldry, and foliage. Two tiny brass portraits on the chancel floor show John Martin and his wife in Elizabethan costume.

Fragments of pottery found hereabouts take the story of Barton back to the New Stone Age. The Romans brought their Akeman Street this way, and where the Bourn Brook ripples by it about a mile away is a stretch of greensward where men who were to be archers at Crecy and Poitiers bent their bows in practice. It is a hundred yards wide and a third of a mile long, and in those days many villages had such a range as this.

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Cherry Hinton. Cambridgeshire

St Andrew is glorious but hard to photograph properly; here's another church I'm uncertain about - both the exterior and interior contain much interest but at the same time much has been lost...here's the dilemma: the surviving gems refer to a much more interesting church, so is St Andrew less interesting than it was or is it interesting as it is?

Pevsner: ST ANDREW. A chancel of the noblest design - E.E. at its best, that is of c. 1230-50. Ashlar—faced. Tall coupled lancets along the sides, without any shafts, only separated pair after pair by buttresses. But in order to avoid any academic uniformity, a doorway with shafts and fine arch mouldings pushes up the sill of one pair. The E window, alas, was replaced in the Early Tudor decades by a five-light Perp window. The interior is, as it always should be (according for example to Inigo Jones’s view), far more lavish than the exterior. Here the windows have exceedingly tall shafts between, with shaftrings, and linked high up under the roof by cinquefoiled pointed arches with fine parallel mouldings (cf. Ely). The Sedilia have plain arches,  the Double Piscina trefoiled arches with dog-tooth ornament under one plain arch. The chancel arch is flanked by groups of five shafts, with fillets. The arch itself has mouldings with three quarter-circles. The arcades (five bays) between nave and aisles followed soon. Their piers are tall and consist of four strong shafts with fine diagonal shafts between, and arches of fine mouldings. The N and the richer S doorway belong to this phase. The S porch is Late Perp. The nave had a C15 clerestory, but this collapsed in I792. C15 also the (renewed) aisle windows. But the oldest element in the church has not so far been mentioned. It is the tower arch. From the outside the ashlar-faced tower appears all Late Perp. But the arch is I Norman, at least in its jambs, completely plain with one angle-shaft. On these jambs stands a four-centred Perp arch. - ROOD SCREEN. Dado with a frieze of open-work quatrefoils. One light divisions with depressed round arches and little tracery above. CI9 additions. - BENCHES. Four with poppyheads in the N aisle. - PAINTING. The Virgin with St Simon  Stock, Italian, 0 17. - MONUMENT. In the W wall of the tower coffin lid with bust of a man praying and foliations below.

 

CHERRY HINTON. The factory chimneys give place to orchards and elms as we draw near this cherry village with a church of chalk, strengthened outside with cobble and stone. It has a low tower, and a 15th century porch shelters a fine 13th century doorway, in which a medieval door with new tracery opens on a spacious interior where nearly everything is 700 years old - the stately arcades, the perfect chancel, the bowl of the font, the altar stone in the south aisle, and the rare coihn lid carved in relief with the head and shoulders of someone at prayer between two roses. The double shafts of the tower arch are even older though the arch itself is 15th century. So are the five benches with leafy poppyheads, and the oak chancel screen, much patched and with a new cornice.

Loveliest of all is the simple beauty of the chancel, a flawless gem from the 13th century, full of light, with side walls gracefully arcaded from stringcourse to roof, the arches framing elegant lancets in pairs.  There is a charming three-stepped sedilia, an exquisite piscina, and a fine little doorway for the priest. Except for the east window and a doorway altered in Tudor times, still with its ancient door, this chancel is as the builders left it 700 years ago.

There is a tablet in memory of Walter Serocold, who fell in action off Corsica in 1794, when the floating battery he commanded was burnt by redhot grapeshot. Admiral Hood wrote that the king had not a better young captain in his service.

Near by are the remains of an earthwork known as War Ditches, the site of a massacre of men, women, and children in prehistoric days, built over in later centuries by the Romans and the Britons.

Teversham, Cambridgeshire

On Tuesday I had a window of opportunity and visited Teversham, Cherry Hinton, Barton and Comberton - I rather ambitiously included Wimpole, Harlton and Hardwick (the latter two as re-visits) but ran out of time. When I've visited Wimpole and Royston, and fulfilled five re-visits, the north western quadrant of my circle will be complete.

