In contrast to the neighbouring Hemel Hempstead the church at Berkhamsted lies right along the High Street, more or less in line with the houses on the N side. This gives the church a decidedly urban character.
ST PETER. The result of much adding and enlarging. At least five periods can be distinguished (apart from Butterfield’s restoration in 1871): chancel c. 1200 (lancet windows with nook shafts); crossing piers and N transept walls of the same date; nave with both arcades of seven bays (not at all in line with the chancel) late C13 (begun from the E with quatrefoil piers on the S, an alternation of circular and quatrefoil piers on the N side, and continued to the W with circular piers only; simple moulded capitals, double-chamfered arches); N transept E aisle with rib-vaults c. 1300; S chancel chapel early C14 (ogee reticulation in the window tracery; ogee-headed Piscina; two tomb-recesses, the E one with a renewed arch), outer S aisle mid C14 (with a wooden post separating it from the inner aisle); S aisle, W part of outer aisle (originally a porch), and clerestory C15; upper parts of the crossing tower 1535-6. The crossing tower dominates the external appearance of the large flint-built church. It is big and powerful with a NE stair-turret rising higher than its battlements. The body of the building spreads broadly along the street and faces on the other side across the churchyard the old Grammar School. - SCREEN. In W tower arch; C15, much renewed. - STAINED GLASS. Some C14 glass in chancel N windows. - S aisle window with three Saints, by Kempe 1880. - PLATE. Chalice, 1629; Almsdish, 1637; Paten, 1706. - BRASSES. Richard Torrington (?) d. 1356 and wife (N aisle). - Demi-figure of Priest, c. 1400 (chancel). - Woman, c. 1360 (N aisle). - Richard Westbroke d. 1485 (N aisle). - Thomas Humfre, c. 1470, shrouded, with wife and children, and figure of St Michael; re-used on the reverse for John Waterhouse d. 1559 and wife (N transept aisle). - John Raven d. 1395 (St John’s Chapel). - Katherine Incent d. 1520, shrouded (St John’s Chapel). - MONUMENTS. Knight and Lady, late C14, defaced stone figures on tomb-chest with ogee-headed niches and shields. - James and John Murray d.1627 and 1634, epitaph with busts of the two brothers in a circle. They died young and are here seen holding hands. One of them reads in a book. Good quality (chancel). - Thomas Baldwin, 1642, by Nicholas Stone, large tablet without figures (S aisle near W end). - Elizabeth Cradock d, 1704, standing wall monument of shallow relief; no figures; by F. Hardy (S transept). - Mary Isabella Smith d. 1834, with large kneeling figure, apparently unsigned.
Berkhamsted. Through this small town of 10,000 people come the road from Aylesbury to Watford, the Grand Union Canal, and the little River Bulbourne on its way to join the River Gade. The green valley belongs to the Chilterns, and there are glorious hills around, with a breezy common 600 feet above the sea to the north, and to the south the Ashlyns domain in‘ a lovely park, high above the town.
In a group of fine buildings only a few years old, standing by Ashlyns Park, is now being carried on the great work begun by Thomas Coram in 1739. He was, of course, the extraordinary man who started the Foundling Hospital in London, and in our own time this great institution has moved from the heart of Bloomsbury and come here, leaving London children a wonderful playground in its place, and giving Berkhamsted a handsome block of buildings and the pride of housing a famous hospital. There are lawns and playing fields, and the buildings are set round a green court which we see from the colonnade at each side of the chapel, which has four columns supporting a pediment and a domed belfry with a lamb for a weathervane. The Foundling has kept its chief treasure, the organ on which Handel used to play to Londoners on Sunday afternoons, and which he himself gave to the hospital. The new home has cost a quarter of a million pounds, but its work is worth it, for it has the proud record of having placed 50,000 children on the way to health and opportunity in the world.
The story of the town is a long one, and its name has changed half a hundred times from the ancient Beorchehamstede. The mile long High Street is on the line of the old Roman Akeman Street, and the famous British earthwork, Grim’s Ditch, can still be traced on the common. Ancient and modern meet across the river, where the railway made 100 years ago encroaches on what is left of Berkhamsted Castle, sheltering on the lower slopes of the hillside. The Conqueror gave the manor to his half-brother, and the earthworks, a fine example of a Norman military fortress, are believed to date from his time, though a Saxon fortress may have stood on this spot. Today, the castle is in the keeping of the Ministry of Public Building and Works.
