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.
Flickr.
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.
Flickr.
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