All Saints rather surprised me by being lovely - I don't generally expect this from Cambridgeshire churches. As usual it's been rather beaten about and the exterior is better than the interior despite Sir Edward Styward's tomb.

I think Pevsner's rather sniffy:

Much E.E. work, much renewed, plus a W tower. E.E. the chancel, see one lancet on the N side, the S doorway into the aisle with two orders of columns carrying stiff-leaf capitals, and a finely moulded and partly keeled arch, and the arcade of three bays with short octagonal piers with upright stiff-leaf capitals. The capitals are dated by Miss Wynn-Reeves c. 1228-30. The NE and SE responds have instead curious long trumpet-shaped corbels covered diagonally with stiff-leaf branches. The nave went on to the W further than it does now. The W tower cut at least one half-bay. The arches have a moulding with two quarter-circles and start with broaches. Above, a very odd contemporary clerestory of oval or rather vesica-shaped windows standing above the spandrels and not the apexes of the arches. They now look into the aisles, and a higher clerestory was provided in the C19. The windows of Teversham church have been so thoroughly restored by St Aubyn in 1888-91 that it is difficult to say what is old and copied and what is new. Later C13 geometrical tracery, especially in the chancel E window (probably not original) and a S window. Other windows Dec looking. The main Perp contribution is the W tower with clasping buttresses and stepped battlements in the Suffolk tradition. Sedilia and Piscina in the chancel are also Perp and cut into a window with Dec tracery. - ROOD SCREEN. With single one-light divisions: ogee arches and panel tracery above. - PULPIT. From Cherry Hinton; Elizabethan or Jacobean. - STAINED GLASS. Some old parts in the W window. - MONUMENT. Sir Edward Styward d.1596 and wife. Alabaster; big tomb-chest with recumbent effigies of indifferent quality.

TEVERSHAM. It is sheltered by trees and surrounded by great fields of the plain; from the trees a tower peeps out calling us to the little church it crowns. It stands in the place of one founded by a man who fell fighting the Danes. Its tower is 15th century, with the original painted roof with red and green shields and flowers. The  lovely 13th century arcades have delightful capitals at the east end shaped like a slender wineglass and carved with sprays of foliage.

The chancel is five and six centuries old, with beautiful seats for priests elaborately canopied. There is a tiny peephole in each pillar of the chancel arch, and across the arch is a 15th century oak screen.

The panelled roof above it all has bosses of flowers and a cornice of angels wearing crowns and holding ribbons. There is a fine Jacobean pulpit, a plain old font, and a medley of old glass in the west window.

The battered figures of Sir Edward Styward and his wife lie on a table tomb, he in chased armour as he would be seen in Charles Stuart’s day, she in a ruff, a gown with a hooped skirt, and a bonnet. They lived through the exciting years of the Civil War.

Long, long, before them men were fighting here for their existence, for life went on at Teversham in prehistoric days. Even before man and the woolly rhinoceros came to it Time bequeathed to this place some witness of life, for in the gravel men have found fossils of shell fish long extinct in England.

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Chesterton, Cambridgeshire

Arguments abound whether Chesterton is a suburb of Cambridge (technically it is) but I'm treating it as if it isn't - the same applies to Teversham and Cherry Hinton.

If I'm honest this was the best visit of the day, mainly because the sun was out and St Andrew gave so much. If the total number of photographs taken at a church reflects its quality St Andrew comes in high at 233 even though a large percentage of those pictures are of poppyheads.

Pevsner: In spite of the fact that Chesterton is administratively part of Cambridge, the church is still a village church in a village setting, away from the main trailic and with various old houses around. It is quite a large church, built principally of flint. Dec W tower with two-light bell-openings and a spire lit by two tiers of dormer windows. The stair turret is constructed in a very original fashion, half inside and half outside the W wall. Inside it is corbelled out on a lion-bracket. The tower arch is specially typical of the early c 14: steep arch on triple-shaft responds with very thin shafts in the diagonals and an arch-moulding with various quarter-circles. Nave and aisles embattled, N porch embattled and pinnacled. All the windows Perp. Chancel Perp, but much reconstructed in 1844. Charming Sedilia with small ribbed vaults inside the canopies. Indications of an earlier structure externally only in what is now the E ends of the aisles, but may have been transepts. Here the tracery is Dec. The arcades inside of seven bays also belong to the c 14, though they are no doubt later than the transept windows, as they do not take the existence of transepts into consideration. They have octagonal piers of no specially inspired proportions and arch mouldings with two quarter-circles. Chancel arch double-chamfered on semi-octagonal responds. Roofs on good stone-corbels, chancel original, nave more renewed. - PULPIT. Elizabethan. - BENCHES. With poppy-heads except for two which have standing figures of young men instead, clearly in the fashionable costume of c. 1420-30. - PAINTING. Doom, C15, above the chancel arch. It extends into the E bays of the clerestory.

