Ware - Christ Church

A funeral service was under way when I passed Christ Church which slightly inhibited me for interiors but I don't think I missed much.

Built in 1858 and designed by Nehemiah Edward Stevens of Kentish ragstone in EE style - its a pretty poor example of Victoriana.

Ware. It was known to the Danes, who are said to have brought their ships up the River Lea, and to John Gilpin on his famous ride, and was important enough 600 years ago for the county town to be referred to as Hertford-by-Ware. Long associated with malting, its aspect has been spoiled by the cone shaped cowls of many kilns, but there are quaint survivals of old Ware, looking its best as we come from Hertford and see its clustering red roofs and the fine grey church with a tiny spire. There is a pleasant tree-lined walk along the towpath on this side of the town, and the gardens of the houses have quaint gazebos along the north bank. George Stephenson’s iron bridge over the River Lea was cased by a concrete bridge early in our century.

The church stands finely at a corner which is like a paved garden, with a sundial among the flowers. In the narrow streets about it is a sprinkling of old houses, some with overhanging storeys. Facing the church is a big house with creepered walls and a roof of mellow tiles; known as the Priory, it has been much altered since it was built from the remains of a Franciscan friary founded in 1338 by the lord of the manor, Thomas Wake. It has some medieval windows, and in the entrance hall is an arch resting on corbels crudely carved with the heads of men. Here, too, is a 14th-century refectory table of oak and ash and poplar, said to be unique for its time in England. The house and its gardens were given to the town in 1920 by Annie Elizabeth Croft - the gardens small but charming with lawns and flowers, fine trees, and the river flowing through, a weeping willow making an arbour near the bridge to a tree-shaded island. Gilpin House in High Street, 17th century, keeps green the association of Cowper’s John Gilpin with the town. The Bluecoat House, built in 1686 by the Governors of Christ’s Hospital, served as a school till the children were removed to Hertford in 1760, and has since been a private house. An 18th—century house in the London Road, home of the Quaker poet, John Scott, became part of the grammar school for girls opened in our own time. A curious transformation has taken place at 65 High Street, where the timbered fronts of two 15th-century houses (which once faced each other across an alley) now form the walls of a coal cellar. One of the fronts has its original window frame and oak doorway, the curved arches above them having pierced spandrels.

Unspoiled by time or trade, the spacious cross-shaped church of St Mary is a grand tribute to its medieval builders, and to the restorers since the middle of last century, who have made the embattled exterior, including most of the windows, look rather new. Most of the old work is 14^th and 15th century, but the chancel (said to have been completed by the mother of Henry VII, Margaret Beaufort) has 13th-century masonry and a fragment of an original window. The chancel arch is 15th century. Opening to the lady chapel is a rare 14th-century round-headed archway divided into two pointed bays, with straight mullions in the spandrel. The chapel has a sedila and piscina 600 years old, 17th-century panelling with a fine border of pierced carving, 15th century screenwork dividing it from the south transept, and a panelled and traceried roof in red and gold, with floral bosses. The 500-year-old doorway to the vestry has slender shafts, and a draped head and the head of a demon peeping from hollow moulding; it frames an old oak door. The 17th-century altar rails now enclosing the children’s corner were cast out of the church last century and served for a time as a garden fence before being brought back a few years ago.

The nave and aisles are from the end of the 14th century, and the tower with double buttresses is a little older. The graceful arches of the arcades, and the big windows of the clerestory (which are partly medieval) carry the eye to the splendid 15th-century nave roof, with stout tie beams and bosses of flowers, shields, and quaint heads, supported by modern stone corbels of saints and apostles. Good heads of medieval folk are between the arches of the arcades. The north transept has two 15th century recesses, and two brass portraits of the same century, showing a woman in flowing robes and ornamented headdress, and Elen Coke of 1454 wearing draped head-dress and wide sleeves. There is a remarkable brass in the south transept with 23 people on it - fine small figures of William Pyrey of 1470 in a belted gown, his two wives in horned headdress, and charming groups of 20 children, each wife having given him five sons and five daughters.

The font is magnificent with its vigorous carving of figures under leafy arches round the bowl. We see Gabriel and Mary, St Margaret slaying the dragon, St Christopher carrying the Holy Child over the stream, St Catherine with her wheel, St James with his pilgrim’s staff, St john the Baptist, and a bearded St George in armour, slaying the dragon. It is this armour of St George which enables us to date the lovely font at about 1380, for it closely resembles that of the Black Prince in Canterbury. At the corners of the font are angels with musical instruments and Passion symbols; the stem, only a little narrower than the bowl, is carved with quatrefoils, and round the base is a wreath of branchwork and flowers. The traceried and pinnacled cover is modern.