The earthworks are still impressive, though little but ragged walling is left of the castle itself. It has been razed to the ground and rebuilt. It became the home of Thomas Becket, who lived here in state, and was a favourite place of Henry II, who gave the town a charter. King John gave it to his Queen Isabella. In 1216 it was taken by Louis of France and the English barons. Henry III gave it to his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, whose marriage with the queen’s sister was celebrated here with a great banquet, and there was another historic banquet here when Piers Gaveston owned the castle and married the niece of Edward II. Edward III restored the castle for the Black Prince, when he was made Duke of Cornwall, and Berkhamsted is still part of the Duchy. King John of France was a prisoner here after Poitiers. Chaucer was clerk of the works here under Richard II. Edward IV gave it to his mother, who died here. After her death it fell into decay, though it was held by three of Henry VIII’s six queens, and in Elizabeth I’s time Sir Edward Cary used much of its material for building Berkhamsted Place, the great house on the hill.
The house once belonged to Prince Henry and passed on his death to his brother Charles I. It is odd that after this it should have been the home of Daniel Axtel, a grocer’s apprentice who was converted to the Parliamentary cause by a sermon he listened to on a fast-day. It was he who made the arrangements for the king’s trial in Westminster Hall, and who called out threatening to shoot Lady Fairfax when she interrupted the proceedings. At the Restoration he was arrested and sentenced to death. He made a remarkable speech on the scaffold, in which he mourned the general depravity of the nation, but declared that he suffered as Our Lord had suffered. His head was set up on Westminster Hall.
A green lawn now marks the site of the outer court, which is 450 feet long and 300 wide, surrounded by a steep fosse and a wet moat. At its north-east corner is the fine conical mound 45 feet high, with a diameter of 180 feet at the base, and 60 feet at the top, where, within the circle of low walling of the keep, is the well the Normans made. Another bank and ditch surround the inner earthworks, and on the north and east sides is a third bank, which is further strengthened by eight great bastions of earth. The fragments of walling still to be seen (high and low, in long and short stretches) are chiefly of flint and rubble, having been robbed of their facing. The remains on the west side of the outer court are perhaps part of the chapel. The oldest of all this masonry may be of Thomas Becket’s time; the outer walls with their towers and the keep on the mound are from 1186. The banks rising from the moat are gay in spring with daffodils, and we walk round the rampart under the shade of trees. Slumbering peacefully in its old age, the site of the castle is cared for now by the Ministry of Works.
The High Street has a sprinkling of old houses, shops, and inns; at its most charming corner stands the old church of St Peter in company with a few Georgian houses, older houses with gables and dormers, and the Court House standing back from the road. In this fine old house, built of brick and flint and timber in the 16th century and now partly new, the manor courts were held; later it was a school, and now is a Church House. Another 16th-century building is the charming timbered Incent House with an overhanging storey: now a place where we may have tea, it is said to have been the home of John Incent, Dean of St Paul’s, who died in 1645. He founded Berkhamsted Grammar School, which after a long period of stagnation has become a source of pride for the town. The dean planned for 144. boys; now there are over 500. The fine old school, of red brick with stone mullioned windows, mellowed with four centuries of time, stands on the north side of the churchyard. Since the addition of two wings last century, the buildings have grown round two courts. Near the fine timber entrance to the south court is the school chapel, with the altar 19 steps higher than the nave, and much stained glass. The west window is a tribute to those who fell in the Great War, and shows Our Lord in Glory, saints, and knights carrying the flags of the victorious nations. The school library is another memorial to 212 Old Boys, one of whom, Major G. R. Pearkes, won the VC. In spite of being wounded, he captured and held a vital point, making possible an important advance, and throughout the war he showed a supreme contempt of danger and wonderful power of control as a leader of men.
