Bramfield

St Andrew, LNK, is a spectacularly dull Victorian restoration utterly without merit (excepting the fact, perhaps, that this was Thomas a Becket's first living).

ST ANDREW. So much restored in 1840 that it appears an Early Victorian building. The W tower is hardly taller than the nave roof and has a spire. The tower arch is characteristically thin and bodyless. - PLATE. Chalice, 1562; Paten, 1617; Breadholder, 1757. - MONUMENTS. Two epitaphs to George Viscount Grandison d. 1699 and the Rev. Edward Bourchier d. 1775, of identical design.

Bramfield. It has green verges by the wayside, an old well under a canopy on the green, one or two finely thatched cottages, a rectory with gables and dormers and clustered chimneys, and a church to which clings the memory of a famous man. We reach the church by a fine avenue of limes.

Thomas Becket’s name heads the list of rectors in the church. According to Matthew of Westminster, Bramfield was the first living of him whom we now know as St Thomas of Canterbury, and, though many a village in the 12th century never saw its rector, it is a moving thought that the voice once sternly raised against a king may have been here subdued to the service of a humble congregation. The church of his day was made new in the 13th century, and much restored 100 years ago, when the low tower and spire were built on the site of an old well. There are several 14th- and 15th-century windows, and old tie-beams with timbering above them. Over the beam between the nave and chancel is open arcading in stone. At the two sides of the porch are a man scratching his chin and a woman holding a cross and a rosary in her crossed hands. The chalice is Elizabethan, the chest is 17th century, and one of the two bells was made at the time Chaucer was writing his Canterbury Tales. One other reminder of the Bramfield rector whose murder at Canterbury set Chaucer’s pilgrims on their way is the pond in the rectory garden still known as Becket’s pond.

A mile or two away, on a hill by lovely woodlands, stands Queen Hoo Hall, still much as it was in Elizabeth I’s day. A tall house of red brick, patterned with blue on the front, it has clustered chimneys, mural paintings in an upper room, and mullioned windows from which is a magnificent view.

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Digswell

St John the Evangelist, LNK, is, without doubt, one of the oddest churches I have visited to date. Approached from the north it appears to be a fairly atypical, although dilapidated and not very attractive, cement rendered building consisting of a low W tower, north aisle, lofty nave (although that may be an illusion due to the tower) and a lower chancel - all appears run of the mill, albeit seedy. And then you walk round to the south to find a 1960's concrete extension which resembles nothing less than a very poorly built leisure centre or school gym.

God alone knows what the planning authority at the time were thinking since, at the time of the extension, the church was Grade II listed (as of Dec 1950) and this is a totally inappropriate addition.

Of greater merit - although the interior, particularly the brasses, sounds great -, but entirely irrelevant to the purpose of this blog, is the mighty Victorian viaduct which I failed to stop and record.

The visual character of this leafy village of houses in their gardens is determined by the austere back screen of the RAILWAY VIADUCT. Forty brick arches (built by Lewis Cubitt in 1850).

ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST. A small church close to Digswell House. The external appearance much altered in 1811. Cemented. The NW tower small. Inside, a plain arch of c. 1200 between chancel and N chancel chapel. The Piscina in the chancel is of the C13. In the N aisle a very curious display of blank geometrical tracery of c. 1290, perhaps connected with a founder’s monument. - SCREEN. Doors from a former rood screen, c. 1540, the earliest example in Herts of the new Renaissance fashions of ornamentation. - STAINED GLASS. Window S aisle (SS Michael and George) by Kempe, 1894. -  PLATE. Engraved Chalice, 1563; Flagon, 1672; Paten, 1673. - MONUMENTS. Brasses in the chancel. Outstandingly fine brasses to John Peryent, Standard-Bearer to Richard II, and his wife d. 1415, big frontal figures. -  Small brasses to a Knight, c. 1430; to Thomas Hoore d. 1495, wife and children; Robert Battyl d. 1557, wife and children; to William Robert and wife, both figures in shrouds, c. 1480. - Epitaph to Richard Sedley d. 1658, large and good, with oval inscription surrounded by a laurel garland, black columns, and fine ornament.

