Braughing

I don't know why it has taken me so long to visit St Mary the Virgin as I visited most of its neighbours ages ago but it was well worth finally dropping by. Not only a wealth of interestingness but also some family leads so a double win.

When I visited it was being lime washed - or rather the south aisle was - and the gentleman doing the washing spent ages pointing out interesting features and moving dust cloths so that I could photograph various features.

The first thing you notice is how obviously well loved the church is, it being one of the best maintained churches I've seen. Added to that is the splendid nave roof with angels and one section, by the chancel, exuberantly painted.

ST MARY. With the exception of the chancel (N lancets) entirely early C15. W tower tall, of three stages, with set-back buttresses and a recessed spire rather than a spike. W door with ornamented spandrels and niches to the l. and r. Two-storeyed S porch with ornamented spandrels to the doorways, large two-light side windows, a two-light upper S window with niches. Battlements and angle pinnacles (that is, everywhere a show of a little more money spent than by most of the neighbouring churches). Embattled clerestory with three-light windows, rood loft turret at the SE end of the nave. Late Perp N and S aisle windows. Tall W tower arch, arcades of four bays with piers of four main shafts and four hollows in the diagonals, the latter without capitals. The arches are re-used from an earlier arcade. Fine nave roof with the sub-principals carried on angels and the E bays panelled and decorated with bosses. - BENCHES. A few C15, buttressed. - STAINED GLASS. E window of 1916-17, just going C20 in style, that is with the leading getting heavier and more severe. (By whom?) - PLATE. Chalice, Paten, and Flagon, 1718. - MONUMENTS. Brass to man and woman, c. 1480, much rubbed off, 18 in. figures (S aisle). - Brass to Barbara Hauchett d. 1561. - Tablet to Sir John Brograve d. 1593, without figure. - Epitaph to Augustin Steward d. 1597, frontal bust, very stiff. - Large standing wall monument to John Brograve d. 1625 and his younger brother, two stiflly reclining figures, their heads propped up on their elbows, in a reredos framing with big columns and arch between them; in the spandrels the figure of an angel blowing soap bubbles (Vanity) and Father Time. - Large monument to Ralph Freman, D.D., of Hamels, d. 1772 and his wife as well as two other Fremans and their wives. The portraits are in three medallions, each with two profiles, the main one on the severe sarcophagus which forms the centre of the composition. Two putti lie a little awkwardly on their bellies on the volutes of the curved top, Michelangelo’s Medici allegories in reverse - the other medallions are on the sides outside the monument proper, The monument was designed by James Stuart (Athenian Stuart) and carved by the young Scheemakers.

Braughing. The world does improve; we found here a memorial to an MP who died after being attacked by highwaymen on Hounslow Heath. Of the old church of this pleasant tree-girt place above the River Quin, set 700 years ago in a sloping churchyard where cottage roofs are on a level with the church doors, only the chancel with some lancet windows remains, for the 15th century built anew the nave and the aisles, the porch, and the tall lead-spired tower with its grinning gargoyles. They built on a noble scale, and it is all here still, though patched with new stone. Higher than the nave roof rise the turret stairs to the vanished rood loft, and higher than the aisle stands the pinnacled porch with its upper room floorless so that we look up to the vaulted roof. Queer stone faces watch outside the walls, and there are wooden angels in the nave and stone angels in the aisles to hold up the 500-year-old roofs. Modern woodwork makes a good show in the elaborate screen, and on the wall hangs a 17^th century painting of the Resurrection, thought to be part of the old altarpiece. A modern font of Caen stone has taken the place of the 14th-century font, which has been brought back into the church after having been cast out. Five of the bells average nearly 350 years.

Augustin Steward appears here in Elizabethan armour in an alabaster bust, but it is two soldier brothers, Charles and John Brograve, who take pride of place, lying in alabaster on their stately Stuart monument. Simeon Brograve has his name painted inside the chapel he bequeathed before he died in 1638, and many others of the family are remembered here. There are also little brass portraits of an unknown 15^th century man and his wife (these were covered because of the lime washing; next time I’m passing I’ll stop again and record them).

