Tewin

St Peter was my favourite, and last, church of the day despite the oddity of the impossible to photograph monument in the porch, and the porch itself, (strangely the monument, which looks like it was created as an internal wall monument, was moved from the churchyard to the chancel, then to the nave and subsequently, in 1864 to the porch which was adapted to fit it - all most peculiar.

It has to be said, however, that it's not particularly interesting; I think it's the locale, an ancestral connection and the fact that it was old, open, light and it was finally sunny so it could have been simply a 'good' church.

ST PETER. A small church on the edge of a scattered village but with the RECTORY close by, a five-bay, two-storeyed Georgian house with a timber-framed weatherboarded barn, and a stable also timber-framed but with brick infillings. - The church is partly still of the C11 (see a tiny window on the N side of the nave and the uncovered remains of inner surrounds of windows on the S side). The chancel was rebuilt or remodelled in the C13, as is proved by S lancet windows. Also of the C I 3 the S aisle with lancet windows and an arcade of octagonal piers with simply moulded capitals. Of the C15 some inserted Perp windows, the whole very low W tower with diagonal buttresses and a spike, and the nave roof. A little later still the timber S porch, badly converted, when the chief monument of Tewin was removed from its original place outdoors and squeezed into the porch. As this has a high obelisk as its main motif, the effect is painful. The MONUMENT is to General Joseph Sabine, Governor of Gibraltar, d. 1739. Below the obelisk on the pedestal in the front an exquisitely carved relief of a Roman general (portrait ?); on the sides and back trophies and arms. There is a number of good epitaphs in the church (1709, 1727, 1733, 1789) and also a BRASS: Thomas Pygott d. 1610 (S aisle).- FONT. Fluted C18 bowl.

Tewin. It was the Saxons who first penetrated the forest and settled in this clearing. Now, among woods and commons, with sloping fields, narrow lanes, and winding paths, Tewin is a centre for lovely walks in unspoiled country, not an hour’s ride from London.

It has two greens, most of the village lying round the lower one, while the church is half a mile away in the fields. The hand of the Saxon helped to build the walls, but the oldest part of what we see is a Norman nave under a 15th-century timber-and-plaster roof, with one blocked window taking us back nearly to the Conquest, and the remains of two clerestory windows added 700 years ago, when the nave arcade was built. The chancel is 13th century. The spiked tower came late in the 15th. Five of the bells are nearly 300 years old, and a sundial from the days before village clocks is scratched on a corner of the chancel. There is an Elizabethan silver chalice.

In front of the altar is a stone carved about 1356 to the memory of a rector, Walter de Louthe, and a small brass shows us Thomas Pygott, who died in 1610, when his family had been in Tewin 300 years. There is a monument to Josephine Sabine, a General who fought under Marlborough and was Governor of Gibraltar. He died out there and was brought home for burial here. His marble monument, 15 feet high, shows the General, dressed in Roman armour, lying in front of a pyramid. Here, too, is a tablet to a queer adventurer, Lady Cathcart, who inscribed on her ring when marrying her fourth husband: “If I survive I’ll make it five.” Number Four took her to Ireland and kept her a prisoner there for 20 years while he spent her money and sold her lands. He died when she was an old lady of 75 and she went to law, recovered Tewin House and her estates, and died at 97 before she had a chance to make it five.

Her story is true, but not true is Lady Anne Grimston’s whose grave is the great sight of Tewin churchyard. It has been split by ash and sycamore trees, which have broken the stones and crumpled the railings. The legend everybody will tell you here is that Lady Anne was an infidel, and that she declared it as likely that she would rise again as that a tree would grow from her grave. It is not true, for Lady Anne was a lady of deep faith and piety; but it is true that trees have grown from her grave, heaving up the great stone, breaking it into fragments, and tearing up the heavy iron railings so that bits of them are now raised high, embedded in the trunks.

The pleasant 18th-century rectory makes use of a pretty timbered stable and a thatched wooden tithe barn, both from the 17th century. Beyond the upper green stands Queen Hoo Hall, a stalwart Elizabethan house with wide latticed windows looking over the wooded slopes.

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Letty Green

Redundant, St John has been converted for domestic use; a not too shabby Victorian built chapel.

I wont state the obvious regarding the boys.

Newgate Street

LNK St Mary is nothing to write home about, so I wont other than to note that this is another church missed by Mee and Pevsner - Hertfordshire seems to have been ill served by them (moreso Mee).

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Goffs Oak

St James, LNK, was built in 1862 by Habershon and Pite and peering through the glass west doors shows a very dull interior (mind you the exterior is no gem).

The church website says - it was built as a daughter church to St Mary the Virgin, Cheshunt......The building is a light and airy Victorian building with handsome proportions and a beautiful wooden roof set in a quiet pleasant spot, which was extensively modernised and refurbished in 2007.

Well that's one view.

Neither Mee nor Pevsner mention it.

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Northaw

St Thomas a Becket - no, no, no but then a bit yes which is slightly disturbing for a late Victorian build. It gets worse on the inside but turns out to be rather glorious; it's a fine example of a Victorian attempt to recreate the Gothic past on a grand scale.

It reminded me of All Saints, Cambridge and Geldart's work in Essex although Geldart is much more flamboyant.

Put simply I loved it and this disturbs me.

ST THOMAS THE MARTYR, 1882, by Kirk & Sons of Sleaford (GR). In its rock-facing, its pinnacles on the W tower, and its flowing tracery quite alien in the county. The tracery of the W window is in fact very Sleafordish. - PLATE. Chalice and Paten, 1636; Paten, 1668; Flagon, 1749; Paten, 1785.

Northaw. Charles Lamb, who loved this countryside, would climb up here from the deep wooded valley where the rivulets flow to the Lea on the east and the Colne on the west. Centuries before Lamb came this way to spend his holidays, this pleasant country attracted someone else, for James I took part of Northaw Common to complete his Cheshunt estate of Theobald’s Park. The money he paid for it still brings the village a few hundred pounds a year as the interest of what is called King  James’s Fund. Theobald’s Park is no more, and the old church by the green has given way to a handsome new church, which has kept from the old the 15th-century font with crosses and Tudor roses, and a Stuart chalice. On the green is the striking memorial to the men who fell in the Great War, a cross rising 25 feet high with the figure of Our Lord.

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Little Heath

Christ Church was open and that normally would be my entry. Built in 1894 the exterior is dire, the location dull and is utterly lacking merit.

Inside, however, is a different story - first the heating is on (always a plus point on a cold day) and second it has some rather good glass, particularly the west window but some of the Victorian glass is good too.

Definitely not a knee trembler of a church but, for a Victorian build, someone you'd introduce to your mother.

I can't find it in Pevsner or Mee.

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Potters Bar

I'm not sure how King Charles the Martyr got on the list as it's a 1939 new build but on the list it was. Open, more I suspect due to the attached cafe than a desire for encouraging visitors. Whilst I was finishing recording the interior the man who had eyed me warily as I passed the cafe came in to, not that a word was exchanged between us, make sure I wasn't up to no good - I found it slightly odd that the church was open but visiting is eyed with suspicion (although I should be used to this attitude by now).

An obvious oddity is the dedication since there are only six other churches in England (Falmouth, Newtown in Wem, Tunbridge Wells, Shelland and Plymouth, which is a bombed out ruin and stands as a War Memorial, which have this dedication. 

The vicar responsible for building it, Allen Hay (incumbent 1898-1954), was a member of the Royal Martyr Church Union and it was proposed at the A.G.M. of that organisation that it would further the cause of the R.M.C.U., which had been founded in 1906 for the purpose of honouring the name of Charles I and to restore it to its proper place in the Anglican Calendar, if a new church was built and dedicated in his name.

Despite the bland, nay dull, exterior I rather liked the interior which has a very Catholic feel to it but that's due more to the build date than any high church tendencies. Having said that I wouldn't normally go out of my way to visit it.

Update: When I visited Potters Bar in January I missed St Mary the Virgin, lnk, so last week (21.08.14) I rectified this omission - I almost wish I hadn't.

No Pevsner.