The rectory standing by the cemetery is not the house in which Berkhamsted’s most famous son, William Cowper, was born in 1731. The old house was a little lower down the hill. His father was rector here for 34 years, and in the church where he preached are memorials to his wife, Ann Cowper, and their poet son. Cowper wrote these lines about this place:
Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more,
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor;
And where the gardener Robin, day by day,
Drew me to school along the public way,
Delighted with my bawble coach, and wrapt
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet rapt,
’Tis now become a history little known,
That once we called the pastoral house our own.
It is a striking church, and one of the biggest in the county, measuring 168 feet from east to west, and 91 feet across the transepts. A fragment of an ancient arch in a wall of the north transept suggests that there was a church here before the Conquest, but the one we see began early in the 13th century as a simple cross-shaped building of chancel, nave, transepts, and central tower. Later in the same century aisles were added to the nave, and the north transept was given its eastern aisle with a vaulted roof; in the 14th century this transept was lengthened and received its windows enriched with ballflowers. Other 14th-century additions were St Catherine’s chapel and the chapel of St John the Baptist. The 15th-century porch has become part of this chapel, which was used by the grammar school till their own chapel was built. Over the leaning arcades in the nave is the 15th-century clerestory. The two lower stages of the tower are 13th century, the heavy arches resting on clustered shafts, but the top storey was added 400 years ago. In the original lancet windows still in the chancel is old glass showing two royal coats-of-arms and fragments. The glass of the modern east window is Cowper’s memorial, showing Our Lord Risen, the women and disciples going to the tomb, and a portrait of the poet at a prayer desk, with his tame hares. The register tells of his baptism. His mother’s memorial has a rhyming inscription by Lady Walsingham.
The massive arches and clustered pillars between the south transept and St John’s Chapel are 14th century, and the fine oak pillar between the chapel and the south aisle is believed to be as old, though the rest of the chapel detail is modern. The tie-beams of the nave roof rest on arches with arcaded spandrels. The 15th-century screen has a new vine cornice, and 14 new figures on the base panels, among which we see Nicholas with three children in a tub; Patrick with shamrock and a staff, lizards and a serpent about his feet; Jerome with a lion at his feet; Gregory with a bird on his shoulder; George slaying a dragon; and Peter holding keys and a church. A fine carved chest with drawers is over 300 years old; the 19th-century pulpit has five angels with outspread wings, and a pew is Elizabethan. Four heads under the tower, and a bearded head at the east end of the north aisle are among the many carved corbels to be seen.
On a richly arcaded tomb lie a 14th-century knight and his lady, he wearing armour, she in a fine netted headdress; they are believed to be Richard and Margaret Torrington. Over the tomb hangs the funeral helmet of Sir Adolphus Cary, who lived at Berkhamsted Place after his brother Sir Edward, who built it. Sir John Cornwallis of 1544 has a marble tomb with his arms in brass; he was a member of the Council of Edward VI and died at Ashridge. By his tomb is that of Charles II’s chief cook, John Sayer, who lived at Berkhamsted Place and founded for his poorer neighbours the quaint row of almshouses at the west end of the town. Under one of two rich recesses in St Catherine’s Chapel is a fine medieval coffin lid, carved by a medieval craftsman, with a floral cross.
The oldest brass here is of Richard and Margaret Torrington of about 1356, wearing long robes and holding hands; two dogs are at her feet and a lion at his. Others are the bust of a priest of about 1400; Richard Westbrook, a civilian of 1485; 14th-century Margaret Briggs with netted hair and draped headdress; and John Raven, squire to the Black Prince, as a knight in armour. A palimpsest brass is on a swivel so that we can see both sides; one with a 16th-century inscription, the other side with fragments of the figures of Thomas Humfre of about 1470, his wife and children, and also part of a representation of St Michael weighing souls. In the first letter of Thomas’s inscription is an engraving of St Jerome as a cardinal. There is an inscription to Robert Incent of 1509, and his wife Katherine is a shrouded figure in brass.
It was the poet Cowper, born at Berkhamsted, who led the way of escape for English poetry from the dead world such men as Pope were making of it. Such poets as he were writing bookish verse made in a library according to rules laid down, but Cowper would have none of it; he did what Wordsworth was to do after him, he found his poetry in the fields and lanes. He put his feelings into it, and not mere words.