Several old homes add their testimony to the fact that long generations have found Braughing a pleasant place to live in. On the hills a mile away is the 17th century Upp Hall, with a huge barn of older red and blue brick beside it; and farther still is Rotten Row, a timbered farmhouse still staunchly Elizabethan, though the past three centuries have changed it much indoors. That at least one Roman made his home here is proved by the discovery of such oddments as the shells of the oysters he ate, and a few coins from his purse, as well as a stone sarcophagus.

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Bengeo

Bengeo is a tale of two churches; the Victorian Holy Trinity and ancient St Leonard.

As you would expect there's not a lot to say about Holy Trinity although I did think it was a rather good Victorian re-creation but very spartan.

St Leonard on the other hand is fascinating but unfortunately only open on Saturday and Sunday afternoon between June and September so my chances of seeing inside any time soon seem remote - which is a shame as it's a rare Norman survival. Apparently it's the oldest building in Hertfordshire and is, I think I'm right in saying, the first church with a round apse that I've seen in the county. A Google search throws up tantalising references to wall paintings but no images - so I'll have to return on a weekend afternoon to see what I missed.

Simon Jenkins says "One of the smallest English counties, Hertfordshire finds excitement hard to come by." - all I can say is that even on an overcast, drizzly day this church excited me, although I have to admit that before I visited I regarded Bengeo as little more than a dull dormitory town.

I finally made it back last Sunday [21/07/19 so only a delay of eight years!] and the interior absolutely live up to expectations - it's a cracker and easily one of Hertfordshire's best!

ST LEONARD. The rare example of a virtually intact NORMAN village church; nave and chancel with apse. This again is a rarity, at least in Herts (but cf. Great Amwell) The apse has small roundheaded windows in the deep inner splays, the nave has one such window on the N side. On the S side the windows have been enlarged and altered in the C14 and C15. The brick S porch dates from the C18, the timber bellcote from the C19. The S and N doorways are original, and the chancel arch has an order of colonnettes with one scroll capital and the other with the face of a man. The chancel and apse are surprisingly roomy. - S DOOR. Probably C14. - COMMUNION RAILS. C18. - PAINTING. On the nave E wall a C13 Deposition from the Cross and indications of quatrefoil patterns. In the chancel painted ashlaring and a later, superimposed red lozenge pattern. - TILES. Some of the C14 below the Communion Table (cf. Much Hadham). - PLATE. Chalice and Paten, 1626. - MONUMENTS. John Ryde, mural tablet of 1665, by William Stanton. - Humphrey Hall, 1742, by Thos. Adey, profile medallion held by two putti with rather vacant faces. The background the usual obelisk. - Daniel Minet d. 1790, a modest tablet by Nollekens. 

Bengeo. The hillside road to this quaintly named village (a little walk out of Hertford and now brought within the borough for civic purposes) passes through some of the finest scenery in the county. From the sandy slopes above two rivers (the Beane and the Rib) flowing past to join the Lea in the valley below, spring larches and firs in rich profusion. With a cottage or two and a 17th century house stands the little church of St Leonard, one of the oldest buildings in Hertfordshire, overlooking the valley. Its inheritors for 800 years or more treated the little building not too well, blocking up or replacing Norman windows and doorways; but except for an 18th century porch and a modern bell-turret the church keeps the plan of its Norman builders. With its round apse it is 68 feet long and 21 wide. An ancient mass dial is on a wall and the doorway is plain Norman, with a door of the 14th century, one of the oldest in the county, still on its hinges. On one of the capitals of the chancel arch is a Norman head, and above the altar is a narrow Norman window below which are 14th century tiles. There are traces of figure painting and masonry pattern at a window and on the walls. The small font is rough and plain, part of a coffin lid forms the sill of a piscina, and the portrait of Humphrey Hall in a medallion held up by two angels has been looking down on it all since 1695.

Bengeo has 19th century church of Holy Trinity to which we come through an attractive avenue of limes, and in it is a reredos interesting because its central panel is the work of George Tinworth, one of the pioneer potters at the Doulton works. He did much relief work for churches; his panel here has on it a relief showing the miraculous draught of fishes.

Baldock

St Mary the Virgin is another one of those large churches that has something for everyone, roof angels abound, numerous brasses, 15th century screens and much more.