St Mary the Virgin & All Saints

POTTERS BAR. Beginning life as a hamlet of South Mymms, it has become a growing place and has seen in our time dire happenings, from its stand on one of the highest points of the Great North Road between London and York. Here stands an oak tree shorn of many branches by a sheet of fire; not lightning but a German Zeppelin struck it, the second in a month to fall flaming from the sky in sight of Potters Bar. One was shot down on September 3, 1916, by our VC airman William Leefe Robinson, the first Zeppelin to be brought down in England, and fell just over the county border at Cuffley. It was the second Zeppelin that hit this oak tree at Potters Bar a few weeks later, but the crews of both airships lie buried here in the new churchyard. Not one escaped from this terrible fate and hardly one was recognisable; and the inscription in their memory tells us that their names cannot be assigned to tombstones; they are written instead on 35 stone tablets on a wall marked with a black cross. Out of this holocaust has come a little gem, a crucifix fashioned from the twisted metal of the German airship that fell on English oak.

We may see this crucifix on an old altar table which is probably the oldest possession of the church, the church itself being one of the most beautiful modern buildings in the county. It is in 14th century style, strikingly lofty with long clerestory windows and fine tracery in the rest, arcades on clustered columns, and a chancel arch soaring to the great oak barrel roof of the nave and chancel. The windows have fine portraits of several saints and one window is a tribute to John Keble, having been placed here on his centenary in 1933. It shows him in white gown and gold vestments, with a picture of a little church and the words from one of his famous hymns. Under this we see him in wig and gown, preaching. A Madonna window showing her as a little girl in the Temple is in memory of Robert Goodacre, a schoolmaster here for a generation, and another has the figure of Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was offered burial in Westminster Abbey but wished to lie in the cloister of his own cathedral. There is a brass inscription, with an angel at each end, to a vicar for 54 years of last century.

Not far away is a church built in Norman style 100 years ago but now forsaken; it is a desolate place. In striking contrast is another building here - Oakmere House, the home of the town council, with a lake in front of it and fine trees in its drive.

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South Mimms

When I arrived at St Giles a funeral service was just underway so I chatted with the undertaker who advised me to hang around for an hour and then talk to the churchwarden who would be tidying up afterwards. I took exteriors, then went to Potters Bar and returned shortly before the service was over.

Keyholders are listed but I have a suspicion that gaining untrammeled access here is difficult if not impossible - to quote Phil Draper when he visited "I find when I am accompanied around a church I miss things or do not explore everywhere. The chap was perfectly friendly and informed..." quite.

The churchwarden let me look around but had made it clear that he needed to leave quite soon (perfectly reasonable) so it was all a bit rushed and not totally satisfactory. Having said that there is plenty of interest here; it's also probably the highest, as in high Anglican, church I've yet visited.

PARISH CHURCH ST GILES. Chancel (C13), W tower (C14), and nave (C15) of flint, N aisle (early C16) of brick, refaced by G. E. Street, who also added the S porch. The church was in existence in 1136. The tower has diagonal buttresses, battlemented parapet, and a stair-turret higher than the parapet in the SE corner. The nave is of modest dimensions with octagonal piers and octagonal concave capitals. The arches are four-centred. A staircase to the former rood loft is preserved in the S wall. The N chancel chapel is separated from the N aisle and the chancel by wooden screens (early C16) of fifteen and ten bays. Each bay ends in a steep gable with slightly concave sides. The W door has a richly cusped ogee arch. Aisle and chancel have simple contemporary roofs. The chancel chapel is a chantry endowed by Henry Frowyk in 1527. He probably also financed the building of the aisle. The Frowyk family were successful City merchants. In the aisle windows are fragments of GLASS, two of them dated 1526, showing groups of kneeling figures in blue, mauve, amber, and a little green; no red. - DOOR in W tower, nail-studded, C15. - CHEST in nave, of elementary hutch-type, may be as old as C13: anyway the earliest piece of furniture in the county. - FONT. Four short C13 shafts support an absolutely plain, big, square bowl. - PLATE. C17 Set re-cast by Keith’s in 1890. - MONUMENTS. The chief pride of South Mimms church are its Frowyk tombs: the brass to Thomas Frowyk d. 1448, his wife and nineteen children in the W tower, and the two splendid canopied monuments in the chancel and the N chancel chapel. The latter is earlier in its style and supposed to represent Henry Frowyk the Younger, who died before his father, Henry the Elder, probably buried in the chancel monument. Both have tomb-chests with quatrefoil panels, corner posts with shaft-rings, and canopies with four-centred arches. But whereas the tomb in the aisle chapel is purely Perp, the probably only slightly later one in the chancel has a Renaissance top cornice and corner posts developing in their upper parts into bulbous, leaf-covered Renaissance balusters (a remarkable example of the gusto with which craftsmen at some distance from the Court threw themselves into the new Italian fashion). The tomb looks as though it might be of c. 1540. - In the churchyard Cavendish-Bentinck Mausoleum, c. 1900, by Weir-Schulzz, a cool, correct Doric temple in arzis.

SOUTH MYMMS. Six miles from St Albans, it is pierced by Telford’s turnpike road of a hundred years ago, and by one of our arterial roads. Just withdrawn from Telford’s highway is the old part of the village, with the church. The White Hart Inn near the church was built about the end of the 17th century and in some of the rooms is 18th century plaster panelling, with enriched ceilings and carved fireplaces. A mile away, off the road to North Mymms, is Mymms Hall with some remains of the 16th century, and fragments of its old moat. Near Potters Bar station is Wyllyot’s Manor, a delightful rambling old house with walls of brick and timber and roofs of mellow tiles. Built probably about 1600, it incorporates part of the barn which comes from earlier in Elizabethan days, and is used now for the civic purposes of Potters Bar.

Near the site of the Battle of Barnet, where the Kingmaker was killed, are the 286 acres of Wrotham Park, with a house built by Admiral Byng, who, after his trial by courtmartial, was shot on board the Monarque at Portsmouth in 1757. Sheltered by great trees, the house has a balustraded parapet and a dome. The fine iron gates at the entrance to the park are between stone pillars with the lion and the unicorn holding shields. Sir John Austen, who was three times knight of the shire in the Admiral’s day, lies in the churchyard, under a tomb carved with a skull and cross-bones. A crucifix in the churchyard, in memory of one who fell in the Great War, was carved at Oberammergau, and a curious Celtic cross, carved with many animal and human figures, is to a village schoolmaster who died in 1916.

The church has a fine 500-year-old tower with a big corner turret, a 14th century nave, and a 13th century chancel with a 600-year-old doorway. The lofty north arcade of the nave and the lower arcade of the chancel are early 16th century, the time of the aisle and the chapel to which they lead. Both have their old roofs, and that of the chapel is painted red and white, its beams dotted with flowers. The oak screen dividing the chapel from the aisle and chancel is also original, and is one of the most beautiful in the county. It has over a score of traceried bays, divided by buttresses, and two fine doorways with leopards on the cusps. The modern chancel screen is similar in style, and has a coloured roof loft with figures of the Crucifixion. The rood stairs climb to a doorway in the splay of a nave window, leading to a passage in the wall.

A 13th century piscina niche has a trefoiled head. The font of the same time has a square bowl on four round shafts, and a central shaft on which tracery was carved a century later; its modern cover has eight pillars and a top gleaming with gold. The grand old chest may be 600 years old. The west doorway of the tower and two doorways in its turret are 15th century. Distinction is lent to the north aisle and the chapel by the Tudor glass shining red, gold, purple, and blue in the foot of the windows, with groups of kneeling men, women, and children believed to represent the builders and their families; behind a man in civilian dress, in the chapel, is a crowd of 12 children.

On a handsome canopied tomb in the chapel, with banded pillars like buttresses at the corners, lies an armoured knight of the Frowyk family, believed to be the last of them, who died about 1540. His gauntlet is beside him, his head rests on a helmet, and the lion at his feet has a very curly mane. At his knee, his shoulder, and his elbow, and on the monument itself, are more leopards. The roof of the canopy has tracery and flowers, and the tomb is enriched with tracery and shields.

In the chancel is another handsome canopied tomb looking rather like a small four-poster bed, remarkable for the rich decoration of acanthus leaves on the baluster-pillars, and the arches and cornice of the canopy, which has a traceried roof. Golden flowers are in the quatrefoils on the tomb. The monument is believed to be that of Henry Frowyk of 1527, who wished to be buried here in the chancel.

Elizabeth Frowyk lies in brass on the floor of the tower, wearing draped headdress and a flowing gown with a tiny dog in its folds. With her are groups of six sons and thirteen daughters, but the portrait of her husband has gone. He was Thomas Frowyk who died in 1448, leaving money for the upkeep of the tower. There is a brass shield on the chapel floor only six inches wide, but remarkable for its elaborate engraving, a lion in the upper part, and below it a high-pooped ship with an anchor, cannon peeping from its sides, and pennants streaming, Above a 17th century wall-monument, showing a sarcophagus and a tiny recess with a skull, is one of the next century, carved with four cherubs.

