Approached from the south the squat tower and south chapel set this building apart and the northern churchyard, set aside as a wild garden, is tranquil. Inside the Norman N & S nave arcades are exceptional and the east end is bonkers but in a nice way. The S aisle has been knocked through to the S chapel and the S chapel though to the chancel - the result of which is a strange semi open plan, with arches, east end which has been semi partitioned with low modern altar rails between the chancel and S chapel. Like I said bonkers but brilliant.
ST LAWRENCE. A church of exceptional architectural interest, thanks to its Norman nave arcades and Dec S chancel chapel. The church is not large. It has a low W tower with diagonal buttresses on the lower stage only. That stage is of the C13, as indicated by its small lancet windows. Its top is a plain brick parapet. The nave is short, of two bays, the chancel lower than the nave. Its windows have Early Perp tracery. The aisle windows are later Perp. So is the clerestory, although remains are noticeable of an earlier clerestory (c. 1300) with pointed trefoil-headed windows. The S chancel chapel has a sumptuous exterior with a chequer pattern of flint and stone mixed with brick, while the rest of the church is flint with stone dressings. The tracery of the windows in the chapel is typical Early Dec. Remains of the W window show that the S aisle was renewed later. A S, and also a N, aisle had, however, existed long before. On entering the church one sees at once that the nave arcades belong to the C12. The N arcade has one circular pier with scalloped capital and W and E responds of the same design. The roundheaded arches are decorated with zigzag placed at right angles to the wall surface and an outer billet. The S arcade has the same arches and responds, but the pier was renewed in the early C13 with a shallow stiff-leaf capital, at about the same time at which the tower was built and received its arch to the nave with an elaborate moulding and large and more expressive stiff-leaf capitals. The W window of the S aisle proves part of that wall also to be a Norman survival. The nave arcades were continued in the late Middle Ages (four-centred arch on the S side). The Dec S chancel chapel opens to the chancel by a two-bay arcade with sharply pointed two-centred arches of double-chamfered moulding. The nave roof is handsome C15 work of king-post type with the closely set rafters showing and the spaces between them plastered.
FURNISHINGS. FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with shields inside quatrefoils (in two panels coarsely carved angels instead). - PAINTING. SS Lawrence and Thomas, high up on E wall of S chancel chapel. Much of what is seen now is Professor Tristram’s ‘restoration’. The style is clearly that of the chapel itself, that is first third of the C14. - COFFER. German, C16, with reliefs alluding to original sin and redemption, no doubt from the Protestant North, as the dialect of the inscriptions also proves. - STAINED GLASS. S chapel E window, 1909, with a lush display of white foliage between the small scenes. By Powell’s of Whitefriars - MONUMENTS. Unimportant brass of 1607 in the N aisle. - In the S chapel Anne Combe d. 1640, the usual epitaph with kneeling figure, and Dame Anne Raymond d. 1714, an epitaph of unusual design, with the principal figure in timeless costume seated frontally, dignified and urbane. The representation of the three grand-children in their cradles on the plinth is, however, still in the naive C16-C17 tradition. - The two principal monuments are placed against the aisle W walls: the first Lord Raymond d. 1732, by Cheere, semi-reclining figure with wig, with a seated allegory on the l. holding a portrait medallion, and putti on the r., the whole against a broad pyramid; lively diagonal composition. - The second Lord Raymond d. 1756 with black sarcophagus against black obelisk in the centre and seated allegories of hope and plenty to the l. and r. By Scheemakers.
Abbots Langley. Here was born 800 years ago the only Englishman to become Pope of Rome. He was Nicholas Breakspear, a poor boy left to fend for himself when his father became a monk at St Albans. A tablet has been put in the church to remind us of this dazzling destiny of a village boy.
It is a beautiful church, one of the most interesting in the county, with a low 13th-century tower with 15th-century top. Inside are arcades of Norman arches carved with chevron and other designs, and lit by a clerestory which is 15th century. Stone demons support the medieval roof of the nave, while angels support the new roof of the chancel. A medieval head looks out from the piscina, and a. skew arch gives a peep to the altar. There is a 15th-century font.
From the chancel an arcade on the south opens into the 14th-century chapel, with windows of graceful stonework, the east one filled with modern glass. On one side of it is the stone figure of Anne Combe, who died in 1640; her husband is well remembered at Cambridge, for he left his library to Sidney Sussex College. Even more delightful is the family group opposite, where an old lady sits reading with three babies in cots beside her. She is Dame Ann Raymond, widow of one of Charles II’s judges, and the three bonneted babies sleeping so peacefully are her grandchildren, all dying within a few weeks of their birth. Their father, Sir Robert Raymond, is sculptured at the other end of the church, reclining on a cushion with a look of intense self-satisfaction as he receives the crown of his labours as Lord Chief Justice.