Nothing was too homely for his pen. He would write of mankind as a whole, or of men as individuals, of the friendly world of animals, or of the changeful beauty of outdoor life. His gentle spirit was invincibly humane, and yet his life was cursed by doubts about his soul. It is one of the tragedies of genius that this man who was so kind, so gentle that he could not hurt a fly, was driven insane by the thought that God would punish him.
One of the most pathetic love stories was that of Cowper and Mary Unwin. He lived with the Unwins in their home at Huntingdon and thought them the finest people in the world. It was to please Mrs Unwin that he wrote much prose and poetry, and it is thought she inspired his famous poem on Boadicea, and the famous one on Alexander Selkirk.
Mary Unwin became a widow, and it is believed they may have become engaged, but Cowper’s mind broke down and the woman who should have been his wife became his nurse. She saved him in his hours of despair, turning him to writing poetry and hymns, but at last she herself broke down under the long strain and was stricken with paralysis. Now the poet was able to repay in some measure the debt he owed to her, but her death was the last blow to him, and left him a wreck with one fine gloomy poem to write before he followed her to the grave.
As a poet his interest is singularly wide and varied. He loved a frolic, as we know by John Gilpin. He was an ardent patriot, a thoughtful politician, a humanitarian fired with the love of freedom, and he brought poetry down into the homely ways of men. Some of his lines belong to our daily speech, and he lives because he shares our common sympathies and touches a chord deep in the hearts of men.
In a group of fine buildings only a few years old, standing by Ashlyns Park, is now being carried on the great work begun by Thomas Coram in 1739. He was, of course, the extraordinary man who started the Foundling Hospital in London, and in our own time this great institution has moved from the heart of Bloomsbury and come here, leaving London children a wonderful playground in its place, and giving Berkhamsted a handsome block of buildings and the pride of housing a famous hospital. There are lawns and playing fields, and the buildings are set round a green court which we see from the colonnade at each side of the chapel, which has four columns supporting a pediment and a domed belfry with a lamb for a weathervane. The Foundling has kept its chief treasure, the organ on which Handel used to play to Londoners on Sunday afternoons, and which he himself gave to the hospital. The new home has cost a quarter of a million pounds, but its work is worth it, for it has the proud record of having placed 50,000 children on the way to health and opportunity in the world.
The story of the town is a long one, and its name has changed half a hundred times from the ancient Beorchehamstede. The mile long High Street is on the line of the old Roman Akeman Street, and the famous British earthwork, Grim’s Ditch, can still be traced on the common. Ancient and modern meet across the river, where the railway made 100 years ago encroaches on what is left of Berkhamsted Castle, sheltering on the lower slopes of the hillside. The Conqueror gave the manor to his half-brother, and the earthworks, a fine example of a Norman military fortress, are believed to date from his time, though a Saxon fortress may have stood on this spot. Today, the castle is in the keeping of the Ministry of Public Building and Works.
The earthworks are still impressive, though little but ragged walling is left of the castle itself. It has been razed to the ground and rebuilt. It became the home of Thomas Becket, who lived here in state, and was a favourite place of Henry II, who gave the town a charter. King John gave it to his Queen Isabella. In 1216 it was taken by Louis of France and the English barons. Henry III gave it to his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, whose marriage with the queen’s sister was celebrated here with a great banquet, and there was another historic banquet here when Piers Gaveston owned the castle and married the niece of Edward II. Edward III restored the castle for the Black Prince, when he was made Duke of Cornwall, and Berkhamsted is still part of the Duchy. King John of France was a prisoner here after Poitiers. Chaucer was clerk of the works here under Richard II. Edward IV gave it to his mother, who died here. After her death it fell into decay, though it was held by three of Henry VIII’s six queens, and in Elizabeth I’s time Sir Edward Cary used much of its material for building Berkhamsted Place, the great house on the hill.