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Ridge

I absolutely guarantee that if you came across St Margaret in a similar location in either Cambridgeshire or Suffolk (and quite possibly in Essex although that would be more of a 50/50 call) you'd find her open; sadly since it is where it is it is LNK.

This is a shame as the location, even in the returning rain, is stunning, it's an attractive building and I'd like to see the St Christopher; plus the alabaster monument to Lady Busby, d.1661, with  a bayleaf band around an inscribed slab, empty cartouche at head, skull at base, fruit and ribbon ornament, early C18 floor slabs and an indent for a brass in chancel and nave floors, early C19 slabs on chancel N wall, tapestry Royal Arms of George III mounted on N wall of nave with plank dated 1814 and fragments of c.1390 glass in upper panels of E window in nave N wall which are all inaccessible.

Besides which any church that has a "lively king-post roof" should be kept open by default.

ST MARGARET. Nicely placed N of a village Green with some weatherboarded barns and a half-timbered cottage. The church belongs to the C15. It is of flint with stone dressings and has a low battlemented W tower with big diagonal buttresses, a tiled nave and lower chancel, and a very pretty C19 timber porch with bargeboarding and traceried openings on the sides (A. Billing, 1881). Aisleless interior with two-light straightheaded windows and a good, lively king-post roof. - Large WALL PAINTING of St Christopher, mid C15, very raw. - PLATE. Chalice and Salver, 1740; plated Flagon, also C18.

 

Ridge. True to its name, it stands on a wooded ridge with a view stretching to distant Barnet. Its narrow church was made new by 15th century builders who left only the piscina to show that there was a church here 700 years ago. Much has been altered since, but there are fragments of 15th-century glass in a window, fragments of a painted St Christopher on a wall, and fragments of three medieval sun clocks cut in stone on the outside. In the tower (less than nine feet square) hang two bells from Stuart England.

Those were the days when Sir Henry Pope Blount, whose memorial is on the wall, lived at Tittenhanger Park, the fine Stuart house he built near London Colney on the site of a house where Wolsey and the king took refuge from the plague. Sir Henry was born at Tittenhanger in 1602, and at 32 he made the famous journey described in his Voyage to the Levant, a book which ran into eight editions while the Stuart throne was lost and won again. This journey took him through the Balkans to Constantinople, with the Turkish fleet to Egypt, through the dark passages of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, and home by way of Florence, which he reached after travelling 6000 miles in 11 months. He died here at 80 and was buried in the church, and his son Thomas proceeded to make the family name still better known by publishing a vast compendium of what 600 great writers of all ages had written about each other. Thomas, who lies here with his father, was a scholar who believed heartily that scholars were not of much use to the State. It is clear that Thomas must have been a man of great modesty, for he himself was of wide learning, and in addition to the great book he produced in 1690, with the opinions of famous writers about one another, he published a natural history extracted from the best authors, and a great book of poetry surveying the poets of all time.

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Shenley

Strangely the outer western doors of St Martin were open but the interior ones were locked. However the inner ones are glass so I could see I wasn't missing much apart from a set of Royal arms and possibly the east window.

Since neither Pevsner nor Mee mention it I offer you its listing entry.

Parish Church. 1841 by S.Staples for Rev. T.Newcome, Rector of Shenley. Red brick, stone dressings, slate roofs. Gothic chapel. 4 bay unaisled nave, short low chancel, W porch, SW bell turret, NE vestry. Tall nave windows: 2 pointed lights each with hollow chamfered mullions set in a square head, chamfered surrounds, stone hood moulds with carved stops. 2 stage buttresses with stone offsets, diagonal to E angles. Upper door to gallery to NW. Plinth. Boxed eaves. Small lights in gable ends of nave. Dentilled brick courses below gable parapets with cross finials. E window: 4 lights with 4 centred arched head. Vestry: pointed heads to doors to W and N, a slit window and a casement. Gable parapets. Gabled W porch: pointed arched entrances, stone hood mould with carved stops. Chamfered slit openings to sides. Stone coped parapet. Above porch square W window, now blocked with a hood mould. Octagonal 3 stage turret, stone courses between stages. Pointed openings to each side in belfry stage. Interior: pointed chancel arch, chamfered with capitals and bases to responds, stopped hood mould to nave. Gallery to W, now organ loft with panelled front, on 4 cast iron colonnettes. Nave roof, decorative queen post with open panels in spandrels. Chancel roof, decorative arched braced collar beam. Glass from Church of St. Botolph. E window, 2 central windows in nave S wall and E window in nave N wall all c.1850-60. E window in nave S wall is by Morris and Co., 1907. Also from St. Botolph's: Royal Arms of George III painted on canvas and brasses to R.Allway and Family, d.1621. (Colvin 1978).

Shenley. Christopher Wren’s friend Nicholas Hawksmoor, when he lay dying by the Thames in London (where he had put his handiwork in the dome of St Paul’s and on the towers of Westminster Abbey), thought of this Hertfordshire hilltop village and asked that he might be buried here. He lies under one of the churchyard yews, having ended a long life of work in 1736. He was with Wren as his assistant all the time on St Paul’s, and finished the western towers of the Abbey which Wren had designed but could not finish. He was a prime mover in the building of 50 Queen Anne churches in London, helped Sir John Vanbrugh with Blenheim, built colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, and restored Beverley Minster. He was a modest man with an infinite grasp of detail, and had a great influence on the architecture of his time. His 200th anniversary was marked by an act of homage from the Royal Institute of British Architects, who were represented at the laying of a wreath on his tomb by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s.

The church where they laid him lost the tower and chancel soon after his burial here, and they have never been rebuilt. Only the nave and the aisle are left, and a homeless bell hangs from a low beam out in the open, where anyone may reach up to it, the other bells having been hung in the timber framework by the chapel in the centre of the village. A sundial tilted on the wall warns us that Time Flies, and a board tells of one whom Time carried off long since:

A parish clerk of voice most clear; 

None Joseph Rogers could excel 

In laying bricks or singing well. 

Though snapped his line, laid by his rod, 

We build for him our hopes in God. 

By the pond on the green is a small round hut under a bee-hive roof, its windows barred with stones inscribed, “Do well and fear not; Be sober and vigilant,” timely warnings to the villagers of old that they would be behind these bars if they did not behave themselves, for this was the lock-up.

Within a mile is Salisbury Hall, a fine country house built by Sir John Cuttes in the 16th century and refashioned about 1700 by Sir Jeremiah Snow. The latter spared no pains to adorn it within and without, bringing from the walls of Sopwell Nunnery at St Albans a number of plaster medallions of Roman emperors, thought to be 15th century. Here they still are, above the panelling in the hall, looking like copies of old coins magnified to nine feet round. Charles II must have admired them, for he was a frequent visitor here.

Radlett

Built in 1864 and extended in 1907, so that the original became the south aisle, I pretty much wrote off Christ Church from the exterior. To my surprise - I'm not sure why - it was open, welcoming and, in my experience, unusually has some good glass. Otherwise this is a run of the mill turn of the century building but full marks for the welcome.

CHRIST CHURCH, 1864, by Smith & Son; new nave and chancel added to the N in 1907 by Oldrid Scott (GR). The older part flint with red brick, yellow brick, and stone; Oldrid Scott’s more restrained and more competent.

Radlett. It lies on the old Watling Street, by a brook that feeds the River Colne; a Roman kiln has been discovered in a sandpit here. Watling Street today divides the old churchyard from the modern church, built on a hillside terrace from which is a fine view of a well wooded green valley. Finely carved heads of kings and queens from the ancient church peep out from the walls of the new, and jutting from the wall near the doorway is an exquisite figure of an angel bearing a crown to Our Lord. In the windows are figures of St Michael, St George, and St Alban, and below a window of Christ blessing the children is a children’s corner with books and paintings and Della. Robbia plaques.

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Aldenham

This week's trip took me to 12 churches centred, mainly, between the M1 and A1 and involved lots of crossing over the M25. This is not an area of Hertfordshire that I'm particularly familiar with having only passed through it whilst enduring the M25 on my way to somewhere else. It has to be said that this is pretty countryside dotted with some fairly dreadful towns.