St Andrew’s church belongs to Chesterton, the riverside village which has been swallowed up by Cambridge. But its fine old church remains from medieval days, with flint walls of the 14th and 15th centuries, gargoyles under the battlements, and a beautiful spire crowning a tower with a turret stairway half in and half out. Its fine 600-year-old arch opens on the impressive arcades of the nave, with their long line of seven bays on each side and the 15th century clerestory over them. The roofs are borne on angels and grotesques and women with draped headdresses, and there is a fine display of carving in the great array of benches, some old and some new. It is a veritable zoo, for we counted 144 animals on the armrests, including dogs, griffins, lions, and antelopes. On two old poppyheads are men in tasselled hats looking at each other across the nave, each with his fingers in his belt. They come from the time when Richard the First was king. On a poppyhead in the north aisle is a monk with a scourge. The low pulpit is Jacobean, the oak chancel screen is 18th century, the canopied sedilia and piscina are 15th. Above the chancel arch and continuing on the wall above the south arcade is a patch of a Doom painting with many clear figures of demons and people, one demon throwing a man into a grave. The churchyard wall has ancient coffin stones in its coping, and among the orchard trees by the vicarage are remains of a medieval building in which we found fragments of an ancient chancel screen. The old church has a new one to keep it company; it comes from last century, and has arcades with clustered piers and a few fragments of old glass. It is one of the finest of our modern churches, impressive in its simplicity, full of light and space, and with a stone statue of St George on the outer side of the west wall.

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St Mary Magdalene, Cambridge

The Leper Chapel of St Mary Magdalene can only be described as astonishing, being an almost completely Norman building. Overcome with the excitement that the exterior was giving me I failed to notice that a keyholder is listed - I'm fairly sure the interior will disappoint but a re-visit is on the cards.

Pevsner: The church, which was originally the chapel of the Leper Hospital at Stourbridge, now stands desperately alone below the road and the railway approach. But visually unpromising as it is, its architectural value is high. It is one of the most complete and unspoilt pieces of Norman architecture in the county. The chapel consists of nave and straight-ended chancel. The chancel is ashlar-faced (Barnack stone?), the nave has exposed flint rubble with shafted stone quoins. The roof was renewed in the C15. The chancel was originally vaulted, see the shafts of c. 5 ft height in the corners and the traces of vaulting cells against the wall. The E window was put in in the C19, after 1819, when Cotman illustrated the building. It was then a stable. Restoration by Sir George Gilbert Scott 1867. Scott inserted the present W window, but the circular windows below are original. The other windows are roundheaded, very small - 7-8 in. their narrowest width between the splays - and enriched by nook shafts and several zigzags in the voussoirs. Other decorative enrichments are billet and similar friezes inside the nave. The most elaborate decoration is concentrated on the doorways (that on the N is bricked up) and the chancel arch. The N as well asS doorway has one order of columns and zigzag voussoirs, the chancel arch two orders to the W and one to the E. Again much zigzag. and capitals with scallops and decorated scallops.

St Mary Magdalene is the chapel of the old leper hospital, and though it looks forlorn, standing in a field below the road (at Stourbridge), the small aisleless building is full of interest. Restored by Sir Gilbert Scott, it is almost entirely 12th century. Though its walls of stone and cobbles are patched with brick, those of the chancel have been raised, and the oak roofs of open timbering are 15th century. The stout arch dividing the nave and chancel has shafts and zigzag ornament, and zigzag enriches the arch and hood of the south doorway. The stringcourse has carving like the teeth of a saw. The side windows have shafts and carved hoods, and there are two round windows at the west end.

I think this church deserves considerably more from both Mee and Pevsner - as I said it's astonishing and has to be one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in the county.

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