The house once belonged to Prince Henry and passed on his death to his brother Charles I. It is odd that after this it should have been the home of Daniel Axtel, a grocer’s apprentice who was converted to the Parliamentary cause by a sermon he listened to on a fast-day. It was he who made the arrangements for the king’s trial in Westminster Hall, and who called out threatening to shoot Lady Fairfax when she interrupted the proceedings. At the Restoration he was arrested and sentenced to death. He made a remarkable speech on the scaffold, in which he mourned the general depravity of the nation, but declared that he suffered as Our Lord had suffered. His head was set up on Westminster Hall.
A green lawn now marks the site of the outer court, which is 450 feet long and 300 wide, surrounded by a steep fosse and a wet moat. At its north-east corner is the fine conical mound 45 feet high, with a diameter of 180 feet at the base, and 60 feet at the top, where, within the circle of low walling of the keep, is the well the Normans made. Another bank and ditch surround the inner earthworks, and on the north and east sides is a third bank, which is further strengthened by eight great bastions of earth. The fragments of walling still to be seen (high and low, in long and short stretches) are chiefly of flint and rubble, having been robbed of their facing. The remains on the west side of the outer court are perhaps part of the chapel. The oldest of all this masonry may be of Thomas Becket’s time; the outer walls with their towers and the keep on the mound are from 1186. The banks rising from the moat are gay in spring with daffodils, and we walk round the rampart under the shade of trees. Slumbering peacefully in its old age, the site of the castle is cared for now by the Ministry of Works.
The High Street has a sprinkling of old houses, shops, and inns; at its most charming corner stands the old church of St Peter in company with a few Georgian houses, older houses with gables and dormers, and the Court House standing back from the road. In this fine old house, built of brick and flint and timber in the 16th century and now partly new, the manor courts were held; later it was a school, and now is a Church House. Another 16th-century building is the charming timbered Incent House with an overhanging storey: now a place where we may have tea, it is said to have been the home of John Incent, Dean of St Paul’s, who died in 1645. He founded Berkhamsted Grammar School, which after a long period of stagnation has become a source of pride for the town. The dean planned for 144. boys; now there are over 500. The fine old school, of red brick with stone mullioned windows, mellowed with four centuries of time, stands on the north side of the churchyard. Since the addition of two wings last century, the buildings have grown round two courts. Near the fine timber entrance to the south court is the school chapel, with the altar 19 steps higher than the nave, and much stained glass. The west window is a tribute to those who fell in the Great War, and shows Our Lord in Glory, saints, and knights carrying the flags of the victorious nations. The school library is another memorial to 212 Old Boys, one of whom, Major G. R. Pearkes, won the VC. In spite of being wounded, he captured and held a vital point, making possible an important advance, and throughout the war he showed a supreme contempt of danger and wonderful power of control as a leader of men.
The rectory standing by the cemetery is not the house in which Berkhamsted’s most famous son, William Cowper, was born in 1731. The old house was a little lower down the hill. His father was rector here for 34 years, and in the church where he preached are memorials to his wife, Ann Cowper, and their poet son. Cowper wrote these lines about this place:
Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more,
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor;
And where the gardener Robin, day by day,
Drew me to school along the public way,
Delighted with my bawble coach, and wrapt
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet rapt,
’Tis now become a history little known,
That once we called the pastoral house our own.
It is a striking church, and one of the biggest in the county, measuring 168 feet from east to west, and 91 feet across the transepts. A fragment of an ancient arch in a wall of the north transept suggests that there was a church here before the Conquest, but the one we see began early in the 13th century as a simple cross-shaped building of chancel, nave, transepts, and central tower. Later in the same century aisles were added to the nave, and the north transept was given its eastern aisle with a vaulted roof; in the 14th century this transept was lengthened and received its windows enriched with ballflowers. Other 14th-century additions were St Catherine’s chapel and the chapel of St John the Baptist. The 15th-century porch has become part of this chapel, which was used by the grammar school till their own chapel was built. Over the leaning arcades in the nave is the 15th-century clerestory. The two lower stages of the tower are 13th century, the heavy arches resting on clustered shafts, but the top storey was added 400 years ago. In the original lancet windows still in the chancel is old glass showing two royal coats-of-arms and fragments. The glass of the modern east window is Cowper’s memorial, showing Our Lord Risen, the women and disciples going to the tomb, and a portrait of the poet at a prayer desk, with his tame hares. The register tells of his baptism. His mother’s memorial has a rhyming inscription by Lady Walsingham.