I ignored the weather forecast when I set off from home as we had clear blue skies but by the time I was on the M25 the rain was so heavy that traffic was crawling along at 40mph. I almost gave up but by the time I got off the M1 the rain was slowing so I decided to persevere, thinking that I could read Pevsner and have a sandwich at my first stop until the rain passed.

I had very low expectations for this trip but out of the 12, 5 were open and 1 was redundant so it was actually a fairly good return.

Having read Pevsner whilst waiting for the last drops to fall I was seriously disappointed to find St John the Baptist LNK. There's no ostensible reason for this since it sits in the middle of the village and on an open site. Still perhaps a lesson in not reading Pevsner before trying the door!

ST JOHN THE BAPTIST. The church stretches out impressively S of the Green, long and well—proportioned, with a W tower, nave, and aisles of four bays, and chancel and chancel chapels. Exterior and interior look at first a unity, but they represent quite a long and complex building history. The exterior is all flint with stone dressings, the window shapes will be mentioned later. The W tower has diagonal buttresses, a NE stair—turret higher than the tower battlements, and a thin, long (renewed) timber spire. The oldest remaining fragment is a Norman window at the W end of the S aisle, perhaps not in its original position. The lower parts of the W tower (see windows) are C13. C13 also is the chancel, with deeply splayed lancet windows, completely renewed sedilia, and a trefoil-headed piscina recess. The S chancel chapel has windows with typical tracery of c. 1300, with trefoils and pointed trefoils. It is separated from the chancel by short octagonal piers with broadly moulded capitals and double-chamfered arches. The nave and S aisle were rebuilt about 1340 (see the octagonal piers with capitals decorated by fleurons and the double-chamfered arches and also the tracery of the two-light windows). To the Perp style belong the N arcade and wide N aisle (the capitals of the piers are finer and have faces as well as fleurons as decoration), the N windows, the N chancel chapel, the tower arch towards the nave, the upper parts of the tower, and the clerestory with small two-light windows. The brick N porch is C19. The roofs are good C15 work, especially in the nave and N aisle. Both are of very flat pitch. FURNISHINGS. FONT. Square, C13, undecorated, on five supports. - SCREEN. Between S aisle and S chancel chapel, C15, much renewed. - COFFER. 10ft long, oak trunk scooped out; the sides are 3 ft thick. With iron bands and many hinges. Dated C14 by Roe. - STAINED GLASS. By Kempe, 1891-1900; the earliest the Crucifixion in the N chancel chapel. - PLATE. Cup, 1565 ; Cup, 1635; several C19 pieces. - MONUMENTS. An unusual wealth of BRASSES, not of high aesthetic quality, but interesting as illustrating the changes of costume: in the chancel man, woman, and eight children, C16; man, woman, and eleven children, C16; Lucas Goodyere, 1547, draped in a shroud; in the S chancel chapel a series from the early C16 to the early C17 (man and wife, c. 1520; man head missing, c. 1520; man and two wives, c. 1525; lady, c. 1535; Joan Warner d. 1538; E. Brisko d. 1608 and wife). - Of stone monuments the most important is that to two ladies of the Crowmer family in the S chancel chapel. Two identical tomb-chests with quatrefoil decoration. Recumbent effigies on them in late C14 costume. Canopies above with cusped four-centred arches and embattled top cornices. The two monuments form one composition. - John Coghill d. 1714, ascribed by Mrs Esdaile to R. Crutcher, two effigies on tombchest; he reclines and seems to talk to her; she is behind him in a half-sitting position. Contemporary costumes. - Robert Hucks and his wife d. 1771, good unsigned epitaph in various marbles, with double profile medallion. - Vice-Admiral Sir John Chambers White d. 1845, Gothic epitaph, very Dec in style, made by Poole of Westminster. - In the churchyard big urn on pedestal to Lt-Gen. R. Burne d. 1825. On the pedestal the places in Europe, Asia, and America are enumerated where he fought; amongst them Buenos Ayres and The Suburbs of Buenos Ayres.

Aldenham. The lovely gardens of Aldenham House, with their rare trees and shrubs and multitude of flowers, are known to every horticulturist.

The laying-out of the gardens was a part of the amazing activity of Henry Huck Gibbs, the merchant and banker who adopted politics and architecture with equal zest, found time to write many articles for the Oxford Dictionary, and was helping with its editing when he died in 1907, first Lord Aldenham.

He inherited Aldenham House, which had been almost entirely rebuilt a century before, and he added to it without disturbing the older treasures it still retains, including 17th-century panelling and a fireplace of 1529. He also made the park and the gardens among the most renowned in England. Three churches owe much to him. He gave time and money in abundance to restoring St Albans Abbey; he gave new life to the church of Clifton Hampden, one of the loveliest villages of Oxfordshire, which was his, too; and he maintained the beauty of Aldenham’s splendid church and gave it its fine oak screen. It is pathetic to remember that his youngest son died within 24 hours of his father, and they were laid in the grave together.

Filled from end to end with beauty and interest is the church, set so proudly in the centre of the village, with a cross designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield and three great sycamores stirring up the graves with their roots. That the Normans had a hand in its building is shown by the west window of the south aisle; the church grew throughout the succeeding building centuries, the 13th adding the chancel, the south chapel, and the tower; the 14th the south arcade with its carved capitals; the 15th an arcade to the north, the top of the tower with its shingled spire, the tower arch, and the clerestory which lights the stone angels supporting the nave roof. After 450 years this roof still reveals traces of its old colour. The chancel is curiously out of centre with the nave, owing to a 16th-century widening.

The font is 700 years old, with a Jacobean cover of fine craftsmanship, and by its side is one of the biggest chests in England, hollowed out of an oak beam 10 feet long 600 years ago, and strengthened with iron and 17 hinges. The south chapel screen is 500 years old, and through a little iron gate in the south wall we see the stairs by which in the old days singers would climb up and walk across this screen, passing through an opening in the chancel wall on to the rood screen, which has now been displaced by Lord Aldenham’s magnificent gift. The little Tudor vestry is a miniature museum, with fragments from Roman and medieval days in a glass case, with oak shutters 400 years old, and a corner fireplace. On its walls are portraits of the Carys and other great families of the neighbourhood, including William and Mary’s powerful friend John Holles, Duke of Newcastle. Ben Jonson’s friend Henry Cary, the first Lord Falkland, lies under the chancel, and his grandson Lorenzo was baptised at the old font. Lorenzo was the son of the second Lord Falkland, Lucius Cary, who fell at Newbury, perhaps the most pathetic figure in the story of the Civil War.

Outlined on a floorstone in the north aisle is John Robinson of 1674., and there are numerous portraits in brass, many only fragments now, though on the chancel floor we see Edward Brisko and his wife of Shakespeare’s day and Lucas Goodyere of 1547 in her shroud; while in the south chapel are several other 16th-century folk in brass, all nameless except Jane Warner. The beauties in this chapel are two nameless ladies of the 14th century, stately figures under rich stone canopies, with the arms of William Crowmer, twice Lord Mayor of London, and many other devices on their tombs.

When the church was restored a century ago many of its tombstones were put to new use in the cottages near by, and we were told that one enterprising baker used one or two for paving his oven, with the result that loaves appeared on tea-tables inscribed Sacred to the memory, or aged 34.years.

Aldenham school stands proudly on its hilltop. Founded in 1597 by Richard Platt, a London brewer, and endowed by him with “all those three Pastures of ground lying nighe the Churche of St Pancrasse in the County of Md’x besides London,” it has grown from an ailing and failing day school into a flourishing public school. Greatly enlarged a century ago, it has added during the present century such handsome buildings as the Library (in honour of the :60 boys and masters who died in the Great War), and in 1938 the dignified chapel designed by Mr W. G. Newton. John Kennedy, a fine classical scholar and an equally fine footballer, vigorously guided the early development of the school from 1877 onwards; under his headmastership, and under that of his successor Dr A. H. Cooke, it achieved a quite remarkable reputation for both scholarship and games. Among many eminent Old Aldenhamians may be mentioned Lord Chancellor Buckmaster, and the sculptor Sir Alfred Gilbert, best known for his lovely figure of Eros presiding over Piccadilly Circus.

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Brickendon

Holy Cross & St Alban is a rather successful 1930s designed chapel with a 2002 west end extension which blends in perfectly. A modest building but a nice end to the day.