Digswell. Here, in the church which for more than seven centuries has overlooked the valley of the Maran, men who fought for England when much of France was her province are joined with those who came from a young Dominion to fight with France and England against a common enemy. Their country’s flag hangs on the church wall, given on behalf of all the Australian officers nursed during the Great War at Digswell House and Digswell Place; and near it is a memorial to 73 whom no nursing could save.

It is 500 years since those other soldiers were brought here whose brass portraits are among the shining array in front of the altar. Almost lifesize is that of John Peryent, the squire of three kings whose last battles were for Henry V. We see him in his armour with his feet on a leopard, and by him the wife who died in the victorious year of Agincourt, imposing in her high headdress with her crest of a hedgehog at her feet. The armed knight next to them is believed to be a later John Peryent who died about 1430. Their family coat-of-arms is carved on two brackets in the chapel. The other brasses show Thomas Hoore, a mercer (as one of his shields shows) in the quieter reign of Henry VII, his wife and 12 children with him; then Robert Battyll with his wife and ten children, their portraits all made the year before Mary Tudor lost Calais; then William Robert with the wife who died in 1484. and his two sons (the date of his own death was begun but never filled in); and last come an unknown couple lying in their shrouds.

This brass portrait gallery of 11 grown-ups and 24 children is a proud possession for this little church, whose nave and chancel walls were raised by Norman masons, though none of their doorways or windows remain. The tower out-topped by the yew beside it was added in Tudor days to the 13th-century aisle, where is a rich recess arch with a dove carved on it. There are 15th-century beams over the nave, and 16th-century oak panelling roofs the chancel. Parts of several Tudor screens are left. The patterned chalice dates from 1563, and two of the bells are early 17th century.

The new world is pressing close about the old church on the hill. The great house beside it is now used by people from all over the country as a Conference Hall.

Bestriding the valley like a Colossus is a mighty range of 40 arches, over which the trains pass like toys, a giant viaduct 100 feet high, 1490 feet long, and noble from sheer magnitude. Passing under it we find a group of Digswell’s oldest homes.

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Ayot St Peter

Simon Jenkins gives St Peter, locked with keyholders listed (who were out when I visited), two stars and says "The interior is a delightful variant on late Victorian Gothic, thanks to its modest size and rich Arts and Crafts furnishings....Everywhere Ayot St Peter glories in colour. There is colour in the painted organ pipes, the chancel floor tiles and roof panels with paintings of saints and angels. The undistinguished stained glass (some of it by Seddon himself) is not obtrusive."

At the time I was unimpressed by the exterior and not particularly disappointed about not gaining access, now I'm not so sure. As an aside the setting must compete for the most picturesque in Herts.

ST PETER. 1875, by Seddon. Red brick with blue brick decoration and stone dressings. Asymmetrically placed thin tower with broaches connecting the square with an octagonal upper stage on which rests a spire. Clock with fancifully designed face in a shade of blue. Nave and apsed chancel plus a polygonally projecting S organ chamber. Corresponding to this on the N side a large rose window on the ground floor flanked by lancets. It is all very capricious and deliberately original. The interior is an exceptionally complete example of church furnishing about 1880 by an architect in sympathy with the then recent Arts and Crafts tendencies: chancel arch, an early work of the Marzin Brothers, who had their pottery at Southall from 1873 to 1915, thin iron chancel screen, elaborate tiling of the chancel, font with mosaic-work on the circular bowl. - STAINED GLASS in the W window (1880) designed by Seddon and incompetently executed, in the apse windows (1879) by an unknown glass artist. - PLATE. Chalice and Paten of c. 1640-50.

Ayot St Peter. The nightingales love the woods round this hill-top village; there is a green dotted with old trees and a 19th-century church which has surrounded itself with yet more trees of all kinds, a silver birch shimmering among the sombre evergreens. The church’s iron screen and stone pulpit with five saints are modern. In the park of Ayot Place is a timber-and-plaster farmhouse with a tiled roof and twisted chimneys, and in its hall is part of a crested roof beam decorated in classical design, and the date 1615 on a frieze of family shields to tell us when this Jacobean house was finished.

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Wheathampstead

Despite the usual Victorian makeover St Helen, open, retains much of interest including a very fine C14th reredos in the north transept (did I mention it is a cruciform building?), a good Christopher Webb Nativity in the south transept and two good tomb-chests with figures. Definitely my favourite church of the day; unusually the chancel is used as a tea and coffee room.