The massive arches and clustered pillars between the south transept and St John’s Chapel are 14th century, and the fine oak pillar between the chapel and the south aisle is believed to be as old, though the rest of the chapel detail is modern. The tie-beams of the nave roof rest on arches with arcaded spandrels. The 15th-century screen has a new vine cornice, and 14 new figures on the base panels, among which we see Nicholas with three children in a tub; Patrick with shamrock and a staff, lizards and a serpent about his feet; Jerome with a lion at his feet; Gregory with a bird on his shoulder; George slaying a dragon; and Peter holding keys and a church. A fine carved chest with drawers is over 300 years old; the 19th-century pulpit has five angels with outspread wings, and a pew is Elizabethan. Four heads under the tower, and a bearded head at the east end of the north aisle are among the many carved corbels to be seen.
On a richly arcaded tomb lie a 14th-century knight and his lady, he wearing armour, she in a fine netted headdress; they are believed to be Richard and Margaret Torrington. Over the tomb hangs the funeral helmet of Sir Adolphus Cary, who lived at Berkhamsted Place after his brother Sir Edward, who built it. Sir John Cornwallis of 1544 has a marble tomb with his arms in brass; he was a member of the Council of Edward VI and died at Ashridge. By his tomb is that of Charles II’s chief cook, John Sayer, who lived at Berkhamsted Place and founded for his poorer neighbours the quaint row of almshouses at the west end of the town. Under one of two rich recesses in St Catherine’s Chapel is a fine medieval coffin lid, carved by a medieval craftsman, with a floral cross.
The oldest brass here is of Richard and Margaret Torrington of about 1356, wearing long robes and holding hands; two dogs are at her feet and a lion at his. Others are the bust of a priest of about 1400; Richard Westbrook, a civilian of 1485; 14th-century Margaret Briggs with netted hair and draped headdress; and John Raven, squire to the Black Prince, as a knight in armour. A palimpsest brass is on a swivel so that we can see both sides; one with a 16th-century inscription, the other side with fragments of the figures of Thomas Humfre of about 1470, his wife and children, and also part of a representation of St Michael weighing souls. In the first letter of Thomas’s inscription is an engraving of St Jerome as a cardinal. There is an inscription to Robert Incent of 1509, and his wife Katherine is a shrouded figure in brass.
It was the poet Cowper, born at Berkhamsted, who led the way of escape for English poetry from the dead world such men as Pope were making of it. Such poets as he were writing bookish verse made in a library according to rules laid down, but Cowper would have none of it; he did what Wordsworth was to do after him, he found his poetry in the fields and lanes. He put his feelings into it, and not mere words.
Nothing was too homely for his pen. He would write of mankind as a whole, or of men as individuals, of the friendly world of animals, or of the changeful beauty of outdoor life. His gentle spirit was invincibly humane, and yet his life was cursed by doubts about his soul. It is one of the tragedies of genius that this man who was so kind, so gentle that he could not hurt a fly, was driven insane by the thought that God would punish him.
One of the most pathetic love stories was that of Cowper and Mary Unwin. He lived with the Unwins in their home at Huntingdon and thought them the finest people in the world. It was to please Mrs Unwin that he wrote much prose and poetry, and it is thought she inspired his famous poem on Boadicea, and the famous one on Alexander Selkirk.
Mary Unwin became a widow, and it is believed they may have become engaged, but Cowper’s mind broke down and the woman who should have been his wife became his nurse. She saved him in his hours of despair, turning him to writing poetry and hymns, but at last she herself broke down under the long strain and was stricken with paralysis. Now the poet was able to repay in some measure the debt he owed to her, but her death was the last blow to him, and left him a wreck with one fine gloomy poem to write before he followed her to the grave.
As a poet his interest is singularly wide and varied. He loved a frolic, as we know by John Gilpin. He was an ardent patriot, a thoughtful politician, a humanitarian fired with the love of freedom, and he brought poetry down into the homely ways of men. Some of his lines belong to our daily speech, and he lives because he shares our common sympathies and touches a chord deep in the hearts of men.
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