Eastwick

St Botolph was locked, which seems a shame given that it contains "the best C13 effigy in the county".

ST BOTOLPH. A short yew avenue leads to the church which was rebuilt in 1872 by Blomfield, except for the chancel arch and the W tower. Blomfield’s church consists of nave and chancel only and is of no interest. The chancel arch is an astonishingly ambitious piece of C13 design with three orders of tall Purbeck shafts and a complexly moulded arch, as if for a cathedral (cf. Standon). - PLATE. Paten, 1705; Chalice, 1719; Paten, 1735. - MONUMENTS. Under the tower the best C13 effigy in the county, a marble Knight in chain mail with long surcoat. His legs are crossed. - Brass to Joan Lee d. 1564. - Epitaph to Mary Plummer d. 1700, good, of diptych type, with three Corinthian columns. - Epitaph to Walter Plummer d. 1746, so good that it may well be by Rysbrack (see the delightful cherubs’ heads and the exquisitely carved classical details of frieze and pediment).

Eastwick. Behind its few cottages are meadows with high and solitary trees and a distant gleam of the River Stort as it turns south into Essex. The church, reached between walls of clipped yew, has changed much; but, though it was rebuilt last century, except the tower, the richly moulded stones of its first chancel arch were set up again as they were 700 years ago and the old gargoyles are back on the tower. In the tower hang two medieval bells, and a third which was new when it tolled for Queen Elizabeth I; and below them is the portrait of an Elizabethan lady, Joan Lee, looking down from her brass on a stone knight of the 13th century who lies cross legged in chain mail with his long sword. They are an interesting couple, both showing in detail the costume of their time.

Cottered

St John the Baptist is, on the face of it, a fairly run of the mill, bog standard Hertfordshire spiked church, heavily restored but not devastatingly so. It doesn't create a flutter of excitement  when encountered but a sense of fondness, like greeting your maiden aunt.

Except that St Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, is depicted on the north wall of the Nave opposite the main doorway. Thought to date from the second half of the 15th century, it was discovered under a thick coat of whitewash when the Victorians carried out an extensive restoration programme in 1886. However, the mural was not completely uncovered until the time of Rev Arthur Granger, Rector here from 1915 to 1925.

Depicted on each side of the main figure are zigzag roads and various roadside crosses along them. On the left at the bottom of the painting is a youth wearing pointed shoes near a tree. A hermit, dressed in a surplice, stands at cross roads with a large red lantern, rather like the old type of telephone kiosk. He is also pulling a rope attached to a bell in a turret high above his head.

On the right hand side of the picture at the base are two men with drawn swords, and high up are some timber framed buildings and two churches. The borders are decorated with flowers connected by a tendril like pattern.

ST JOHN THE BAPTIST. The outstanding feature is the spacious aisleless nave with large three-light transomed Perp Windows with four-centred heads. It makes the church appear a palatial Hall. The masonry of the nave is older (see the C14 doorways). Of the C14 also the W tower (see the W window and tower arch). The tower is unbuttressed and has a lead spire. The chancel is lower than the nave. Its windows are Perp but the chancel arch looks early C14. - FONT. Early C18, of lovely grey Derbyshire marble, with baluster stem and fluted bowl. - DOORS. Nave, heavy oak, C15 (?). Vestry, with Late Medieval ironwork. - PAINTING. On the nave wall large figure of St Christopher with indications of river surroundings and much incidental drama of the medieval highway. - PLATE. Chalice and Paten, 1711.

 

Cottered. It gathers about its green, on which cows and donkeys graze in the shadow of tall elms. There is an ancient farmhouse and a church 600 years old. We open the 500-year-old door of the church and find the faded figure of St Christopher greeting us, the background of the scene like a medieval map, with castles and roads, a horseman riding, and a countryman stepping through the meadows, like a picture of our countryside when this church was built in the middle of the 14th century. The lofty nave has a 15th century timber roof and is lit by six medieval transomed windows, some with fragments of their original glass. There is a second old door to the vestry with 16th century ironwork, and the vase-shaped marble font is 18th century. The chapel was built 500 years ago by Edward Pulter of Broadfield Manor, a house that has been made new but keeps the 17th century stables.

Here is one of the oldest houses in the county, a farmhouse known as The Lordship, built 500 years ago and interesting as showing the changes of the 17th century. It has many of its original doorways and much 17th century panelling, but the front door which the village knew for nearly five centuries is now in America.

There died in this village in 1926 a brilliant surgeon who spent his life in public causes, Sir James Cantlie. Here he lies in the churchyard, and on the wall of the church is a white tablet with a bronze medallion showing his kindly face, with the words: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Merciful indeed he was, a Scotsman who went out to China in 1887 as a surgeon, and also spent many years in India, mastering the mystery of tropical sickness and founding the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine. The tablet was set up by the Chinese Minister in London, Dr Alfred Sze, in appreciation of the noble services Sir James Cantlie rendered to China. In the critical days when Dr Sun Yat Sen was kidnapped and held a prisoner in the Chinese Legation in London it was Dr Cantlie who saved his life and enabled him to become the Christian President of the Chinese Republic. Sir James was knighted for his work in the Great War.