ST HELEN. A big flint church with a chancel as long as the nave and a dominating crossing tower with a broached lead spire starting like a pyramidal roof (an odd outline due to the C19 restoration). Of a Norman church the foundations of an apse have been discovered. The nave no doubt corresponded to the present nave. The chancel was added c. 1230 (see the fine group of three lancet windows in the E wall, with nook shafts inside, and the N doorway with dog-tooth decoration). The crossing tower with its heavy treble-stepped piers belongs probably to the later C13. The early C14 is responsible for the W door (with its ball flower ornament) and the S aisle and S porch. The two-light windows at the aisle W end and the octagonal piers with their moulded capitals and double-hollow-chamfered arches are typical of that date. Of the same date are the transepts, and here much money must have been available and an architect with a good sense of display. The N transept N window is of five lights, the S transept S window of four. Both have ogee-reticulated tracery. Moreover, the S transept E window has some very original finely ogee-cusped tracery and big fleurons inside along jambs and voussoirs. In the N transept the windows have even two orders of (smaller) fleurons. The E window has fleurons outside as well, and inside below the sill a delightful blank frieze of crocketed ogee arches with brackets for statuettes. Nothing else of the Dec style in the county, with the exception of the E end at St Albans, is quite so rich. The same designer inserted equally original windows in the chancel N and S walls. The N arcade of the nave is later than that of the S, although the N aisle has windows of early C14 date. The clerestory windows were given their present shape in 1863-6. The only notable contribution of the later Middle Ages is the charming canopied Piscina in the chancel tucked in diagonally by the Sedilia. - FONT. Early C14, octagonal with quatrefoil circles on finely carved but somewhat decayed leaves. - PULPIT. Jacobean, from the former chapel at Lamer House. - BENCHES. In the N transept. From the same chapel; two benches dated 1631. -  SCREEN. Fragments in the N transept and at the W end, Jacobean, and probably made up of fragments from a former W gallery. - PAINTING. Mount of Olives by King, 1821, large figure. The frame is in a thin Gothic taste. - STAINED GLASS. Kempe, 1893, N aisle, first window from E. - MONUMENTS. A large number. Brass to Hugh Bostok and wife, c. 1436 (N transept); good large frontal figures; the parents of Abbot Wheathampstead of St Albans. - Brass to John Heyworth d. 1520 and wife (N transept), small figures slightly in profile. -  Man and wife with children, c. 1520 (N transept). - Headless Lady, leg of a Knight and dog at his foot, C15 (S transept). * - Brass Indents chancel N with stone surround. - John Heyworth d. 1558 and wife (N transept), the figures small, incised in a marble slab, with a modest architectural surround; at the foot simplest strapwork (cf. Harpenden, Cressye). - Sir John Brocket d. 1558 and wife (S transept): alabaster tomb-chest with recumbent effigies. The decoration with figures and heraldry is just on the point of leaving the Gothic style and going classical. No refinements. - Garrard Monument N transept, the largest in the church, undated and not fully identified. The date must be in the 1630s, and the design is conservative for that date. Alabaster semi-reclining figures, the husband behind and slightly above the wife, big architectural surround and columns, coffered arch, and allegorical figures in the spandrels of the arch top achievement. - Many Garrard tablets in the N transept, one of them, hung up much too high to be seen, is by Thorwaldsen (Charles Drake G. d. 1817: two Grecian figures holding each other by the hand; in the style of Athenian stelae).

* The south transept is carpeted and I missed the north transept brasses.

Wheathampstead. As we walk about these lanes we may imagine a queer little man clinging close to his Bridget, drinking in the beauty of the countryside, and chatting eagerly in his delight at being here. He was Charles Lamb. Here are 400-year-old cottages he knew, a pleasant inn of the same old age, and a church with stone and brass memorials of no less than 50 folk of medieval days. But the hills looking down on them all, the River Lea cutting its way through, and the wild Heath of No Man’s Land carry memories far more ancient than these.

The heath took its name, it is said, from its position as the dividing land between the domains of the abbots of St Albans and the abbots of Westminster. Round about are entrenchments dug before the days of history. A boundary dyke, in places 32 feet deep and 100  feet across the top, runs for a mile from Bernard’s Heath to St Albans Road. To the south-east Devil’s Dyke and the Slad, both now protected by the National Trust, run nearly parallel. Were these the fortifications where the British tribe turned Caesar’s raiding forces back?