A stone to Robert Nevyll, who died 500 years ago, reminds us that
This world is but a vanity,
Today a man, tomorrow none;
but several brasses win a little earthly immortality for some of his neighbours and their successors. We see Raulfe Horwode’s two wives and six children, though his own portrait of 1498 has been stolen; and another husband, Thomas Cogdell, is here with his two wives in fine big portraits, the women wearing the broad-brimmed hats of Shakespeare’s day. One of these wives may have lived on to notice the curious slip in the Table of Commandments set up a few years later, which leaves out the neighbour’s maidservant from the Tenth. Long afterwards someone broke the Eighth by stealing the Commonwealth entries from the registers here, which go back to 1538.
A fragment of medieval glass in the clerestory shows St Lawrence, who has also reappeared with St Thomas of Canterbury on the walls after being hidden for generations under plaster, 13th-century frescoes brought to light by Professor Tristram.
A famous man who lies here has a marble memorial with a portrait medallion by Sir William Richmond. He was one of the most remarkable and industrious men of the 19th century, Sir John Evans. A familiar figure in this countryside, he was nearly all his life associated with the paper mills at Hemel Hempstead, yet he kept almost daily engagements in London and spent every spare moment he had digging into history, geology, and anthropology, till he had established to his satisfaction the vast antiquity of man. He went to France with Sir Joseph Prestwich to examine the flint implements found in the river gravels of the Somme by Boucher de Perthes. It was this discovery which stirred the mind of the village grocer of Ightham, Benjamin Harrison, who set to work searching for flints on the old plateau of Oldbury Hill, a mile from his shop. He submitted flints to Sir Joseph Prestwich and Sir John Evans, both of whom agreed that they were human handiwork, like those from the Somme, proving that man was hundreds of thousands of years older than had ever been imagined. Sir John Evans built up splendid collections of ancient moneys, on which he was a great authority, and in 1864, he published a standard work on the coins of the Ancient Britons.
On the way to the neighbouring hamlet of Bedmond we pass what is now a Roman Catholic College, where great cedars stand beside two enormous chestnuts with branches crawling like snakes along the ground. Beyond them is the farm belonging to Cecil Lodge, a picturesque group of old gables, and beyond this again is Breakspears Farm, part of which is 300 years old, though the name takes us back 800 years to the village boy who became Pope Adrian.
Nicholas Breakspear was the son of a poor man who entered the monastery at St Albans and left the boy to his own resources. Having been tumed away from St Albans, Nicholas made his way to France, was admitted in a menial capacity to the Abbey of St Rufus near Avignon, and eventually rose to be its abbot. His reforming zeal caused his monks to denounce him to the Pope, who summoned him to Rome. Finding that he had an exceptional man in Breakspear, the Pope made him a cardinal and sent him as legate to Norway and Sweden, where he converted the heathen, founded the bishopric of Upsala, and returned in triumph to be hailed as the Apostle of the North.
It was in 1154 that he became Pope, as Adrian IV, the first and last Englishman elected to that position. The outcast of St Albans was now the supreme prince of Christendom, and among those who came to Rome to do him homage was the head of the house that had rejected him, the abbot of St Albans!
Our King Henry II sent an embassy to Adrian, with John of Salisbury at its head, seeking permission to conquer and annex Ireland; and the villager from Langley disposed of a kingdom at a stroke. His reason was that the Irish church was reported as guilty of laxity and heresy. His justification was that, according to the forged donation of Constantine, which Adrian believed authentic, the successor of St Peter was made possessor of all the islands in the world. King Henry was to bring the Irish within the pale, and to pay a penny a year for every hearth in Ireland!
But Adrian had a seething Europe about him. Arnold of Brescia had put himself at the head of a republican Rome and defied the papacy. Adrian took the unprecedented course of laying the Eternal City under interdict, and later he sent Arnold to the stake. He waged a long battle with the Norman king of Sicily, and came to grips with the emperor of the long-lived Holy Roman Empire, Frederick Barbarossa. In a memorable scene at Nepi, Adrian compelled this haughty monarch, in the presence of his entire army, to lead his horse by the bridle and hold his stirrup while he mounted and dismounted. Afterwards, in opposition to the wishes of the Romans, Adrian secretly crowned Barbarossa in St Peter’s; but the rival claims of the two were never reconciled. Adrian firmly asserted universal sovereignty for the Pope, and entered on a contest that left him apparently defeated, but in the end destroyed the dynasty of Frederick, whom Adrian was on the point of excommunicating when death laid him low, in 1159.
In private life Adrian was unaffected, just, and kind, and he told John of Salisbury that he looked back with a sigh of regret upon his English life, and that the papacy had brought him no real satisfaction.
Flickr.
It is a beautiful church, one of the most interesting in the county, with a low 13th-century tower with 15th-century top. Inside are arcades of Norman arches carved with chevron and other designs, and lit by a clerestory which is 15th century. Stone demons support the medieval roof of the nave, while angels support the new roof of the chancel. A medieval head looks out from the piscina, and a. skew arch gives a peep to the altar. There is a 15th-century font.