Sir Richard Fanshawe’s descendants have restored his marble monument in the south transept. Son of Sir Henry Fanshawe, who was a horticulturist and an Italian scholar, Sir Richard was born in 1608 at Ware Park, a domain of over 200 acres west of the town, partly encircled by the River Lea and the River Rib. He was a famous ambassador of Charles I, and his son was taken prisoner at Worcester, and became Latin secretary to Prince Charles at the Hague. Returning at the Restoration, he became a Privy councillor and in 1664 was English ambassador at Madrid, where he died in 1666. His body was brought home and buried here.

The church of the Sacred Heart, built in 1939, is the most attractive modern place of worship in the town, with its clear glass and comely fittings. It was designed by the late Geoffrey Webb.

Ware Park is now a sanatorium. One of its rooms is said to have been the original home of a piece of furniture that lives in Shakespeare, the Great Bed of Ware, which has lately been bought for the Victoria and Albert Museum. For nearly four centuries this wonderful oak bedstead, nearly 11 feet square and over 7 feet high, has been a byword with English people. It has often been mentioned in literature. Shakespeare makes an amusing allusion to it in Twelfth Night, when Sir Toby gives advice on courtship to Sir Andrew Aguecheek, telling him to write to Olivia, assuring her of his valour, "as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the Bed of Ware in England." Early in the 18^th century it was in the Crown Inn at Ware, and in 1764 was moved to the Saracen’s Head near by. Last century it was taken to a building in the grounds of Rye House in Hertfordshire, renowned for the plot against Charles I’s two sons, happily discovered before they could be assassinated. The bed is magnificently carved. The head is a work of art, and the canopy and bedposts are also richly decorated. From the moment the idea of this huge bed entered the mind of its maker the Great Bed of Ware must have been a perpetual joke down the centuries. All kinds of travellers stopping at the two inns have slept under its great canopy, and many strange bedfellows it must have seen.

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Holy Trinity, Bishop's Stortford

Umm and err - locked no keyholder listed; is this a bad thing - I think probably not.

Neither boys covered it, so from its website:

The acquisition of a parcel of land, of ‘garden ground’, in 1852 marks the beginning of the history of Holy Trinity Church.  This ‘garden ground’ still provides the only green open space in the whole of the main street running north-south through Bishop’s Stortford.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, the ancient parish of St. Michael covered the whole town but the Rev’d Francis W. Rhodes, the Vicar, recognised the need for a new place of worship, not only in Hockerill, but also in the rapidly growing southern part of the parish.  The first building on the site was a school for infants only, begun in the autumn of 1852.  The very detailed description of the stone-laying ceremony appeared in the Hertfordshire Mercury of 20th November.  The first pupils arrived almost a year later.  The building still stands on the western part of the site and has been used, since the closure of the school in the 1920s, as Holy Trinity Parish Hall.  It was built for the education of 150 children and was licensed for divine worship, and services were held there on Sunday afternoons until the church was ready.

The plans for the church, now in Lambeth Palace Library, were drawn up by Joseph Clarke who designed a number of buildings in Bishop’s Stortford and in north London.  Holy Trinity was built of brick with Kentish ragstone cladding.  At first it consisted of a nave, chancel and sacristy, had a large east window and, on the west wall, two tall lancets with a quatrefoil above: these and all the other windows showed the simplicity of the Early English style.  It was intended that the building would accommodate 300 people, most of whom were poor.  This could only be possible by packing in benches for the children and pews for the adults.

‘The Church of Holy Trinity’ was consecrated on 27th April 1859 by the Bishop of Carlisle as the Diocesan, the Bishop of Rochester, was indisposed.  On 23rd January, in the following year, the District Chapelry of New Town by Order in Council became a parish.

At some time between the 1861 census and that of 1871 a tiny, very basic cottage was built to house the schoolmistress: it still stands.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century it was clear that the church needed extending and, with Sir Arthur Blomfield as architect, it was lengthened.  A narthex and choir vestry were also built at the west end.  The decision was made not to purchase chairs for the new seating but to provide pews, and five job lots of second hand pews, with ends of different shapes and sizes, some with solid backs, others open and some with very narrow seats were acquired.  None was of artistic merit.  In 1901, the east window received the stained glass seen today.