History speaks with more assurance at Mackery End, the 16th-century farmhouse delightful with its elegant gables and famous for its place in literature, for here Charles Lamb as a weakly child lived with the Gladmans in the tender charge of his Bridget. His memories of those days, recalled by a visit 40 years later, make one of his most delightful essays:

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End, a farmhouse delightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget, who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. . . .More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery End (kindred or strange folk) we were afraid almost to conjecture, but determined someday to explore.

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at Luton in our way from Saint Albans, we arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farmhouse, though every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. For though I had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives.

Bridget’s was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered her old acquaintance again, some altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the scene soon reconfirmed itself in her affections, and she traversed every outpost of the old mansion, to the woodhouse, the orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds were alike flown) with a breathless impatience of recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age fifty- odd. But Bridget in some things is behind her years.

The only thing left was to get into the house, and that was a difficulty which to me singly would have been insurmountable; for I am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love stronger than scruple winged my cousin in without me; but she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest young women in the county. But this adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all - more comely.

Those slender ties that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a metropolis bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up together. . . . The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already so, as  in anticipation of our coming; and, after an appropriate glass of native wine, never let me forget with what honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as some newfound rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans. . . . When I forget all this, then may my country cousins forget me; and Bridget no more remember that in the days of weakling infancy I was her tender charge, as I have been her care in foolish manhood since, in those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End in Hertfordshire.

In an older Mackery End than this was born John of Wheathampstead, the famous abbot of St Albans who founded the abbey library and whose tomb still graces the abbey church. He was a powerful man in the 15th century. In the church at Wheathampstead his proud parents, Hugh and Margaret Bostock, are portrayed in brass. Other portraits in the north transept picture John Heyworth and his wife, a Tudor couple with their nine children, and another nameless couple of those days are here with eight children not their own, for they do not fit the stone. We may suppose they come from one of the stones in the chancel and the south transept, where are fragments of many other brasses.

The north transept was the chapel of the Garrard family of Lamer Park, where their shields still appear on a 17th-century entrance arch and in the window of the dairy, which was once a chapel. From that chapel at Lamer Park (older than the house, which is 18th century) came the church’s oak pulpit and two chairs, all 17th century. A whole family of Garrards appear in the transept on a coloured marble monument of 1637, Sir John (one of the earliest of our baronets) in armour with his wife, and below them in relief six sons and eight daughters. Opposite  is a white stone cut with a sketch of John Heyworth of 1558 kneeling with his wife and three children, and on their tombs in the south transept lie the alabaster figures of Sir John Brocket in 16th-century armour with his wife. Round the tomb eight mourners stand out in relief. On the chancel walls we read of Nicholas Bristow, servant to the last four Tudor sovereigns, and of Thomas Stubbinger, who in the 17th century seems to have successfully combined the business of a merchant with the life of a rector.

The foundations of an earlier apse show that there was a church here in Norman or perhaps in Saxon days, but the oldest part of the present building is the chancel, with its stringcourse and three lancets of the 13th century. The central tower, with its odd spire and graceful arches, was rebuilt at the end of that century. The tracery of the 14th-century builders fills the windows of both transepts and both aisles; theirs are the arcades and the ballflower arch of the west doorway, the font, and the rare stone reredos of seven canopied niches in the north transept, where the sill of the east window is brought low to support this treasure, with all its delicate detail. The screen to this transept was made from the timbers of a gallery of 300 years ago.

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Gustard Wood

St Peter, LNK, was built in 1910 as a mission church. The principal funder, Laura Pearce, relict of the incumbent at nearby Wheathampstead, responded to the appeal to raise funds for a corrugated iron chapel by saying “For an iron church I will give you nothing; but make it a permanent church and I will give you a thousand pounds”.

The result is rather dreary although I did like Capt FM Drury's original WWI wooden cross which is kept out side the chancel.

Neither Pevsner nor Mee mention it.

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Harpenden

I visited three churches in Harpenden, Our Lady of Lourdes, St Nicholas (both open) and St John the Baptist (LNK).