Mee is quite fulsome so I shall contain myself with the observation that the size of the church is probably due to Baldock's importance as a staging post between London and the North and its being situate on the crossroad of the Great North Road and the Icknield Way which made it an important market town (and later it became a major malting town).

ST MARY. A roomy church, architecturally in several points the sister of Ashwell, a few miles away. Big broad W tower of the early C14 with Dec windows, and on the embattled parapet a small octagonal lantern crowned by a Herts spike. The body of the church also embattled, mostly of flint. But the lower part of the chancel is of stone. Here traces can be found of C13 windows and a Double Piscina with a C13 shaft. The S porch is two-storeyed with a turret in the NW angle and an outer doorway of the early C14. The other Windows are Perp. The interior is in its appearance almost completely early C14: tower arch, arcades of six bays, chancel arcades of two bays, Sedilia and Piscina in the S chapel with nodding ogee arches. The piers are quatrefoil with additional thin shafts (without capitals) in the diagonals (just as at Ashwell), typical moulded capitals (on the S side slightly more finely detailed than on the N) and double-chamfered arches. Good contemporary head corbels for the outer labels. C15 clerestory roofs (on head corbels). The aisles are wide and on the low side. The church is generally broad and roomy: a wealthy town church. - FONT. Octagonal, on nine shafts; C13. - SCREENS. A complete C15 set across aisles and chancel arch, the rood screen, of course, more ornate than the others, but all three relatively elementary in their tracery. - STAINED GLASS. W window 1849, looks as if it might be by Wailes; E window similar; N aisle Simpson Window 1881, a typical early Kempe. - PLATE. Chalice and Paten, 1629. - MONUMENTS. C13 Purbeck marble coffin-lid with cross (N chapel). - Brasses to a nun, c. 1400, small (nave, W end); to a man and woman, c. 1400, smallish (N chapel); to a man and woman, later C15, larger figures (N chapel); to a man and woman, shrouded, c. 1520, c. 3 ft long (N chapel). - Monument to Georgiana Caldecott d. 1846, by Baily. She lies on a couch mourned by a kneeling young woman, while an angel in the background of the relief carries her soul up to heaven. - Many minor epitaphs (e.g. by Gaffin).

Baldock. It has a piece of the Great North Road for its fine main street, lined with grass banks and trees, and it has at Quickswood Farm a clock which has worked with very few stoppages since the year Charles I came to the throne. On to the street look the dormer windows of a charming row of almshouses, telling their age with a syllable under each window: An No Do Mi Ni 1621. John Wynne, who gave them, also wrote on the wall that he left money to carry them on "to the worldes end." Close by is a stalwart pair of panelled gates 500 years old, and down every side street we find old homes and old inns, many with overhanging storeys.

Baldock’s church has as spacious an air as its highway, and is almost complete from the 14th century, with nave and chancel, two aisles and two chapels, and a clerestory added in the 15th century. Inside is a pillared font 100 years older than the church itself, and much line carving in wood and stone. Niches and sedilia and piscina show the art of the medieval mason, and the 15^th century woodcarver has a grand display in the screens stretching across the nave and aisles, three in a line, each different. The middle screen has its original doors, and over the patched doors of the north screen is a laughing face. Other faces in stone catch our eye wherever we look up, and there are 22 quaint little oak figures between the beams of the north aisle roof. The staircase door to the priest’s room (now made one with the porch) is 500 years old, and some of the roofs are medieval, but, like the screens, they have needed patching, and we found a strenuous battle going on with the deathwatch beetle. Fragments of medieval painted glass are in the north chapel, which has a 17^th century altar table.

There are several brass portraits, one of c. 1400 picturing a man kneeling in prayer. Another shows a woman with her husband, whose dress proclaims him a 15th century forester. His horn hangs from his belt, but his dog has gone from his side. Two other men from the 15th and 16th centuries are here with their wives, and beside them hang two ancient deeds, one of 1289 telling of a yearly payment of twopence. Such deeds were probably kept in the little medieval ironbound chest, and there are two other chests with Jacobean carving. Over the north door hang two old breastplates and a sword.