Various changes were made to the interior between 1901 and 1997 when a six-year major restoration programme began.  Rising damp had damaged walls and the wooden platforms on which the pews stood.  It was necessary to empty the nave and provide a new floor.  The opportunity was taken to install under floor heating and a floor of beautiful Purbeck stone.  The nave now has only moveable furniture, allowing people of all ages to have access to all parts of it.  At the same time the choir stalls were removed and original terra cotta and black embossed tiles in the chancel were cleaned and reset where necessary.  The decision to purchase chairs means that they can be arranged to suit all kinds of services.  The altar, free-standing from the north wall, the font and the lectern can be focal points with the congregation gathered around.  This is perhaps best seen on a summer’s day through the door from the south porch which now has wrought iron gates and grilles made by the Much Hadham blacksmith.  The chancel is now the natural place for most small services on weekdays, for private prayer and for personal ministry.

It was during the incumbency of Canon John Haynes that Holy Trinity was able to join in the bell-ringing to celebrate the Millennium.  The original bell, dated 1858, was cast by Mears Foundry, now the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, but had long been out of use: it weighs ¾ cwt (38 kg).  A second bell, in regular use since its acquisition, was cast by J. Warner and Son in 1873 and weighs ½ cwt (25 kg): it came from St. James’ Church, Watford in 1976 and was apparently installed by a T.V. aerial firm!  Both were refurbished and rung together for the first time thanks to the generous support of businesses in the parish.

Soon after the arrival of John Williams, the people of Holy Trinity were able to celebrate the completion of the major restoration programme and to accept the invitation of Don Vincenzo, the parish priest of the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Family (Santa Famiglia) at Fano on the Adriatic, to establish a link with them.  The ecumenically-minded parish already had links with Lutherans in Denmark and Orthodox in Romania and all three Anglican town parishes are now involved.  Gifts have been exchanged and visits made, one including a joint pilgrimage to Assisi where the group visited the church of San Damiano.  The generous gift of a copy of the San Damiano crucifix for the refurbished church is a constant reminder of the link.  Saint Francis of Assisi heard Christ on the cross speak to him and ask him to rebuild the church when he was praying in San Damiano.  It is encouraging to remember that the church is not the building, as Saint Francis at first thought, but the whole people of God, always in need of restoration and renewal.

Bishop’s Stortford. The greatest thing it has done for the world was to give birth to Cecil Rhodes, and we may believe that the time will come when the house in which he was born will be a place of pilgrimage. Yet this small town had its place in history centuries before young Rhodes sat in the pews at St Michael’s listening to his father preach. In the public gardens is a mound on which it is believed a castle stood, Waytemore Castle, the fortress of Bishop Maurice of London, into whose hands the Conqueror entrusted this key position by the ford over the River Stort. The outer works and moats can be traced among the walks and flowerbeds.

The hilly streets of Bishop’s Stortford set off to advantage the fine old buildings among the new, many of them inns from the 16th to I7th centuries with overhanging storeys; the Boar’s Head and the timbered Black Lion still carrying on, the White Horse, with its plastered heraldic front of Italian work, an inn no longer

Two fine churches, an old one and a new one, look to each other across the roofs of the town, both set on hills. The new church is All Saints, the old one is St Michael’s. The new one, looking out over the town from Hockerill, was designed by Mr Dykes Bower, and is one of the best modern churches we have seen. It has a magnificent rose window in the east with Christ in the centre surrounded by dazzling colours, rings of little suns, flames, and symbols. The west window has three great plain lancets in the tower. There are four high arches on each side of the nave, supported by round columns, the stone roof is spaced out in 125 compartments, and there is a charming oriel in the sanctuary.

But the eye turns first and last in this town to the splendid 500 year-old church shooting up its pinnacled tower and spire from among the houses on the top of the other hill, summoning its worshippers with a peal often bells. The spire was added in 1812. They enter today by the very door people pushed open five centuries ago, and in one spandrel of the doorway is the same strange carving of the All-Seeing Eye, the Angel of the Resurrection sounding his trumpet in the opposite spandrel. The door opens on the six great bays of the spacious nave and aisles, where corbels of angels and apostles and medieval folk turn on us their stony gaze; we noticed a gardener, a cook, and a woodman among them. Save for a few changes and additions the church is wholly medieval, and has a Norman font which has been buried, having probably belonged to the church before this. There are 18 rich choir stalls, making a grand show with their traceried backs and panelled fronts, and misericords crowded with 15th-century faces and fancies, men and animals, one of them a rare early carving of a whale. The fine chancel screen is mainly 15th century, but the vaulting is new. The pulpit and a remarkable chest are Jacobean, the chest having an inside lock of 14 bolts which are as long as the lid. Both the north chapel and south vestry are Victorian.