Our Lady of Lourdes is, undeservedly in my opinion, treated perfunctorily by Pevsner (who also dates it incorrectly). Built in 1928/9 to the the Catholic architect A. F. Walters' designs this is a traditional Hertfordshire style church with some excellent furnishings - chancel and lady chapel reredoses for example - and good stained glass by T. H. (‘Harry’) Grylls of Burlison & Grylls and Arthur A. Orr and F. D. Humphreys and others. Also of note are the contemporaneous Stations of the Cross by Aloys de Buele (1861-1935). To my mind this is, for a Catholic church, a building of some merit. Taking Stock's entry can be found here.

St Nicholas is a Victorian rebuild but not a bad example of its kind. A predictably bland interior, almost all the monuments are repositioned in the C15th tower, contains two early Christopher Webb windows.

St John the Baptist is a run of the mill utilitarian 1908 Eden J. Hodgson build.

ST NICHOLAS, 1862 by W. Slater, except for the W tower (flint and stone, diagonal buttresses, SW stair-turret, spike). In the N aisle on window ledges C12 scalloped capital from the former chancel arch and C12 capital with upright stylized leaves. - FONT. c. 1200, polygonal bowl of Purbeck marble with two blank pointed arches on each panel. - MONUMENTS. Brass to William Anabull d. 1456 and wife, very decayed figures (close to pulpit). - Brass to William Cressye d. 1559 and wife, kneeling figures in stone surround (N transept wall; cf. Wheathampstead, Heyworth). - Godman Jenkyn d. 1746, standing wall monument with bulgy sarcophagus and obelisk with scrolly shield.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES, Rothamsted Avenue, 1905, by F. A. Walters.

Harpenden. It is the country town of great delight, unspoilt by the Industrial Age, with a touch of gold for ever on its gorse-clad common, lovely walks through woods and fields, trees in its streets, and an air as sweet and pure as any corner of the British Isles. Its very name means Valley of the Nightingales, and it is worthy of it.

It has little to tell us of history, but Nature has endowed it richly with her bounty - commons, woods, and No Man’s Land; streets like avenues, with roofs of houses peeping through the trees; and one of those broad High Streets that have come straight down from Old England, with a strip of green turf along the middle. In the heart of the village, just off the High Street by the green, stands the medieval tower of the church built with flint and stone in 1470. The church itself was new last century, but it has kept a few memorials from the ancient church, and the font at which Harpenden’s babies have been baptised since Norman days; it has a panelled bowl. There are brass portraits of two married couples, William Cressye and his wife in Tudor costume, and William and Isabella Annabull, worn out by being in the floor of the nave for about 500 years. A brass tablet pays tribute to a man who must have been delighted to make this country town his home, for he was one of the most painstaking students of Nature who ever lived, Richard Lydekker. Here he died in 1915, an immense loss to the science of Natural History, for he knew as much as any man about the structure of mammal, bird, and reptile, whether fossil or alive.

The churchyard slopes pleasantly with its limes and cypresses, and pines as high as the tower, and beyond are greens where pink chestnuts, may trees, and copper beeches flaunt themselves gaily as a background to a group of timbered cottages which have been here since Stuart days. On the outskirts of the town, at Hatching Green, is an inn with a Tudor rose and crown on its rough plaster front, and away towards Flamstead is Turner’s Hall with the date of 1665 somewhere about it and one wing 400 years old. The memorial to the men who did not come back is a cross on the green. A fitting place is Harpenden for natural research, and it has become the home of the greatest agricultural experimental station in the world. It is in the beautiful Rothamsted Park which lies beyond Harpenden Common, an old gabled house with medieval timbers and Tudor bricks. A great treasure of Rothamsted, discovered in 1940, is an ancient mural painting depicting the Earl of Hertford’s attack on Edinburgh in 1544., when the English were attempting to coerce the Scots into allowing Queen Mary to marry Prince Edward. The manor was then owned by the Bardolph family and doubtless one of them was a member of this expedition.

Rothamsted was the birthplace, in 1814., of Sir John Bennet Lawes, whose family took over the house in the early days of Charles I. He profited little at school or at Oxford, but, being of a purely scientific train of mind, he had a laboratory fitted up in a bedroom here and made himself a master of chemistry. At 21 he inherited the estate, and it happened that his attention was turned to the value of bones as a fertiliser of the soil, and prolonged experiments led him to set up a factory for the production of fertilisers, from which he derived much profit.