From the chancel an arcade on the south opens into the 14th-century chapel, with windows of graceful stonework, the east one filled with modern glass. On one side of it is the stone figure of Anne Combe, who died in 1640; her husband is well remembered at Cambridge, for he left his library to Sidney Sussex College. Even more delightful is the family group opposite, where an old lady sits reading with three babies in cots beside her. She is Dame Ann Raymond, widow of one of Charles II’s judges, and the three bonneted babies sleeping so peacefully are her grandchildren, all dying within a few weeks of their birth. Their father, Sir Robert Raymond, is sculptured at the other end of the church, reclining on a cushion with a look of intense self-satisfaction as he receives the crown of his labours as Lord Chief Justice.
A stone to Robert Nevyll, who died 500 years ago, reminds us that
This world is but a vanity,
Today a man, tomorrow none;
but several brasses win a little earthly immortality for some of his neighbours and their successors. We see Raulfe Horwode’s two wives and six children, though his own portrait of 1498 has been stolen; and another husband, Thomas Cogdell, is here with his two wives in fine big portraits, the women wearing the broad-brimmed hats of Shakespeare’s day. One of these wives may have lived on to notice the curious slip in the Table of Commandments set up a few years later, which leaves out the neighbour’s maidservant from the Tenth. Long afterwards someone broke the Eighth by stealing the Commonwealth entries from the registers here, which go back to 1538.
A fragment of medieval glass in the clerestory shows St Lawrence, who has also reappeared with St Thomas of Canterbury on the walls after being hidden for generations under plaster, 13th-century frescoes brought to light by Professor Tristram.
A famous man who lies here has a marble memorial with a portrait medallion by Sir William Richmond. He was one of the most remarkable and industrious men of the 19th century, Sir John Evans. A familiar figure in this countryside, he was nearly all his life associated with the paper mills at Hemel Hempstead, yet he kept almost daily engagements in London and spent every spare moment he had digging into history, geology, and anthropology, till he had established to his satisfaction the vast antiquity of man. He went to France with Sir Joseph Prestwich to examine the flint implements found in the river gravels of the Somme by Boucher de Perthes. It was this discovery which stirred the mind of the village grocer of Ightham, Benjamin Harrison, who set to work searching for flints on the old plateau of Oldbury Hill, a mile from his shop. He submitted flints to Sir Joseph Prestwich and Sir John Evans, both of whom agreed that they were human handiwork, like those from the Somme, proving that man was hundreds of thousands of years older than had ever been imagined. Sir John Evans built up splendid collections of ancient moneys, on which he was a great authority, and in 1864, he published a standard work on the coins of the Ancient Britons.
On the way to the neighbouring hamlet of Bedmond we pass what is now a Roman Catholic College, where great cedars stand beside two enormous chestnuts with branches crawling like snakes along the ground. Beyond them is the farm belonging to Cecil Lodge, a picturesque group of old gables, and beyond this again is Breakspears Farm, part of which is 300 years old, though the name takes us back 800 years to the village boy who became Pope Adrian.
Nicholas Breakspear was the son of a poor man who entered the monastery at St Albans and left the boy to his own resources. Having been tumed away from St Albans, Nicholas made his way to France, was admitted in a menial capacity to the Abbey of St Rufus near Avignon, and eventually rose to be its abbot. His reforming zeal caused his monks to denounce him to the Pope, who summoned him to Rome. Finding that he had an exceptional man in Breakspear, the Pope made him a cardinal and sent him as legate to Norway and Sweden, where he converted the heathen, founded the bishopric of Upsala, and returned in triumph to be hailed as the Apostle of the North.
It was in 1154 that he became Pope, as Adrian IV, the first and last Englishman elected to that position. The outcast of St Albans was now the supreme prince of Christendom, and among those who came to Rome to do him homage was the head of the house that had rejected him, the abbot of St Albans!
Our King Henry II sent an embassy to Adrian, with John of Salisbury at its head, seeking permission to conquer and annex Ireland; and the villager from Langley disposed of a kingdom at a stroke. His reason was that the Irish church was reported as guilty of laxity and heresy. His justification was that, according to the forged donation of Constantine, which Adrian believed authentic, the successor of St Peter was made possessor of all the islands in the world. King Henry was to bring the Irish within the pale, and to pay a penny a year for every hearth in Ireland!
But Adrian had a seething Europe about him. Arnold of Brescia had put himself at the head of a republican Rome and defied the papacy. Adrian took the unprecedented course of laying the Eternal City under interdict, and later he sent Arnold to the stake. He waged a long battle with the Norman king of Sicily, and came to grips with the emperor of the long-lived Holy Roman Empire, Frederick Barbarossa. In a memorable scene at Nepi, Adrian compelled this haughty monarch, in the presence of his entire army, to lead his horse by the bridle and hold his stirrup while he mounted and dismounted. Afterwards, in opposition to the wishes of the Romans, Adrian secretly crowned Barbarossa in St Peter’s; but the rival claims of the two were never reconciled. Adrian firmly asserted universal sovereignty for the Pope, and entered on a contest that left him apparently defeated, but in the end destroyed the dynasty of Frederick, whom Adrian was on the point of excommunicating when death laid him low, in 1159.
In private life Adrian was unaffected, just, and kind, and he told John of Salisbury that he looked back with a sigh of regret upon his English life, and that the papacy had brought him no real satisfaction.
Flickr.
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