There is a tablet in this fine church to a man who made the River Stort navigable up to Bishop’s Stortford. He befriended Captain Cook, who showed his gratitude by making him known to navigators all over the world, naming after him Port Jackson in New South Wales and Point Jackson in New Zealand. The man whose name thus lives on the map was born George Jackson at Richmond in Yorkshire, but he died Sir George Duckett; here in the church is his memorial. We find no memorial to a butcher’s son born here in 1813, who did much to help photography by proving the use of collodion in developing films. He was Frederick Scott Archer, and his children were pensioned by the Crown because his invention brought him no profit but yielded vast profits for others.

Much happier in his fortune was the famous physician who lies in the Quaker burial ground; he was Thomas Dimsdale, an Essex man who adopted Hertfordshire as his county, practised as a doctor in the county town, and sat in Parliament for it. He is remembered for his pioneering with inoculation for smallpox, and especially because Catherine of Russia invited him to her capital to inoculate herself and her son. It was in 1768, when the adventure was fraught with some peril, and the empress arranged for relays of horses from the capital to the border to aid the doctor’s escape in case of disaster. Happily all was well, and Dimsdale received £2000 for expenses, a fee of £10,000, and an allowance of £500 a year. He was laid in the burial ground of the Quakers here when he was 89 years old.

One of the windows of St Michael’s is in memory of the old vicar Francis Rhodes, who was laid to rest here eight years after his delicate son had left for South Africa. He lived to hear the good news that his son had found health and strength and was working in the diamond digging, and he saw him home again entering on a graduate’s life at Oxford; but he died in 1878 before Cecil entered the Cape Parliament, and before he had formed his great plan of a British South Africa. In the birthplace we see his portrait looking down from the wall on the bed in which Cecil Rhodes was born.

Bishop’s Stortford has been long in paying homage to its great son, but it has made amends, has bought the house he was born in and the house next door, and is developing both as a Cecil Rhodes Museum. The house is refurnished with pieces that either belonged to the family or belonged to the time, and it is an attractive place for any pilgrim interested in Rhodes of Rhodesia. In addition to the bed he was born in, one of eleven children, there is here the Bible his mother gave him, a fine old clock which was ticking in those days, a picturesque native drum used for communicating signals, a water colour he painted of a windjammer, and the uniforms he wore on ceremonial occasions - and never again.

Cecil Rhodes’s birthplace has all the glamour and fascination that invests the homes of famous men, and it is gratifying to find how much this great empire-builder’s memory is honoured in his native town.

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St Joseph & The English Martyrs, Bishop's Stortford

Despite this being the church I normally attended as a child I know very little about its history and neither Pevsner nor Mee mention it (perhaps a lingering anti Catholic prejudice?). So from the church's website a little history:

The history of the Catholic presence in Bishop's Stortford was recalled by Monsignor Stapleton Barnes of Cambridge, who delivered the homily at St. Joseph & The English Martyrs official opening on the 20th June 1906, when he recalled that St. Michael's Church had been built by Catholic Stortfordians...Then it was ended...Centuries passed. Then came the Second Spring. The town was a valley of bones, not a Catholic Church within miles and scarcely a single Catholic in the town. A Catholic priest would come once a quarter to say Mass in a room of a hired house, and half a dozen Catholics would come from the neighbourhood to worship God.

Next, on 4th May 1896, came five Sisters of St Mary of Namur who, with encouragement from Major Skeet and Cardinal Vaughan, then Archbishop of Westminster, had arrived to start a mission and school for Catholic girls.

Cardinal Vaughan

The occasional visit by confessors and chaplains did not fully meet the spiritual needs and guidance of the Sisters or the embryonic Catholic community. The nearest Catholic Church was at Old Hall Green, near Ware, and that required a walk of approximately three hours each way.

These factors convinced the Sisters of a need for a local priest. This need was communicated to Cardinal Vaughan, via the Sisters' Mother General in Namur, and probably by Major Skeet too. This resulted in a visit of Bishop Brindle at the behest of Cardinal Vaughan.