All the money he made he spent on his experiments for enriching the soil, and in time he came to develop food for cattle on new and revolutionary lines. He was laying the foundation of scientific agriculture, and men came from all over the world to look into his work. He studied various kinds of drainage, the varying results of fertilisers on different soils, and watched the evolution of new varieties of corn and vegetables. With a chemist friend, Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert, he brought about a great increase in the world’s daily bread. They divided the land at Rothamsted into special plots, and it may be said that nearly every improvement in fertilisers, in wheat selection, or in rotation of crops, was worked out here.

There is one plot here where wheat has been grown continuously since 1843. Lawes carried on his splendid work for more than 50 years, and his jubilee was honoured as that of a man famous throughout civilisation. He was a man of liberal mind, a social reformer, and took great interest in furnishing the village folk with allotments and amenities in those early days.

In order to ensure the future of his work Sir John founded the Rothamsted Trust, embracing the laboratory and 40 acres of land, and enriched with an endowment of £100,000. All over the world farmers are grateful to Rothamsted, and if that man has blessed his  fellows who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before, John Bennet Lawes must be counted among the incalculable benefactors of mankind. One thing we noticed which gives us an insight into the detail of the work at Rothamsted; we found a bright light shining at night, and discovered that it was meant to trap for examination the insects which play so great a part as friend or foe in agriculture. We were told that as many as 6000 have been caught in a single summer’s night.

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Flamstead

I liked St Leonard - locked but keyholder numbers listed, and it's open on Fridays from 9.30 to 11.30, [as of Oct 2016 now kept open daily] none of whom were in so I didn't gain access - particularly the south porch and the curious two up two down vestry. Having read Pevsner a revisit is on the cards.

ST LEONARD. Low W tower of flint and random stone, patched up with brick, also Roman brick. High up traces of two-light Norman windows. No battlements; thin spike. The body of the church flint; nave with clerestory, aisles, heavily buttressed S porch, unbuttressed N porch, low much restored C14 chancel, C14 NE vestry. Most windows are simple Perp, but the N aisle has one which is Dec (ogee reticulated tracery). The interior confirms that the w tower is Norman. The tower arch is depressed round-headed on the simplest of imposts. Into it, during the C13, a smaller arch was inserted, treble-chamfered on imposts with typical capitals of that century. The Norman nave was aisleless of the same width as the present nave. The six-bay arcades show that aisles were added in the early C13. Octagonal piers, the W and E responds (except for one) slimmer attached circular shafts. The capitals are stiffleaf, much renewed; the capitals of the responds have the leaves composed in two tiers. The chancel arch and the Piscina in the chancel are C14, but one N lancet window goes back to C13. - C15 nave roof on carved stone corbels. - PULPIT. 1698; just framed panels with very little inlay. - COMMUNION RAILS. c. 1700 with twisted balusters. - SCREEN. Well preserved C15 work; tall arcades, each division of six lights, with the central mullion running up to the apex of the arch; the individual lights end in round arches, the tracery is elementary Perp. - WALL PAINTINGS. Apart from St Albans the most important series in the county, all revealed only in 1930-2. None well preserved. Between the spandrels of the nave arches lower parts of four Apostles, large figures, C13. - Nave upper wall even larger C15 figure of St Christopher. - Above the chancel arch Christ in Glory C13, with Doomsday scenes C15. In the NE chapel mid C14 series of stories of the Passion in two tiers. Last Supper, Crucifixion, Mocking of Christ, Entombment (the best preserved and hence most readily appreciated scene), Crowning with Thorns, Resurrection. - PLATE. C17 Chalice and Paten; Pewter Flagon, 1675; Flagon, 1690; Breadholder given in 1700 - MONUMENTS. Brass to John Oudeby, Rector, d. 1414, with indent above showing that there was a demi-figure of Virgin and Child under a canopy. - Tomb-chest with stone effigies of man and woman under one ogee canopy; early C15, the figures badly preserved. -  Sir Bartholomew Fouke d. 1604, the usual kneeling figure. - Saunders Children, erected about 1690, large altar tomb of black marble with the figures of five deceased young children in contemporary dress and with praying hands placed on a ledge which could be used as the S aisle altar. The surviving sixth child kneeling on the floor, no doubt not in the original position. The monument is by William Stanton and cost £1,500. - Sir Edward Sedbright, by Flaxman, 1762. Nobly carved composition with Hope and Faith reclining to the l. and r. of a slender fluted urn.