Neither Pevsner nor Mee cover it but from the guide:

In 1883, parts of the Brickendonbury Estate were sold to a local business man, Mr. Henry Wilson Demain Saunders. He died at an early age in 1888 and his widow, Minnie, remarried Mr. Arthur Henry Kingsley in 1892.

The Chapel was built with funds provided by Mrs. Kingsley during her lifetime, and by her daughter Constance Demain Saunders who was responsible for its completion.

The Demain Saunders family were so impressed with the way in which some friends of theirs had converted an old timbered barn into a Chapel, that they decided to ask the architect W.F. Haslip, who had done the conversion, to design a similar Chapel in Brickendon, which would be in keeping with the surroundings. The timber was cut from trees on the Brickendon estate and lay weathering on the Green for the necessary length of time. Constance Demain Saunders stipulated that for the building of the Chapel, men of Brickendon should be employed by the builders, Rattee and Kett of Cambridge.

Before the building began the field was marked in 1931 by the setting up of a Great Cross of oak, designed by Alexander Nairne, a Canon of Windsor and a close friend of the Demain Saunders family. As 1931 was the Millennium of the Poet Virgil, the words DIVINI GLORIA RURIS (The Glory of the Divine Country), were carved in the Cross. The Cross was dedicated on Palm Sunday of that year.

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Bayford

Externally not bad of its type; St Mary was rebuilt in 1870 replacing a plain brick 1804 church which in turn had replaced an earlier chapel on the site. Internally more interesting with an unexpected knight's effigy, some good brasses and a price list board for church services.

My real joy here was Colin, who came to lock up earlier than usual - luckily he came in to the church to check it was empty before locking up - who said that they had only been keeping the church open for about a year, that it had been a great success with lots of visitors and finished off by saying what is the point of having a church if you're going to keep it locked? Hear, hear...we need more Colins in this day and age.

ST MARY. 1870, by Woodyer. Stone, in the E.E. style, with brick quoins and a fleche. The S vestry roof is the nave and chancel roof carried lower down without a break (a happy effect). - F ONT. Perp, octagonal with simple tracery and quatrefoil motifs. - MONUMENTS. George Knighton d. 1612, excellent recumbent marble effigy in armour. Let into the back wall the brasses of two men in armour, c. 1550 and c. 1590.

Bayford. From the village pond the road bends down to the handsome lychgate of a churchyard where junipers, pines, and yews show up darkly against the elms in the meadows and the lofty oak across the way. Here under the churchyard trees lies William Yarrell, whose books on British fishes and birds were long the best books of their kind. This London bookseller took every opportunity of accumulating knowledge about our birds and fishes and in writing about them with such accurate simplicity that his books are still read after a century. He was born in 1784, and he lies here in his mother’s village, while his medallion portrait is in the Piccadilly church of St James’s, and his oil portrait is treasured by the Linnean Society, whose treasurer and vice-president he was till he died. Those who make this naturalist’s grave a place of spring-time pilgrimage will hear a grand chorus of birds from the deep woods stretching for miles behind these cottages above the Lea Valley; but they can scarcely hope for his good fortune in seeing, as he did at Therfield, the rare rock thrush. It came in the spring of 1843, but has never been seen wild in England since.

Bayford’s church is new since Yarrell’s day, but it keeps the rose-carved Tudor font, the brasses, and a marble figure from the old one. Two of the brasses are portraits of 16th-century knights, the palimpsest one sketched on the back of part of a shrouded figure thought to be that of John Knightson, whose descendant George appears in the same recess, a white armoured figure of 1612 in ruff, trunk hose, and jackboots. In his day the manor house was built, and though many alterations were made last century the old stairs still climb the three storeys in six flights, one above the other, and in one of the rooms is some painted panelling.

Bayfordbury, the great house here, stands in grounds remarkable for their trees, three cedars forming a magnificent group about 100 feet high. The house has classical porticos on both sides and is famous for its portraits of members of the Kit Cat Club, which were painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

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Little Berkhamstead

Essentially a Victorian church St Andrew is LNK and not very appealing - it's blandness makes it eminently forgettable.

ST ANDREW. Essentially 1857 and 1894. Of the church built in 1647 no telling features remain.,- PLATE. Chalice and Paten, 1684; Paten, 1701; Paten, 1721; Almsdish,  1791; Flagon of Sheffield Plate, c. 1790.

Little Berkhamsted. Trees close in the appealing sound of the three old bells in the church’s wooden belfry, the oldest bell having Ave Maria moulded on it 600 years ago. It would be the first peal heard by Bishop Ken, for in this village he was born, and we like to think that the ancient bell may have stirred in him the message of the hymn he was to write as the years rolled on, Awake, my soul, and with the sun. . . .

The altar table in the church is a memorial to this saintly Bishop of Bath and Wells. The church was made new in his day, and has been rebuilt since, but a name from the 17th century stops us at a stone in the chancel floor, the name of Cromwell. Here lies Cromwell Fleetwood, Oliver’s grandson, whose mother Bridget married two leaders of the Parliamentary Army, first Ireton, then General Fleetwood. This grandson was married in the chancel here in 1679, but he died childless nine years later; his sister was that Bridget Ireton who, of all Oliver’s descendants, is said to have been in some ways most like him, though she was one of the most extraordinarily wild and unbalanced women ever known.

Facing the church is a charming row of wooden cottages under red roofs, and from the churchyard we see the red tower John Stratton built 300 years ago, so that from its battlements he might see his ships anchored in the Thames. It was later made into an observatory. His house, the Gage, has been much altered since it was built of Elizabethan brick and timber. Manor House Farm has also seen many changes in its three centuries, but is remarkable still for its open timber porch.

It was in the summer of 1637 that life began here for Tom Ken. After his father and mother died he lived for a time under Izaak Walton’s roof before going on to Winchester, where his name may still be seen in the cloisters. In 1663 he was living in an Essex rectory, and four years later, when he was only 30, he was a rector in the Isle of Wight, and was becoming famous as a brilliant preacher who often stirred London congregations. Living in the unsettled times of Charles II and James II, he stood for decency and right, and did not hesitate to tell kings what he thought of them; but he never lost his humility. He sailed for Tangier with Samuel Pepys, was made a bishop in 1684, attended Charles II in his last hours, and was present at the execution of Monmouth.

But he was most loved for the little things he did. He helped all who were in trouble. He gave away nearly every penny. He worked as few bishops had ever been known to work, and had 12 poor folk to dinner every Sunday. When other bishops drove in fine coaches Bishop Ken walked on foot in London’s streets.

One of the Seven Bishops sent to the Tower in 1688 for petitioning James against his Declaration of Indulgence, he soon afterwards found himself deprived of his See; and as he had never saved money and had no private income he became a poor man. Happily there were friends ready to go to his aid, and in his old age Queen Anne gave him £200 a year.

He was a little man with dark eyes, a familiar figure in London and Winchester, his hair hanging loose about his clean-shaven face. He had a winning smile, and was always courteous and kind, always eager to help. Unaffected, generous in his thoughts if sometimes quick in temper, he was as true as steel in all his dealings with others.

He is remembered best of all today for one or two hymns still sung in chapel and cathedral. He died in 1711, having been taken ill in Dorset, and setting out for Bath, found himself unable to go beyond Longleat, the great house of his friend Lord Weymouth. There in a few days his long life ended and he was buried on the first day of spring at the east end of Frome Church. His funeral took place, at his own request, at sunrise, and those who followed him to his last resting-place must have been thinking of the famous hymn he wrote for the scholars of Winchester:

Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run.

Everyone knows Bishop Ken’s evening hynm, beginning:

Glory to Thee, my God, this night,
For all the blessings of the light:
Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
Beneath Thine own almighty wings.

In both hymns is the famous verse known as the Doxology:

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

No verse has been sung more often than this throughout the world it may be said that these four lines of Tom Ken have been on every body’s lips at some time or other.

Essendon

I was duped into thinking that St Mary the Virgin, LNK despite the notice board declaring 'Come in and pray' which plainly only applies on Sunday, was old  because of the C15th tower. In fact the nave and aisles were rebuilt in 1883 and then restored in 1916-7 after bombs jettisoned from a Zeppelin caused damage in 1916 (see below).

Unusually the 1833 rebuild is rather good and this is a pleasant building - just a shame it's kept locked; a small compensation is a magnificent Cedar of Lebanon.