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Clothall

St Mary the Virgin is an absolute gem of a church with a quirky design, good brasses and outstanding glass.

The glass in the east window is the glory of the Church; it is thought that there are only two others like it in England, possibly the work of the same man.

It consists of six late 14th century medallions, with the Heads of Christ, the four Evangelists and Mary Magdalene. That of Mary Magdalene is reputed to have come from the Chapel of St Mary Magdalene in the Leper Hospital which stood at Hooksgreen, at the top of a hill about half a mile to the South of the Church. The Hospital was suppressed in 1547. That medallion is of interest for the prominence of Mary's hair, which is probably due to the belief that she was the same Mary who anointed the feet of Christ in the house of the Pharisee, having washed them with her tears and dried them with her hair; but some modern scholarship has rejected that belief.

The medallions are surrounded by small 15th century diamond-shaped quarries, depicting many of the birds of English countryside together with others more exotic. Of the English birds, hawks, partridges, peewits and ducks are all recognisable.

The Canopy Work in the top of the window is pot metal glass of the earlier thirteen hundreds, and the whole has been made up, with some insertions, within a border of 15th century glass.

ST MARY. The church has a SW tower in which is the N porch. This is C14; so is the S chapel. The latter is the most interesting part, with an arcade to the nave on unusual piers with semi-octagonal members and a Piscina characteristic of the period. - FONT. C12, of the tabletop type, Purbeck marble, square with shallow blank round-headed arches. - BENCHES. Some bench-ends with poppyheads. - DOOR. In the S doorway, with long iron hinges, probably C14. - STAINED GLASS. Christ, the Virgin, and Saints in medallions, only fragmentarily C15, ornamental quoins with flowers and delightfully drawn birds; thick canopies above; hardly before 1400 and perhaps later. - BRASSES (in the chancel). Early C16 priest, c. 3 ft long; John Vynter d. I404, Rector of Clothall, c. 3 ft long; John Wryght d. 1519, Rector of Clothall, with scrolls and the Trinity above the figure; two more brasses covered by the chancel stalls. of the church a nice Georgian brick house of the usual five-bay, two-storey type.

Clothall. It is a lonely spot that any traveller must love to see, with a few old thatched cottages and a wonderful little church on a hill, looking over cornfields red with poppies when we called. It is only here that they have crept in, for all round we found fields with some of the finest wheat in England, and there are terraces still to be seen on which men were growing their food in the days before history.

We come into the church by a door studded with the nails of hundreds of church notices, and painted with the name of John Warren - perhaps the name of the proud man who made it in the 14th century. The door opens on a quaint group of old seats raised in tiers to the back of the church. Among their poppyheads stands the little panelled font on pillars, 800 years old with a cover made 300 years ago. The chantry chapel is now the children’s chapel and is 14th century. They saved their pennies to buy vases for it and they keep them filled with flowers. The images have gone from the brackets, but here is still an Old French inscription to a man who died when the chantry was new. The children must love the east window, for it is filled with birds of the countryside, all in glass of the 14th and 15th centuries. There are six heads of saints in the window and every inch of space between is filled with hawks and peewits, ducks and partridges, and all the birds from the fields around. One of the bells has been ringing while all these birds have been singing.

Yet more treasures has this small place, five brasses. They show four rectors of the 15th and 16th centuries, and a mother with her 16 children. The oldest rector here is John Vynter of 1404, shown in his robes, and the three others are John Wright of 1519, Thomas Dalyson of the 16th century, and William Lucas who died in 1602. Unfortunately, his brass and that of Anne Bramfield, with her very big family, are hidden by the pews^*.

* The group of seats with poppyheads and the pews obscuring the last two mentioned brasses are no longer extant which in many ways is a shame but does mean we can now see the brasses.

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Buntingford

Having often been to Mass at St Richard I knew that it was a new build but hadn't realised quite how new -  it having been built in 1914. I wasn't going to include it but changed my mind whilst searching for Layston church.

Pevsner doesn't mention it.

Last week (Feb 2014) I visited my 915th, and final, in area church and so completed my mission.

At its heart St Peter is a C17th building which was built under Alexander Strange's direction to accommodate those people who could not attend mass at nearby Layston. Not the best of churches but open.

ST PETER. Built in 1614-26 as a chapel-of-ease to Layston. Brick, on the Greek cross plan to which in 1899 a porch and apse were added. The windows were also altered. Kept in the church is a C17 BRASS PLATE showing the interior of the church.