Flamstead. The River Ver ripples and winds by the unbending Watling Street, and above it lies Flamstead and its old cottages, a church with a Norman tower crowned by a medieval spire, and gabled almshouses of the 17th century.

Lilacs and red and white chestnuts, with two giant sycamores among them, surround the church. The nave was rebuilt and aisles added in the 13th century; the chancel and north vestry are 14th century and the lofty clerestory 100 years later. Inside is a wealth of medieval frescoes, brass portraits, and sculptured figures. The 15th century added a high clerestory to the church, so that we have light to admire the 500-year-old roof with its carved stone corbels, the exquisite leafy capitals of the 13th-century arcades, and the old paintings, which were the picture Bible of the village folk in the Middle Ages; they have appeared in our time from under centuries of plaster. Most curious of all these finds under the whitewash was an oil painting of the Stuart arms surrounded by cherubs and prophets, completely blotting out the older painting now revealed over the chancel arch, where Christ sits in judgment on a rainbow with an angel towering on one side and the windowed walls of heaven on the other. Elsewhere we see barefooted Apostles ten feet high, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Entombment, and the Risen Christ. Several of these originally decorated a chantry chapel of the Beauchamps, one of whom left his name to the Beauchamp Tower in the Tower of London, where he was imprisoned for conspiring against Richard II. Here is a font from those days and a screen with a new beam taking the place of its vaulted roodloft. The altar table and rails are 17th century; the bit of oak ceiling in the aisle is probably 600 years old, and the six bells average over 250 years each.

Portrayed in brass are John Oudeby, the rector who died in 1414, and a couple from the end of that century with their four children. In stone we see a nameless 15th-century couple lying on their tomb under a canopy; the resplendent red-and-gold kneeling figure of Sir Bartholomew Fouke, the Master of Elizabeth I’s household who lived to see James on her throne; and the tomb of Thomas Saunders, the almshouse founder, with his five children kneeling below it, and in front the odd dwarfed figure of his widow striking a dramatic attitude. He lived in Beechwood Park. But best of all we like the inscriptions to humbler folk cut on the chalk pillars. One is dated 1598 and says

In this middle space and at this seat’s end
There lieth buried our neighbore frind
Olde John Grigge of Cheverill’s End.

Flickr.

Markyate

I took St John the Baptist, LNK, to be entirely Victorian new build but it appears that the nave and tower are C18th. Excepting the westerly view towards Markyate Cell it is utterly devoid of merit; a peek through the windows didn't show much of interest inside either.

ST JOHN THE BAPTIST. Below the A5 road in the SE corner of the grounds of Markyate Cell, reached from the E by an avenue of elm trees. Thin embattled W tower of red brick with blue brick chequer, and nave of 1734, enlarged by aisles with arched windows in 1811; chancel 1892. The arcades inside have roundheaded arches. The octagonal piers look decidedly later than 1811. Curved W gallery on thin iron columns.

Markyate. Roman soldiers marched down its street, and long after them black-robed nuns here found a retreat until Henry VIII gave their house to one of his favourites. Traces of this history are before us. The houses line the Roman Watling Street as it passes into Bedfordshire, and in the park surrounding Markyate Cell, the red house beyond the village, are magnificent trees which would be saplings when Humphrey Bourchier pulled down the nunnery and set up his Tudor house. It has been much rebuilt since then, but in the 16th-century kitchen walls are stone mouldings from the church of the nuns.

A row of giant limes leads us to an 18th-century church, with a handsome gallery, a carved pulpit, and two elegant chairs. The chancel was added in 1892. It has a stone cut with a flowery cross which came from the nunnery, and a tabernacle with painted saints from Italy. It was to this church that the poet Cowper came as a boy when at Dr Pitman’s school in the village; he was here for two years, unhappy and ill-treated, and long afterwards he hated schools and wrote a long tirade against them in a poem called Tyroeinium, in which come these lines:

Lascivious, headstrong, or all these at once;

That in good time the stripling’s finished taste

For loose expense and fashionable waste

Should prove your ruin, and his own at last;

Train him in public with a mob of boys,

Childish in mischief only and in noise.

Flickr.