ST MARY, 1883, by W. White. Essendon is worth a special visit if only to see the FONT in the church. It is of Wedgwood’s Black Basalt ware, an exquisitely beautiful classical shape and with all the appealing matt sheen of the Wedgwood body. It was given to the church in 1780. - PLATE. Chalice and Paten, 1569; large Paten, 1692; Flagon, 1769 ; Baptismal Dish, 1778. - MONUMENTS. Brass to W. Tooke d. 1588 with wife and children (S aisle). - Large Epitaph to W. Prestley d. 1664.

Essendon. The village will not soon forget the dark September night in 1916 when a German Zeppelin was brought down in flames at Cuffley, not far away, for before this ghastly blaze lit up the sky this Zeppelin, one of the first criminals of the air, had emptied what was left of its load of bombs on this peaceful village, shattering cottages and wrecking the chancel of the church. The tower of the church alone is as it was in the 15th century, but inside are various memories of the past. One, a melancholy reminder of English justice not so very long ago, is a stone high on the west wall on which is written that a young man who suffered at Hertford for theft in 1785 “begged a grave in this churchyard and prayed to God that his suffering might prove a warning to others.”

The church has a delightful christening bowl which has the distinction of having been made by the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood. On a brass is pictured an Elizabethan family, William Tooke, his wife, and 12 children, all kneeling, the father having died in 1588. Many of their descendants lie here, and towards Hatfield Park is their old home, Pope’s Farm, where George Tooke retired in 163 5 after having taken part in the ill-fated attack on Cadiz. Thereafter he spent 40 placid years in writing prose and poetry which tells us much about the military tactics of his day.

The church, which has a noble cedar in the churchyard, stands in the centre of this pleasant village, and a road from the south approaches it between two big estates, Bedwell Park (which is now a school) and Essendon Place with its handsome iron gates and luxurious trees, the home of several Baron Dimsdales since the physician of that name was summoned to Russia in 1768 by the Empress Catherine to inoculate her and her son against smallpox. So satisfied was the Empress with the skilful Thomas Dimsdale that she loaded him with gifts and created him a baron. His grave is in the Quaker burial ground at Bishop’s Stortford.

Zeppelin Raid

On the evening of Saturday the 2nd of September 1916 Germany launched the largest air raid of the Great War using a total of 16 airships. 14 aluminium-framed Zeppelins operated by the German Navy and 2 plywood-framed Schütte-Lanz craft operated by the German Army headed out across the North Sea to cross the English coast over East Anglia from where they then headed for targets in the North, the Eastern counties and London.

By mid 1916 England's defences against these air raids had been considerably strengthened since the first big raid a year earlier. Searchlights and anti-aircraft batteries now ringed London; the Royal Flying Corps was flying regular patrols above 10,000 feet and their aircraft were equipped with a recently developed ammunition for their Lewis guns - a mixture of three types of rounds designed specifically to puncture an airship's gas bags and then to ignite the released hydrogen gas.

The first of the airships heading for London that night, a German Army Schütte-Lanz airship, the SL-11, commanded by Wilhelm Schramm, arrived over St Albans at ten minutes past one in the morning of Sunday the 3rd of September. Schramm dropped bombs on the northern suburbs of London and while heading further south his airship was picked up by the searchlights at Finsbury Park and Victoria Park. Turning back to the north over Tottenham and Enfield, the SL-11 was spotted by Second Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson in his B.E.2c biplane. Leefe Robinson pursued and engaged the SL-11 and eventually with his third drum of ammunition succeeded in setting it on fire.

The descent of the blazing SL-11 from a height of two miles to a field at Cuffley was not only seen by many Londoners, but also by the Navy Zeppelins then making their approach. The L-16, commanded by Erich Sommerfeld was the nearest to the SL-11 when it burst into flames, and was seen by one of the RFC pilots who had been chasing SL-11. Sommerfeld headed off to the north, to escape the glow from SL-11 before the planes could arrive at his position. To speed this escape he jettisoned his bomb load as the L-16 was passing over Essendon and though many of the bombs fell on open land, others caused considerable damage to the church, and other buildings nearby. In one of these houses two daughters of the village blacksmith were mortally wounded.

Later that day thousands of sight-seers flocked to Cuffley hoping to see the wreckage of SL-11 which was quickly removed by the authorities. On Monday, the newspapers carried extensive reports which focused largely on the shooting down of the SL-11 - a victory to be contrasted against the grim news from the battlefields of the Somme. "A Great Air Raid. One Zeppelin Destroyed. Wonderful Spectacle in London. Slight Casualties" was the heading to the leading article in The Times. That evening an inquest into the deaths of the 16 crew of SL-11 was held at the Plough Inn, Cuffley a short distance from the crash site. The coroner announced that the War Office had decided to give them a military funeral at the nearest cemetery and this took place two days later at Potters Bar cemetery.

On Tuesday, 5th, the country's delight in this first shooting down of a German airship on English soil was heightened when the King awarded the Victoria Cross to Leefe Robinson.

Frances and Eleanor Bamford were laid to rest in Essendon churchyard on the 13th of September.

The bomb that hit the church came down on the flat roof of the vestry, flattening it, wrecking the organ, making a huge hole in the south wall of the chancel and shattering the roof above the altar. The east window was severely damaged, as were other windows in the church, but the nave, aisles and tower all withstood the blast. The church clock stopped at 23 minutes past two. Behind the rubble-strewn altar, the picture of "The Last Supper" was unharmed. Among the treasures destroyed in the vestry were the Baskerville Bible, presented to the church in 1791 by the Marquess of Salisbury, the remains of the old pulpit made in 1778, a table and two Chippendale chairs. The contents of the safe including the registers and church plate were undamaged.

The church insurance had been reviewed a short time before and confidence that the cost of repairs would be recovered allowed these to be set in motion quickly. The ruined parts of the church were restored close to their original state. Four stained glass windows were replaced by their original makers using the drawings kept from the 1883 rebuilding of the church and the Willis organ was rebuilt. A stone set in the south wall of the vestry commemorates the re-opening of the restored areas just one year later on Sunday, 2nd September 1917.

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Old Hatfield

Having been to Hatfield House with my youngest a couple of years ago, but without a camera (I wasn't collecting Hertfordshire churches then),I've visited St Etheldreda before and, as I remember, it is a magnificent interior with a much restored exterior. So I was disappointed to find it LNK but a subsequent Google search shows that it is normally open from 1-4pm when the house is open - a revisit is on the cards.

I revisited last week (22/05/14) and find that my memory of the interior was exaggerated: to call it magnificent is wildly inaccurate. In reality this is, typically of many Herts churches, as air brushed as the exterior; that is to say heavily refurbished in 1872 to the point of torpor. I think I was remembering the Salisbury chapel, which is really rather good, and the Burne Jones SE transept window (photos of which were unusable due to low light rendering them useless). To be honest I struggle to understand why Simon Jenkins rates this as a 3* church - I think I'd rate it 1* at best.

ST ETHELDREDA. The parish church and its churchyard lie on the top of an eminence. Down the hill run the main streets. Behind the church to the E is the entrance to Hatfield Palace and one of the entrances to Hatfield House. The W tower makes an impressive show from the high road below. It is of four stages, with set-back buttresses, a broad W door with quatrefoil decoration in the spandrels, and a four-light W window. The exterior of the nave is a disappointment after this first impression. It looks strikingly Victorian and was indeed rebuilt by David Brandon in 1872. He changed the windows from Perp to Dec, raised the roof, removed box pews and three-decker pulpit, and (strangest alteration of all) narrowed the chancel arch. In spite of all this the general impression of the interior  is interesting, with its broad nave and the vistas through into the various openings of the E parts. These are in a more genuine condition and architecturally very remarkable. The church possesses a transept with the unusual adjuncts of two W chapels, and a chancel with a C15 S and a C17 N chapel. The chancel, transepts, and W transept chapels are the oldest surviving portions. They date from the C13, as can be seen from the inner jambs of the chancel E window with nook-shafts, the chancel Piscina, the blocked E lancet window in the S transept, and the blocked trefoil-headed larger opening to its N, and the surprisingly splendid arch between S transept and W chapel. This has trefoil responds with big dogtooth decoration between the shafts, large stiff-leaf capitals, and a complex arch section. The C15 added the W tower and the S chapel. Its arcade towards the chancel is unusually ornate. Instead of the customary four-shaft-four-hollow section the pier has four triple-shafts and above the hollows of the diagonals demi-figures of angels holding shields. The arch from the S chapel to the transept (which cuts into the C13 trefoil opening) is triple-chamfered and has no capitals between jambs and voussoirs. It looks as if it belonged to the C14, in which case a S chapel prior to the one now existing must be presumed.