Then a chance remark in early 1899 by Fr. Bennett, Provincial of the English Province of the Redemptorists, was made to Cardinal Vaughan.

Later in 1899 the Cardinal, a missionary at heart, invited the Redemptorist Order to accept the task of establishing a Catholic community in the town. Father Oliver Vassall-Phillips was chosen for the job which he started on 6th May 1900.

For a short while Mass was said in a small wooden shed in the grounds of the Windhill Lodge - the present site of St. Mary's Catholic School - where the Sisters had established themselves.

Then for a short while Masses were held in a private house in Windhill, opposite what is now the Old Monastery.

During these early days Fr. Vassall-Phillips had problems finding a house to accommodate the Redemptorist community and coupled with the lack of growth in attendance to Mass he resolved to go to meet his superior. He records how, whilst on his way to the rail station, he met Mr. Fehrenbach who persuaded him to stay. Mr. Fehrenbach, a German watchmaker, showed Father Vassall-Phillips a disused public house with some ground on the corner of Newtown Road and Portland Road.

This was duly purchased and a second hand prefabricated tin shed was erected on site by November 1900 and formally opened on the 7th November in the presence of Bishops Brindle and other visiting clergy and distinguished laymen and 300 other onlookers.

Thereafter progress was swift. In 1903 Major Skeet sold Windhill House to the Redemptorists, together with its surrounding land as well as the adjoining property, St Katherine's House, which became the site for the present St Joseph's Church.

A legacy inherited by Father Vassall-Phillips was used to build the new church to designs prepared by Mr Doran Webb. The plans were inspired by a church in the town of San Miniato, near Florence, which itself had been designed by Michelangelo.

The foundation stone of St.Joseph's was a stone from the original parish church of St Michael, encased in marble. It was laid by Cardinal Bourne on 13th July 1904.

The church was formally consecrated on 19th June. Cardinal Bourne felt it his duty to attend the solemn requiem sung for Cardinal Vaughan's Anniversary which fell on the same day, and so Bishop Fenton, auxiliary Bishop of Westminster formally consecrated St. Joseph's church on the 19th June 1906.

To be honest there's little of interest here but childhood memories of the boredom of Mass means it has a special place in my heart.

Bishop’s Stortford. The greatest thing it has done for the world was to give birth to Cecil Rhodes, and we may believe that the time will come when the house in which he was born will be a place of pilgrimage. Yet this small town had its place in history centuries before young Rhodes sat in the pews at St Michael’s listening to his father preach. In the public gardens is a mound on which it is believed a castle stood, Waytemore Castle, the fortress of Bishop Maurice of London, into whose hands the Conqueror entrusted this key position by the ford over the River Stort. The outer works and moats can be traced among the walks and flowerbeds.

The hilly streets of Bishop’s Stortford set off to advantage the fine old buildings among the new, many of them inns from the 16th to I7th centuries with overhanging storeys; the Boar’s Head and the timbered Black Lion still carrying on, the White Horse, with its plastered heraldic front of Italian work, an inn no longer.

Two fine churches, an old one and a new one, look to each other across the roofs of the town, both set on hills. The new church is All Saints, the old one is St Michael’s. The new one, looking out over the town from Hockerill, was designed by Mr Dykes Bower, and is one of the best modern churches we have seen. It has a magnificent rose window in the east with Christ in the centre surrounded by dazzling colours, rings of little suns, flames, and symbols. The west window has three great plain lancets in the tower. There are four high arches on each side of the nave, supported by round columns, the stone roof is spaced out in 125 compartments, and there is a charming oriel in the sanctuary.

But the eye turns first and last in this town to the splendid 500 year-old church shooting up its pinnacled tower and spire from among the houses on the top of the other hill, summoning its worshippers with a peal often bells. The spire was added in 1812. They enter today by the very door people pushed open five centuries ago, and in one spandrel of the doorway is the same strange carving of the All-Seeing Eye, the Angel of the Resurrection sounding his trumpet in the opposite spandrel. The door opens on the six great bays of the spacious nave and aisles, where corbels of angels and apostles and medieval folk turn on us their stony gaze; we noticed a gardener, a cook, and a woodman among them. Save for a few changes and additions the church is wholly medieval, and has a Norman font which has been buried, having probably belonged to the church before this. There are 18 rich choir stalls, making a grand show with their traceried backs and panelled fronts, and misericords crowded with 15th-century faces and fancies, men and animals, one of them a rare early carving of a whale. The fine chancel screen is mainly 15th century, but the vaulting is new. The pulpit and a remarkable chest are Jacobean, the chest having an inside lock of 14 bolts which are as long as the lid. Both the north chapel and south vestry are Victorian.