There lies in the church a man with a simple name famous for a great achievement. He came here as rector, but was known long before he came for his work at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he toiled for 10,000 hours over six small volumes of closely packed and mysterious shorthand, fully 3000 pages. They had lain in Pepys’s library at Magdalene for 95 years, unregarded, when Lord Grenville looked into them and deciphered some of the arbitrary signs. These he handed to John Smith, an undergraduate of St John’s, who promised to decipher the whole and at the end of three years produced the immortal Diary of Samuel Pepys. It was an extraordinary piece of work, and a remarkable fact concerning it is that among the books in Pepys’s library at Magdalene was a small volume which would have given John Smith the key to the mysterious characters he had to work out, for in this volume was a shorthand account, written by Pepys from the dictation of Charles II, of the king’s escape after the Battle of Worcester, with the longhand translation of it. John Smith, who became rector of Baldock, lies in the church.

The broad road leads into Icknield Way, and where this prehistoric track crosses Stane Street the Romans settled in the second century. Their cemetery was in Wall’s Field, where hundreds of urns, lamps, beakers, jugs, dishes, and cups have been unearthed; we have seen them in Letchworth Museum, a truly remarkable collection of elegant vessels of all shapes and sizes. Most curious of all the discoveries is a lead tablet with an inscription which has been translated: Tacita, or by whatever other name she is called, is hereby cursed. Some vindictive person placed this in Tacita’s burial urn, and sent her with a curse into the unknown world.

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Aspenden

I knew as soon as I got out of my car that St Mary would be locked and so, despite the assurance on the sign that "a warm welcome awaits you", it proved. What galled me most about its locked status was that whilst it is comparatively isolated it is nothing like as isolated as near by Meesden which actually does offer a warm welcome by being unlocked.

The most striking feature of the exterior is the curious roof which appears to have been cut in half (actually 1/3 and 2/3) with dormer windows inserted into the larger part.

ST MARY. Cemented and much restored (1878; by Sir A Blomfield). Unbuttressed W tower with spike. The interior mostly Perp and much C19. In the chancel lancets, proving its C13 date. The S porch is quite lavish with a decorated doorway and two-light window. It was built c.  1525 and paid for by the widow of Sir Robert Clifford Inside, the S aisle arcade (octagonal piers, moulded capitals, two-centred arches) must belong to the mid C14. The S chancel chapel is the most interesting part of the church. It was remodelled in 1622. It opens to the chancel in two bays with the usual octagonal piers, but the arches are now made semicircular, and strapwork decoration is applied. - C15 Roofs in nave, S chapel, and S aisle. - Perp RECESSES in the N chancel wall (ogee canopy and crenellation) and the S chapel. The latter houses the tomb of Sir Robert Clifford d. 1508. Tomb-chest with shields on three lozenges. Depressed panelled arch. Against the back wall brasses of the Clifford family. Quatrefoil frieze above the arch and top cresting. - Morris & Co. windows of 1913 in the S porch. - MONUMENTS (cf. above) : Man and woman, 1500, 18 in. figures (nave, N wall). - Ralph and William Freman d. 1634 and 1623, big epitaph with broken segmental pediment and beneath it, not in niches, two frontal busts. The two brothers hold each other’s hands. - John Boldero d. 1789, with urn above inscription; white, grey, and pink marble.

Aspenden. The road ends here, and we found it all so quiet that even the old school was empty, the books mouldering in the cupboards where the children had packed them years ago when they changed their school for Westmill. Sad to see it would have been for that warm-hearted Mary Cator, who saved £210 in her 30 years as servant at the hall, and left it for teaching the children of the village. That was more than 150 years ago, a generation before young Tom Macaulay was learning his lessons at the same hall, where a clergyman kept a school.

There cannot have been a more wonderful scholar in any school in England at that time than 14-year-old Tom Macaulay, who started to be a historian so early that before he was eight he had written a compendium of Universal History from the Creation to the year of his own birth. Of books he always had a great store, and, reading with lightning speed, he packed away all knowledge as it came into his capacious memory.