Finally in 1618 William, Second Earl of Salisbury, built the N chapel as a mortuary chapel to hold his father’s tomb. The SALISBURY CHAPEL is the only part of the church which is stone-faced. Its windows are still entirely in the Perp tradition, but the three-bay arcade to the chancel has tall Tuscan columns (cf. Watford, 1595). Two bays are original, the third was added in the C19. The columns are of Shap granite, a material which was only coming into favour at the end of the Tudor era. The interior of the Salisbury Chapel was lavishly adorned by the third Marquis in 1871. The artists employed were Italians (cf. Hatfield House). There is plenty of Salviati mosaic and of alabaster used (the latter notably for the blind arcading of the N and E walls). The W and S openings are filled by exquisite iron gates of early C18 Flemish work which were brought by the third Marquis from Amiens Cathedral. In the chapel stands the MONUMENT TO ROBERT CECIL, First Earl of Salisbury, d. 1612. It was ordered by the second Earl from Simon Basyll, and the sculptures on it are by Maximilian Colt. The monument is entirely in the Dutch tradition, established by Tommaso Vincidor in the Nassau Monument at Breda. The Earl lies on a black marble slab supported by four kneeling allegorical figures: Faith, Justice, Fortitude, and Prudence. One of these has her breasts bare, a reminder of the distance which European civilization had travelled between the time when the church and when the chapel was built. But behind the four Virtues, below the effigy of the Earl in his full State dress, lies a skeleton on a rough straw mat, and that rude reminder of the vanity of worldly glory takes one back to the late Middle Ages. - In the same chapel are, moreover, the following MONUMENTS: A knight in armour, his chest covered by his shield, C13. - A body in a shroud on the floor; he lies relaxed, the attitude and the mastery of handling might be Italian. It is the effigy of Sir Richard Curle, by Nicholas Stone, 1617. Stone wrote in his notebook: ‘I mad a pector lieng on a grave ston of gre marbell for Mr Corell of Hatfield for which I had £20.’ - The Third Marquis of Salisbury d. 1903, Prime Minister to Queen Victoria, bronze by Sir William Goscombe John, replica of the monument in Westminster Abbey.

OTHER FURNISHINGS. PULPIT. By A. E. Richardson, 1947. Polygonal, with plain wooden panels with coloured shields. - ORGAN GALLERY. By W. H. R. Blacking, 1927. On Tuscan columns, arranged so as to let the light from the W window come in unimpeded. - COMMUNION RAILS. C17 with broadly twisted balusters. - CHANDELIER. Brass, given in 1733 (S chapel). - STAINED GLASS. Nothing medieval, but a good cross-section though Late Victorian glass. Infinitely the best the S transept window by Morris & Co., designed by Burne-Jones, 1894. It has a purity of glow, with its typical prevalent green and its peacock blue and rose-colour, never achieved by any other glass before the early C20. - Chancel E window and N chapel E window by Clayton & Bell, c. 1870-2. - The N windows of the N chapel and the E window of the S chapel by Burlison & Grylls, the former 1881, 1894, 1899, the latter, to the design of Temple Moore, 1902. - PLATE. Two Chalices and Patens, two Flagons, two Almsdishes, and a Spoon, all dated 1684 and all made for the Coronation of James II. - Cross and Candlesticks in the s chapel, designed by Temple Moore. - Processional Cross in the same chapel designed by A. E. Richardson. - MONUMENTS (other than those in Salisbury Chapel). Brass to Fulke Onslowe d. 1602, inscription on stone tablet (chancel, N wall). - Sir John Brocket d. 1598, very simple standing wall monument, without figures. Sir John was a merchant; yet his helmet is suspended above the tomb. - Dame Elizabeth Brocket d. 1612 and his mother. Big standing wall monument with the two ladies stiffly reclining, propped up on their elbows, one behind and above the other. The background architecture flat and not too costly. - Sir James Reade and his son John, by Rysbrack, 1760. Two busts, and above a portrait medallion against the usual obelisk. By the sides two big beautifully carved adult cherubs with large wings. - Thomas Fuller d. 1712, standing wall monument with inscription on drapery and two putti l. and r. ; not of high quality. - Several late C18 to early C19 epitaphs high up in the nave, particularly fine the Heaviside Monument by Thomas Banks, 1787, the side pieces later. In the centre two female allegories of Death (a reversed torch) and the Caduceus, the symbol of Medicine.

CHURCHYARD GATES. Magnificent ironwork taken to Hatfield from St Paul’s Cathedral. They were made about 1710.

Hatfield. It gathers itself about one of the greatest houses in the land, the home of the Cecils, built by the son of Queen Elizabeth I’s Burghley. He himself had built the great house of Theobalds, which James I took from Robert Cecil, giving him Hatfield in exchange. Sir Robert began the building of this marvellous place but never lived in it, for it was barely finished when his life was over and they laid him to rest in Hatfield church.

Here is a quiet little street where the old houses seem to mount in steps. It brings us to a delightful group of old buildings, clustering about and within the park. Picturesque cottages and a Georgian house look across to the church in its delightful setting of lawn and trees, carpeted in spring with crocuses and daffodils. At one corner of it is a timbered house, at another are iron gates which have a history, for they stood round St Paul’s, the iron having been foundried in Sussex in the days when iron founders were burning down forests instead of digging up coal. These gates were part of half a mile of iron railings ordered by Wren for St Paul’s, 200 tons of them. They stood in the heart of London till last century, when they were taken down to be sent to Canada. Only a few arrived, for the ship was wrecked and most of the railings now lie in the bed of the Atlantic.

Ending the vista of these buildings along the road is the brick gatehouse of the palace once occupied by the Bishops of Ely; what is left of the palace itself is across a lawn, a fine long range of mellowed brick with gables and a central tower, all 15th century. But a few steps away rises the great Hatfield House, nearly 100 yards long, with two wings projecting to the south, enclosing three sides of the great courtyard.

In Saxon days the land hereabouts belonged to the monks of Ely. Here in a few more generations grew up the home of the bishops of Ely, and in the 15th century Cardinal Morton began the building of Hatfield Palace. Brick had then become a popular material for builders, and in this great group of buildings no stone was used. What remains of the palace today is delightful. The gatehouse has ancient beams over its archway and a fine mullioned window above it, and the heavily buttressed west front of the palace itself is impressive, with a square tower, and a charming stepped gable at the end, crowned by a twisted chimney. The great hall remains with magnificent timbers in its roof, the solar and the room below it are intact, and there are splendid walls of open brickwork round the formal gardens. All this is now only the western range of buildings which once surrounded a square courtyard, and we see it as it has been much refashioned in Stuart times, and again last century.

In this great place all three of Henry VIII’s children spent much of their early years. Edward VI granted it to Elizabeth I and she was here when he died, her sister Mary being 12 miles away at Hunsdon. Here Elizabeth received an invitation to go to court to acknowledge Lady Jane Grey as queen. She refused, saying she was ill, but a few days more and she was well enough to go to town to proclaim her sister Mary, riding side by side with her into the City. Here Elizabeth was when Mary died on a grey November morning in 1558, a brilliant cavalcade riding down to Hatfield to bring the news; it is said that she received it under an oak still growing here.

A seat here has a carving of Elizabeth with her courtiers.

It was soon after the death of Elizabeth that Robert Cecil came looking round the grounds of the old palace for a site to build a house in place of Theobalds, which King James had coveted so greatly as to insist on changing it for Hatfield. Robert Cecil built the great house but never lived in it, dying before it was ready. It is built like an E in honour of Elizabeth, involving four years of hard work and costing about £40,000 in the money of that day.

It is one of the most magnificent houses in the land, with towers and domes and a marvellous array of windows. Only pictures can give any adequate conception of its splendour. The south porch rises to a great height with fluted columns one above the other and stone lions at the top, the date 1611, and winged cherubs who appear to be dancing round a coronet. Behind this rises the great clock tower with an octagonal cupola over it. The clock tower rises in three styles from the roof of the great hall and has an arch in the lower stage through which a motor-car could drive. There are sculptured figures at the corner of the upper stage, which are repeated at the top round the cupola.