There is a tablet in this fine church to a man who made the River Stort navigable up to Bishop’s Stortford. He befriended Captain Cook, who showed his gratitude by making him known to navigators all over the world, naming after him Port Jackson in New South Wales and Point Jackson in New Zealand. The man whose name thus lives on the map was born George Jackson at Richmond in Yorkshire, but he died Sir George Duckett; here in the church is his memorial. We find no memorial to a butcher’s son born here in 1813, who did much to help photography by proving the use of collodion in developing films. He was Frederick Scott Archer, and his children were pensioned by the Crown because his invention brought him no profit but yielded vast profits for others.

Much happier in his fortune was the famous physician who lies in the Quaker burial ground; he was Thomas Dimsdale, an Essex man who adopted Hertfordshire as his county, practised as a doctor in the county town, and sat in Parliament for it. He is remembered for his pioneering with inoculation for smallpox, and especially because Catherine of Russia invited him to her capital to inoculate herself and her son. It was in 1768, when the adventure was fraught with some peril, and the empress arranged for relays of horses from the capital to the border to aid the doctor’s escape in case of disaster. Happily all was well, and Dimsdale received £2000 for expenses, a fee of £10,000, and an allowance of £500 a year. He was laid in the burial ground of the Quakers here when he was 89 years old.

One of the windows of St Michael’s is in memory of the old vicar Francis Rhodes, who was laid to rest here eight years after his delicate son had left for South Africa. He lived to hear the good news that his son had found health and strength and was working in the diamond digging, and he saw him home again entering on a graduate’s life at Oxford; but he died in 1878 before Cecil entered the Cape Parliament, and before he had formed his great plan of a British South Africa. In the birthplace we see his portrait looking down from the wall on the bed in which Cecil Rhodes was born.

Bishop’s Stortford has been long in paying homage to its great son, but it has made amends, has bought the house he was born in and the house next door, and is developing both as a Cecil Rhodes Museum. The house is refurnished with pieces that either belonged to the family or belonged to the time, and it is an attractive place for any pilgrim interested in Rhodes of Rhodesia. In addition to the bed he was born in, one of eleven children, there is here the Bible his mother gave him, a fine old clock which was ticking in those days, a picturesque native drum used for communicating signals, a water colour he painted of a windjammer, and the uniforms he wore on ceremonial occasions - and never again.

Cecil Rhodes’s birthplace has all the glamour and fascination that invests the homes of famous men, and it is gratifying to find how much this great empire-builder’s memory is honoured in his native town.

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All Saints, Bishop's Stortford

I find that I have omitted entries for three Stortford churches the first being All Saints situated in Hockerill. Built in 1937 it confronts St Michael across town and has a distinctly High Church feel about it - in fact I initially thought it a second Roman Catholic church. Not really to my taste (perhaps why I omitted an entry) but the east rose window is good of its kind.

ALL SAINTS, Stanstead Road, Hockerill. 1937, by S. E. Dykes Bower. In a position overlooking the whole town. Big square tower with hipped roof and three excessively elongated lancet windows. The two entrances into the aisles with curiously lobed arches. Interior with tall circular piers, a long aisleless chancel and a rose E window with C20 flowing tracery.

Bishop’s Stortford. The greatest thing it has done for the world was to give birth to Cecil Rhodes, and we may believe that the time will come when the house in which he was born will be a place of pilgrimage. Yet this small town had its place in history centuries before young Rhodes sat in the pews at St Michael’s listening to his father preach. In the public gardens is a mound on which it is believed a castle stood, Waytemore Castle, the fortress of Bishop Maurice of London, into whose hands the Conqueror entrusted this key position by the ford over the River Stort. The outer works and moats can be traced among the walks and flowerbeds.

The hilly streets of Bishop’s Stortford set off to advantage the fine old buildings among the new, many of them inns from the 16th to I7th centuries with overhanging storeys; the Boar’s Head and the timbered Black Lion still carrying on, the White Horse, with its plastered heraldic front of Italian work, an inn no longer.