The church, with a tiny 18th-century spire on its medieval tower, has the mark of most centuries since the 12th, but the 15th predominates. Here is the tomb of Sir Robert Clifford, knight of the body to Henry VII but unfaithful to him when Perkin Warbeck would have seized the throne. He lies in a chapel filled with box pews and cut off behind a rare arcade of two dainty 17th·century arches and a wooden rail six feet high. At the back of his tomb, under a crested canopy, we see him in brass with his wife and two daughters, the colours still shining on his heraldic coat. A man and his wife in 15^th century dress have their brass portraits by the north door. On another memorial are sculptured half figures of Ralph and William Freman with their hands clasped and holding skulls. Ralph was Lord Mayor of London, and this memorial is of special interest because it survived the Great Fire, having been in St Michael’s, Cornhill, when the fire was burning.

There are timbers 500 years old in the roofs, there is a solid bit of 17th-century craftsmanship in the alms box, and from the same century comes the charity of an Aspenden boy who became a bishop and President of the Royal Society. He was Seth Ward, who left , £12 for apprenticing village boys, set up the almshouses at Buntingford, and put a stone to his parents outside the chancel wall. In the opposite chancel wall is a tiny window framed in rough Hint, the only fragment of Norman work left; and beside it is a curious low window of the 16th century with a grinning face and a fleur-de-lys in the spandrels. The south chapel was remodelled in 1622.

Many of the windows are in memory of the Lushingtons, who have lived for generations at the hall in the park, a 19th-century house with 17th-century panelling. The rectory is much older, for it has 16th-century timbers in its walls and an overhanging storey.

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Ardeley

Ardeley is lovely, end of. Unfortunately the church is kept locked (except at weekends) and of the two keyholders listed one was out and the other was running late for an appointment so felt he couldn't lend me the key since he would be out when I returned it! Fair enough I suppose.

Mee gives a good review of the church so I'll have to revisit which is irritating as the village is right on the limit, distance wise, of my self imposed radius.

ST LAWRENCE. Unbuttressed W tower with spike. The W window C14. Embattled aisles, clerestory, and chancel. The aisle and clerestory windows mostly Perp. The N porch tall with two-light windows, also C15. Only in the chancel do two lancet windows show an earlier stage of the church. The windows are matched by the fine piscina and the N recess, both with short shafts and dog-tooth ornament. The nave N arcade consists of three bays with octagonal piers, and these must also be C13 (simple moulded capitals, double-chamfered arches). The S arcade is a little later: C14, as is presumably the chancel arch. The nave and aisle ROOFS of the C15 have bosses, angel brackets, and some tracery in the brackets. - The ROOD LOFT with painted rood and rood canopy (but no screen) was given in 1928. It was designed by F. C. Eden. - FONT. Octagonal with big faces in the four diagonals. The date is difficult to determine; probably C14. - PLATE. Chalice, Paten and Almsdish of the late C17. - MONUMENTS. Brasses to Philip Metcalffe, Vicar of Ardeley, d. 1515, to Thomas Shotbolt with wife and children d. 1599, and to W. Wyndham Malet, Vicar of Ardeley, d. 1885 (profile, turned towards the altar). - Mary Markham d. 1673, epitaph with lively demi-figure in niche with telling gestures. On a ledge in front her baby. Fine quality. - Cartouche to Henry Chauncy d. 1703; also very good.

Ardeley. From this village went out a Hertfordshire boy to be first President of Harvard University in 1656. Charles Chauncy and his brother Henry were born at Ardeley Bury, and though their Stuart home is now much altered it keeps its dry moat and some of the panelling of the rooms where Henry compiled his Antiquities of Hertfordshire. Perhaps he was out searching for information for this book when he heard of Jane Wenham of Walkern; he took sides with those who accused her of being a witch, and at his instigation the last trial for witchcraft was held in England in 1712, the case leading to the abolition of this superstition from the Statute Book. Not far off is the small hamlet of Cromer with one or two cottages and a farm, all 16th century, and a great postmill without sails. At Wood End are two more farms 300 years old.

Ardeley itself has a 17th-century vicarage, but its new houses and the new village hall in a horseshoe round the village green, all white-walled and thatched, are charming.

This is a church where great devotion has clearly striven to replace old glories that have gone. A screen with a canopy background to its coloured statues of Calvary, Mary, and John, is exquisite in grey-white oak, and compares in workmanship with the 12 angels spreading wide wings below the old roofs of the nave and the aisles; but the screen is new and the angels are 500 years old. Of the stone steps to the rood loft only one was left, but this has been copied and now a complete newel stair is here for the children to climb to the top of the screen and sing carols at Christmas.