The great hall is every inch superb, the east and west walls most richly screened and panelled, the north and south walls tapestried, and the ceiling arranged in compartments each with a painting set in a sculptured frame. The gallery on the east wall is divided into 12 panels, the top half of it open and the lower half like beautiful fretwork. Everywhere the doorways are stately, and the main staircase has probably never been surpassed. Its newel posts are works of art, carved with formal work and figures in relief and crowned with angry lions, fantastic creatures, and beautiful children with musical instruments. Like the hall, the chapel is two storeys high, with galleries on the upper storey from which we have a close view of the grotesque brackets set in the coved and painted ceiling; they are 16th century and were brought from the old Market House at Hoddesdon. The sanctuary is in the bay of a window crowded with Bible scenes, the work of French, Flemish, and English craftsmen in the 17th century. The front of the galleries is arcaded, and panelling covers the walls of the chapel below, which is entered through a handsome modern screen.

Two beautiful galleries run from end to end of the main building, the lower one known as the Cloisters or Armoury (from the suits of armour which stand as if guarding four splendid pieces of 400-year-old tapestry), and the upper one known as the Long Gallery which, with its anterooms, is 150 feet long. The ceiling of this gallery is superb, and the panelling which extends from it to the floor is a magnificent example of the reign of James I, especially the upper arcades, decorated with arabesques. Two of the great chimney-pieces which are so striking a feature of Hatfield House are here. In the niche of another marble chimneypiece King James presides in great pomp over the room named after him, the ceiling of which is ingeniously decorated with compartments of various shapes, elaborate pendants hanging down.

It need not be said that the house is filled with great possessions. There is the Rainbow portrait of Queen Elizabeth I by Zucchero, the death-warrant of Mary Queen of Scots, a letter in her handwriting, Lord Burghley’s diary recording the defeat of the Armada, one of Queen Elizabeth I’s hats and a pair of her stockings, a letter in the queen’s handwriting, a manuscript poem by Ben Jonson, a set of Benvenuto Cellini crystals given by Philip of Spain to encourage his suit with Queen Elizabeth I, a missal used by Henry VI (with his signature), and an Elizabethan quilt with mottoes and Tudor roses. As for the cradle in which Anne Boleyn is supposed to have rocked the little Elizabeth, it is believed that it is too late for that to have happened.

The wonderful park in which this famous group of buildings stands has the River Lea flowing at its northern end, covers 1300 acres, and is seven miles round. The entrance to its grand drive is off the Great North Road, and has four stone pillars crowned by lions holding shields, with beautiful gates and screenwork in which are satyrs, cherubs, and horns of plenty. In front of the gates, looking thoughtfully at the traffic passing by, sits one of the famous men of the last generation, the Conservative leader when Mr Gladstone was leading the Liberals to their triumph. He is the third Marquess of Salisbury, Prime Minister of England longer than any other man who has held the office.

His marble monument is in Westminster Abbey, near the grave of the Unknown Warrior, but he wished to lie here in the little burial ground by the church, and a simple tomb with a cross marks his grave. Inside the church is Sir William GoscombeJohn’s fine bronze of the marquess, showing him lying on a tomb of black marble, wearing a rich mantle with his Order of the Garter, and holding a Crucifix to his breast. Here also is the figure of the first Earl of Salisbury, who built the great house, sculptured in white marble by Simon Basyll. He is in his robes with a ruff, wearing the Garter and holding his staff, his head resting on embroidered cushions. The black marble slab on which he lies is borne on the shoulders of four white women representing the Virtues, two sitting and two kneeling on a black marble base. Below, under the marble shelf on which the earl lies, is a marble skeleton after the fashion of those days, a reminder that rank and power pass away and all are equal in the tomb. On the floor of the chapel are two memorials in stone, one the 12th-century figure of a knight with a great shield, the other believed to be William Curle, Warden of the royal estate at Hatfield. This Salisbury chapel, built by the first earl’s spendthrift son in 1618, is arresting with its classical arcade dividing it from the chancel, and lovely screens of delicate 18th-century ironwork looking like lacework. The 19th-century decoration is the work of Italian craftsmen. The walls have marble wainscoting, and both walls and ceiling are painted with the Four Evangelists, the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, and representations of the Virtues. Here lies a second Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, with his wife Lady Caroline Lamb; their grave is under the modern pulpit. One of the chapel windows is in memory of the mother of another Prime Minister, Lord Balfour.

In the south chapel are monuments of the Brockets and the Reades. The chapel was built at the close of the 13th century, and enlarged in the 15th when the arcade was set up dividing it from the chancel; it has capitals of angels holding shields. In its west wall is a 13th-century arch to the transept and a 15th-century doorway, and it has modern paintings of roses on its old roof beams. Here is the canopied tomb of Sir John Brocket, a merchant at the time of the Armada; he was a soldier, too, and his helmet hangs above his monument. Near him are two ladies lying stiffly one above the other, both with lifelike complexions, both wearing black dresses with white ruffs and cuffs, and one holding her gloves and resting her hand on a skull. One of the two is Sir John’s second wife, and the other is her mother, Dame Agnes Sanders. On an 18th-century monument are busts of Sir James and Sir John Reades, father and son, with a medallion portrait of Sir James’s daughter. They lived at Brocket Hall, which at their death passed to the Lambs and became the home of Lord Melbourne. It is a fine red house in a park three miles away, bounded by the Great North Road.

The church, one of the biggest in the county, is striking in its plan, the eastern half with chapels and transepts contrasting with the aisleless nave, which is spanned by a great modern roof with dormers doing duty as clerestory windows. It was built in the 13th century on an older site, but in the restoration of 1871 the nave was rebuilt, the rest of the walls were given new stonework, and the window tracery was renewed. New porches were built with timber from the old roofs, and the transepts, like the south chapel, keep most of their old beams. The massive tower and the arch leading from it to the nave are 500 years old. The south transept has the oldest work to show; coming from early in the 13th century are a. blocked lancet and a recess in its east wall, and a beautiful round-headed arch leading to its small west chapel, the mouldings deeply cut and the capitals carved with leaves. The chancel has a modern arch, and a reredos of alabaster and gold mosaic with a white marble Crucifixion scene, showing the three women and St John, and a saint on each side. There are Jacobean altar rails, an ironbound chest of 1692, an old pillar almsbox, a modern font with a 13th-century base, and a silver processional cross with the Twelve Disciples round the base. The lovely silver candlesticks and cross in the south chapel were fashioned from plate given to General Lindsay by five other Generals for his service in the House of Commons, and are now a memorial to his wife and daughter. The altar cloth of red plush embroidered with gold, was part of the pall at George III’s funeral. A treasure of the church is a piece of beautiful embroidery of roses and fruit in delicate colour and gold, of remarkable interest because it is said to have been worked by Queen Elizabeth I when she was at the palace. The handsome chandelier in the south chapel was given in 1733, the organ gallery is of 1927, and the pulpit of 1947.

There are shields of old glass. A window designed by Burne-Jones has saints and small scenes illustrating the Virtues, in heavy colouring.

Hatfield has one of the three New Towns of Hertfordshire and what was a few years ago open farmland is now covered with thousands of mediocre houses and other buildings.

Flickr.

Hatfield

This post covers three New town churches, the oldest of which is St Luke, a Cemetery chapel built 1877, extended as a cruciform church in 1893 by H T Shillitoe and not of any interest.

St John is a 1950's A frame new build which I only included in the list because I liked the design.

St Michael & All Angels was an erroneous inclusion but must qualify as one of the oddest I've visited - bearing in mind that at this point it was my 895th church. To quote their website "The church is a basilica style building consecrated in 1955 to replace a ‘Nissan Hut’ erected to serve the growing community in the war years." To be honest it looks like a bungalow on steroids.

Hatfield New Town had already developed to the NW, before it was established as one of the ‘New Towns’ in the sense of today. It had first grown in conjunction with the de Havilland Factory (1935, by J. M. Munro). A little earlier still, the COMET, by E. B. Musman, 1933, one of the earliest inns in England, built in the style of the C20, without borrowings from the past. Of the new New Town one neighbourhood is growing up in 1951-2: ROE GREEN, just S of the Comet. The plans and most houses by Lionel Bret: and Kenneth Boyd. So far about one-third of the new population lives in four-storey flats, the rest in terrace houses. Density c. 16 dwellings to the acre. Well calculated vistas, and nice contrasts of yellow and red brick with a certain amount of white plastering. May it stay white. Also flats by Hening & Chitty.

Mee isn't a fan of new towns: Hatfield has one of the three New Towns of Hertfordshire and what was a few years ago open farmland is now covered with thousands of mediocre houses and other buildings.

Flickr.