St Richard of Chichester

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St Bartholomew at Layston was a most peculiar experience. Having entered Layston into my sat nav I was presented with something to the affect that no such place exists. Now I knew this was not the case as I had marked it on my google map, so I bravely parked the car and proceeded on foot. As I entered the High Street the first sign I noticed was that of Church Street and, thinking to myself that that's where I'd put a church, walked down it but failed to find a church. Somewhat bemused I decided I needed height to survey the town for a steeple so I started uphill until I came to a sign saying Layston Cemetery.

Thinking to myself that where there's a cemetery there's bound to be a church I continued, walking further and further into the countryside until eventually I spotted the Spire emerging from a pretty dense wood. When I got to the church I found it surrounded by hoardings, covered in scaffolding and with a seriously overgrown churchyard. So I took a few pictures and returned to my car.

When I got home I Googled it and came across www.layston-church.org.uk which tells the story of the extraordinary restoration project being under taken by Martin and Mandy.

Basically Layston is a lost village and St Bartholomew was inconveniently placed for the good folk of Buntingford and so was allowed to fall in to disrepair. As a result of the fantastic research that they have undertaken on the 'inhabitants' of the chancel monuments I have found out all sorts of connections back to my 12th GGrandfather, John Crouch, as well as ancillary connections to the Freman family.

So what I had regarded as a failed trip actually turned out to be a huge success!

Buntingford. A small town on the River Rib, it has a wide stretch of a Roman road for its High Street, full of quaint houses with gables, overhanging storeys, deep archways, and red roofs turned yellow here and there with creeping stone-crop.

By a group of lime trees are the 17^th century almshouses, standing round a court filled with flowers; they are the homes of four old men and four old women, founded in 1684, by that famous man of his day, Seth Ward. His portrait hangs inside, and outside are his arms and mitre, carved in stone. He was born at Aspenden, and walked over here every day to the free school till he left for Cambridge. He lost his fellowship there by refusing to take the Covenant, but later was made Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and, branching into philosophy, started his long controversy with Hobbes. After having been Bishop of Exeter, he became Bishop of Salisbury, and one of his first acts there was to call on his friend Christopher Wren to survey the cathedral. Wren’s report is now in the possession of the Royal Society, of which Seth Ward was the second President.

Close to his almshouses is a red brick chapel, built about 1625 to gather in more of the people of Buntingford than could attend the old church on the hill. Inside is a picture drawn on brass soon after the chapel was finished, showing it, with its vicar Alexander Strange in the pulpit, as it was before the apse and porch were added in 1899; and hanging in the vestry is a charter giving the town permission to hold a market. It has a portrait of Henry VIII on the seal hanging from it.

In a garden farther down the street is a Roman Catholic chapel and priest’s house, with roses climbing up the walls. Robert Hugh Benson lived and wrote many of his novels close by, at Hare Street, and now lies in the graveyard. Son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he became a priest and private chamberlain to Pope Pius X.

All round are fine old houses. Hare Street has many and near it is the 17th-century Alswick Hall. The Court was the Grammar School 300 years ago, and the Old Manor is a little way out at Corney Bury. In the main street are many 16th- and 17th-century houses and hostelries, one with its sign hanging from magnificent ironwork. An old turret over the archway of the Angel Inn has a clock with one hand, and a bell which the Charity Commissioners (who own the inn) used to have rung whenever there was a service in the chapel down the street or in the church on the hill.

The church on the hill is still called Layston, though nothing else is left of that lost village. The chancel is now used only occasionally, and the nave has, unfortunately, been deprived of its roof. The bells still hang in the 15th-century tower. The chancel is 13th century and the rest mainly late medieval, but the thickness of the nave walls suggests an earlier origin. During repairs a few years ago pieces of carved alabaster work were discovered which when reassembled were found to portray the Crucifixion with the Blessed Virgin and St John. These fragments are now in the Hertford museum, where also is part of the 15^th century font.

Close by, in a new little graveyard which we found as bright with flowers as his own decorative work, lies Claud Lovat Fraser, a delightful artist of our time. He was the son of a Buntingford solicitor, and he loved beauty over all. Very early he began to make drawings for books and rhyme sheets - long slips of paper with a poem or a ballad printed on them. People loved them partly because of the verses and the artist’s work, and partly because many hundreds of years ago the same kind of sheets were printed, and balladmongers walked the streets selling them as fishmongers sell fish. Looking at these works of art, some of them not much bigger than a postage-stamp, it would seem that the artist’s greatest genius lay in drawing minute head-pieces and tail-pieces for poems. They look as if he did them with one hand while he was waving the other about, telling a story; they look as if he had just thought about them that minute, and must put them down before he forgot. They are little images of people and places, not as ordinary people see them but as Mr Fraser saw them. He knew that at night tree trunks become "little old men with twisted knees." He knew what a lovely colour a highwayman’s cloak ought to be. He knew exactly, down to a spar, the kind of ship that went a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea.

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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