The nave is 700 years old; the north aisle, some carving over a piscina, and a recess in the chancel are 13th century; the south aisle and the tower are 14th, and the clerestory and the north porch are 15th. The font is the oldest thing the church possesses, the rough work of some country mason long ago, with only two of its jutting-out heads left. A few 15^th century pews still have their poppyheads, much worn. "The Lord’s Name be Praised" is written on the oldest bell, which may have sounded the news of Agincourt; and another, made later in the 15th century, says, My name is Mary.

Another Mary is remembered in this church, a young woman whose beautifully sculptured head and shoulders are framed in the wall by the roodscreen. She was Mary Markham, who lived at the 17^th century farm of Wood End, and died there when she was 24. A fine brass of 1599 shows Thomas Shotbolt with his wife and six children, and a small brass portrait of Philip Metcalff, a 16th-century vicar, looks across to a 19th-century vicar who also has his portrait in brass, a striking likeness of a grand old man, William Malet. It was left to our own generation to put up a monument to Sir Henry Chauncy, and we may think he deserved something more interesting. The modern windows are more successful. One is crowded with little pictures showing the Seven Sacraments; another is beautiful with a blue-robed Madonna and Child sitting on a green throne.

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Anstey

St George is an imposing cruciform building on a slight rise in the heart of the village. The crossing tower is all that remains of that Norman church. There are four narrow round-headed arches inside, with shafts with primitive spiral capitals on the west side of the west and east arches. The arches have roll mouldings thickening at narrow intervals into a kind of Norman shaft-ring, a motif used in the mid 12th century decoration of the slype at St Albans Abbey. The shafts also have such rings, but here they seem to be the proper shaft·rings of the Early Gothic style, which do not appear in England before Canterbury in 1175. So this ‘Norman’ work is perhaps as late as 1200.

The chancel walls have some notable military-style graffiti that belong to the 13th century — crested helms, shields, shells etc. Other graffiti are also interesting - on the embrasure of one of the chancel windows Thomas Monford, appointed Rector in 1584, inscribed his name in 1595, and nearby is a simple sketch of a man in Elizabethan dress.

In the south transept‘s south wall is an exquisite though mutilated tomb recess with canopy and pinnacles.Under the canopy, which is similar to those of about 1300 in Westminster Abbey, is a woman’s head with a wimple. Tradition has it that the effigy in the recess is that of Sir Richard de Anestie, one of the reputed builders of the church.

In the chancel are what remain of twelve stalls whose date is uncertain. Seven of them bear carved misericords. Carving of this kind generally dates from the t5th century: this sculpture, however, includes a bunch of typical 13th century stiff-leaf foliage, a grotesque head with protruding tongue, an arch bearing two human arms (each with a gloved hand on which is perched a hawk), an oak spray, and another spray with a hooded man on either side of it holding up his arm (the men wear the hood with a point at the back which was fashionable in the mid 13th century).

The crude Norman font is certainly a curiosity. The design of its decoration, with four mermen holding their split tails with both hands, makes a symmetrical pattern along the four sides of the bowl, and it is possibly symbolic of the Ark of Christ's Church. Such a motif is rare, occurring in only one other place in England, St Peter‘s Church, Castle Street, Cambridge.