Two fine churches, an old one and a new one, look to each other across the roofs of the town, both set on hills. The new church is All Saints, the old one is St Michael’s. The new one, looking out over the town from Hockerill, was designed by Mr Dykes Bower, and is one of the best modern churches we have seen. It has a magnificent rose window in the east with Christ in the centre surrounded by dazzling colours, rings of little suns, flames, and symbols. The west window has three great plain lancets in the tower. There are four high arches on each side of the nave, supported by round columns, the stone roof is spaced out in 125 compartments, and there is a charming oriel in the sanctuary.

But the eye turns first and last in this town to the splendid 500 year-old church shooting up its pinnacled tower and spire from among the houses on the top of the other hill, summoning its worshippers with a peal often bells. The spire was added in 1812. They enter today by the very door people pushed open five centuries ago, and in one spandrel of the doorway is the same strange carving of the All-Seeing Eye, the Angel of the Resurrection sounding his trumpet in the opposite spandrel. The door opens on the six great bays of the spacious nave and aisles, where corbels of angels and apostles and medieval folk turn on us their stony gaze; we noticed a gardener, a cook, and a woodman among them. Save for a few changes and additions the church is wholly medieval, and has a Norman font which has been buried, having probably belonged to the church before this. There are 18 rich choir stalls, making a grand show with their traceried backs and panelled fronts, and misericords crowded with 15th-century faces and fancies, men and animals, one of them a rare early carving of a whale. The fine chancel screen is mainly 15th century, but the vaulting is new. The pulpit and a remarkable chest are Jacobean, the chest having an inside lock of 14 bolts which are as long as the lid. Both the north chapel and south vestry are Victorian.

There is a tablet in this fine church to a man who made the River Stort navigable up to Bishop’s Stortford. He befriended Captain Cook, who showed his gratitude by making him known to navigators all over the world, naming after him Port Jackson in New South Wales and Point Jackson in New Zealand. The man whose name thus lives on the map was born George Jackson at Richmond in Yorkshire, but he died Sir George Duckett; here in the church is his memorial. We find no memorial to a butcher’s son born here in 1813, who did much to help photography by proving the use of collodion in developing films. He was Frederick Scott Archer, and his children were pensioned by the Crown because his invention brought him no profit but yielded vast profits for others.

Much happier in his fortune was the famous physician who lies in the Quaker burial ground; he was Thomas Dimsdale, an Essex man who adopted Hertfordshire as his county, practised as a doctor in the county town, and sat in Parliament for it. He is remembered for his pioneering with inoculation for smallpox, and especially because Catherine of Russia invited him to her capital to inoculate herself and her son. It was in 1768, when the adventure was fraught with some peril, and the empress arranged for relays of horses from the capital to the border to aid the doctor’s escape in case of disaster. Happily all was well, and Dimsdale received £2000 for expenses, a fee of £10,000, and an allowance of £500 a year. He was laid in the burial ground of the Quakers here when he was 89 years old.

One of the windows of St Michael’s is in memory of the old vicar Francis Rhodes, who was laid to rest here eight years after his delicate son had left for South Africa. He lived to hear the good news that his son had found health and strength and was working in the diamond digging, and he saw him home again entering on a graduate’s life at Oxford; but he died in 1878 before Cecil entered the Cape Parliament, and before he had formed his great plan of a British South Africa. In the birthplace we see his portrait looking down from the wall on the bed in which Cecil Rhodes was born.

Bishop’s Stortford has been long in paying homage to its great son, but it has made amends, has bought the house he was born in and the house next door, and is developing both as a Cecil Rhodes Museum. The house is refurnished with pieces that either belonged to the family or belonged to the time, and it is an attractive place for any pilgrim interested in Rhodes of Rhodesia. In addition to the bed he was born in, one of eleven children, there is here the Bible his mother gave him, a fine old clock which was ticking in those days, a picturesque native drum used for communicating signals, a water colour he painted of a windjammer, and the uniforms he wore on ceremonial occasions - and never again.

Cecil Rhodes’s birthplace has all the glamour and fascination that invests the homes of famous men, and it is gratifying to find how much this great empire-builder’s memory is honoured in his native town.

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Stapleford

St Mary the Virgin was locked but keyholders were listed - who were both out at the time of my visit.

Did I miss out...I'm not sure.

ST MARY. The church stands outside the village. It has a Norman N doorway (one order of colonnettes, the left capital with upright oak leaves, the outer voussoirs zigzag, the inner zigzag on the intrados) and an altered C13 lancet window in the chancel. But its chief characteristic is its N tower which has the porch below, a weatherboarded upper stage, and then an octagonal timber stage and a spire. This changes a medieval church effectively into one mid Victorian. The tower was built in 1874. - PLATE Chalice and Paten, 1712.

Stapleford. Home came a sailor from sea to be rector for 30 years after the Battle of Waterloo. He was Commander Charles Prowett, and the story of his capture of a Dutch ship of 14. guns is told in the church. Many a parson before him trod the yew-shaded path to this church in the meadows by the River Beane, for though it looks so new its walls were built 800 years ago. It was refashioned about 1500 and much renewed in the 19th century, but the restorers have spared the beauty of the Norman doorway, whose chevron moulding and leafy capitals are still the great attraction of the church. There are some 400-year-old beams in the nave roof, fragments of 15th century glass in one of the windows, and stone heads of a medieval king and a bishop outside. The curious tower of wood and lead was added last century.

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Pevsner on Sawbridgeworth

ST MARY THE GREAT. A big church, un-embattled except for the W tower. The tower seems to be C14 (see the tower arch) but was much repaired in brick in the C16. At that time a low stair-turret was added (cf. Hunsdon). The earliest remaining evidence of the history of the building is, according to the Royal Commission, a S arch in the chancel, now hidden. This is supposed to be c. 1300. The N aisle windows must be early C14 (E window replaced but probably correctly). The date goes well with the quatrefoil piers and chamfered arches of the N aisle arcade. The piers are the same in the S arcade but the arches seem a little later; and the doorway looks indeed later too. - FONT, c. 1400. Octagonal, with panelled stem and shields in quatrefoil panels on the bowl. - PULPIT, 1632, but still Jacobean in style. - SCREEN. C15. On each side of the entrance one very broad four-light division with panel tracery. - STAINED GLASS. E window, 1864, by Hardman, much less disciplined than at the time when Pugin designed for him. - MONUMENTS. The church is a veritable storehouse of monuments; The following fifteen deserve attention. In the CHANCEL Reassembled (?) recess for a tombchest with three shields in richly cusped quatrefoils. Shafts to the l. and r. with diagonal honeycomb decoration. Ogee arches along the top and cresting above. Indents for brass at the back. Probably early C16. - Brass to Geoffrey Joslyn d. 1470 with two wives, the figures 2 ft long. 1 Plain tombchest with almost completely defaced figures of John Joscelyn d. 1525 and his wife. - Epitaph to Sir Walter Myldemaye d. 1606, wife and son, with the usual kneeling figures. - Large standing wall monument to George, Viscount Hewyt, d. 1689. Life-size standing figure a la Louis le Grand, one hand on hip, the other on a helmet. Red marble columns l. and r., and trophies outside them. Curly broken pediment on top. On the plinth two putti hold the inscription. - In the S CHAPEL. Magnificent large Brass to John Leventhorp d. 1425 and wife, the frontal figures life-size. - Standing wall monument to Sir John Leventhorp d. 1625 and wife. The two effigies, the lady in front, her husband behind and a little higher, lie under a deep coffered arch with Victories in the spandrels. Columns on the sides, fourteen kneeling children in relief on the plinth. - Jeremiah Milles d. 1797 and his wife d. 1835, by Ternouth, with a kneeling mourning woman. - In the NAVE. Late C15 fragmentary Brass; twelve sons and six daughters only. Brass to John Chauncy (?) d. 1479 and his eight sons. - Sir Walter Hewyt d. 1637 and wife d. 1646, epitaph of black and white marble. Very unusual design. The two demi-figures in one oval medallion hold hands. White columns with black capitals l. and r. White gable of two concave curves a la chinoise. - Viscount Jocelyn d. 1756, excellent bust before grey obelisk. At foot tondo with mourning justice. By Bacon (born in 1740 ; so the recoverment must be a good deal later than the Viscount’s death). - In the S AISLE; Brass of Edward Leventhorp d. 1551 and wife. He is in armour. - Brass of a woman, 2 1/2 ft long, c. 1600. - Inside the TOWER: C15 Brass to man and woman in shrouds. - Big Elizabethan Brass to Mrs Mary Leventhorp d. 1566. - Standing wall monument to Sir Thomas Hewit d. 1662, signed by Abraham Story. Black and white marble in a grand Baroque manner. Segmental pediment. Large inscription held by two putti.

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