ST GEORGE. An architecturally interesting and externally very impressive church. Internally the aesthetic effect is spoilt by the very features which make the building archaeologically remarkable. The crossing tower seems Norman in its lower stages: four narrow roundheaded arches inside with shafts with extremely primitive volute or spiral capitals on the W side of W and E arches. The arches have roll-mouldings thickening at narrow, regular intervals into a kind of Norman shaft-rings, a motif used in the mid C12 decoration of the Slype at St Albans Abbey. The shafts also have such rings, but here they seem the proper shaft-rings of the Early Gothic style which were introduced in France about 1150 in a completely different context and do not appear in England before Canterbury in 1175. So this ‘Norman’ work is probably as late as c. 1200, a time-lag worth remembering. The chancel and both transepts were rebuilt late in the C13. The S transept front seen from the S is a fine sight, with C13 lancet windows and a round stair-turret. Behind it appears the crossing tower with diagonal buttresses right up to the top, C14 bell-openings and a Herts spike. The chancel has on its S and N sides typical late C13 windows with two lights with pointed trefoil heads and quatrefoils above (no bar tracery yet). Inside the chancel is a fine display of C13 detail. The E end has two blank lancets to the sides of the C19 E window, the N doorway a label on very unusual stops, and the S side an equally unusual piscina and sedilia arrangement combined with the windows and a doorway. It is all so odd that one wonders whether it has not been, in some way, tampered with. In the S transept S wall an exquisite though, alas, mutilated tomb-recess with a canopy and pinnacles. The canopy of the same type as those of c. 1300 in Westminster Abbey (blank trefoil in the top). It rests on naturalistic leaf stops. The pinnacles have blank tracery and also naturalistic leaves. Under the cusped arch of the canopy a woman’s head with a wimple. The effigy in the recess (cf. below) does not seem to belong. The date of the canopy is probably the earliest years of the C14. Only a little, if at all, later the nave arcades (four bays) with big quatrefoil piers with moulded capitals and two-centred almost straight arches. The C15 clerestory windows are quatrefoil-shaped. The aisle windows are Late Perp, as is the S porch with two-light windows and blank panelling. The inner and outer doorways of the porch have blank quatrefoils in the spandrels. - FONT. Very crude Norman with four mermen holding their split tails with both their hands; the design makes a symmetrical pattern along the four sides of the bowl. - CHANCEL STALLS. Plain C15 or C16 with MISERICORDS (large leaves, a shell, a head with tongue out, two profile heads). - STAINED GLASS. S aisle window by Heaton, Butler, & Baines, 1907. - PLATE. Set of C18.
LYCHGATE. C15 or earlier. Tripartite; but one altered into a lock-up.

Anstey. A Norman knight chose to settle at Anstey, and built here his castle and his church.

The great moated mount in the grounds of the hall is all that is left of this castle, which Henry VIII gave to his first three wives in turn; but the late Norman church still stands, its central tower on four strong arches, and here is the font in which all the babies of Anstey have been baptised since his day. It is a curious one with a merman at each corner. A small stone figure in a recess may be Richard Anstie, who added and altered much in the early 14th century, building the transepts with turret steps leading to a priest’s chamber, and giving a view of his new chancel from these transepts through windows in the flying buttresses of two pillars. Even the blocked priest’s doorway, with a kind of dog-fish carved at the end of its arch, he cut on the cross so that the altar lights could be seen from the sacristy. And here are some of the stalls put into his chancel 600 years ago, seven with misericords worthy of a cathedral, two jesters exchanging quips among their leafy carvings, and a man putting out his tongue.

The beautifying 15th century added a needle spire to the tower and built the handsome porch with eight trefoil windows and doorways with carved spandrels. In the vestry are two wooden chests, one still in use after 700 years, the other covered 500 years ago with skin before being bound with iron. Here also are two tally sticks, and a register filled with the neat notes of the man who was clerk in 1541.

Two years after that Thomas Campion, the poet and musician who wrote masques and songs for the court of James I, was born here and baptised at the curious font. His best known poem is the familiar one beginning, The man of life upright. Perhaps he was thinking of this Hertfordshire village when he wrote:

Jack and Joan they think no ill,

But loving live, and merry still,

Do their weekday’s work and pray

Devoutly on the holy day.

Those who answer the call of the two 500-year-old ells in the tower pass through a medieval lych gate, which has served two purposes, one bay having been turned at some time into a lock—up for unruly villagers.

At the rectory is an altar frontal of purple velvet with the date 1637 among its embroideries. The most famous of the rectors was James Fleetwood, who took an active part in the Battle of Edgehill as a soldier and ended as Bishop of Worcester. He was tutor to Charles I’s son, who made him his chaplain at the Restoration.

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Allens Green

I've been out and about collecting churches hence the long delay in posting.

St Anne in Allens Green - a tiny hamlet near Sawbridgeworth overlooked by Pevsner & Mee - looked to me like a redundant or converted church but looking on a church near you it seems that it is still in use.

Or so I thought until I found this on Savills website: A former church with planning permission and listed building consent to convert into a 2 bedroom unit with its own garden and set in a semi-rural location, Guide price £250,000.