The Marlin Chapel proved more elusive and, although I got tantalisingly close, time ran out - having subsequently checked the HCP entry I've decided that the return on invested time wont be worth my effort and have written it off as a lost church.
ST MARY. The W end faces the High Street across the turf of a treeless churchyard. The church has a Totternhoe-stone crossing tower; the rest is flint. The archaeologically, if not visually, most interesting fact about Northchurch is that the S and part of the W wall are Saxon, and that the thickness of the wall at the W end proves the existence of a separate square W chamber W of the nave proper. The chancel is a C13 enlargement (see the large N lancet window now opening into a modern vestry). The masonry of the transepts is partly C13, partly C14. The crossing tower was rebuilt in the C15 and the arches on which it stands were then strengthened. It has a NW stair-turret. Porch and N aisle are C19. Of the nave widows the first has Dec, the second geometrical tracery. The chancel S windows are Early Perp. - CHEST. Flemish, c. 1500, richly decorated with tracery. - STAINED GLASS. E window of 1883, an early Kempe. Several other later windows by Kempe and his successor W. E. Tower. - BRASS TABLET to ‘Peter the Wild Boy’ who was found in the woods of Herrenhausen near Hanover; S wall, inside S door.
Northchurch. There are stones in its church walls which were laid before the Conqueror set foot in England, and near by is a fragment of the mysterious Grim’s Ditch, a rampart and boundary line of unknown origin.
In its nine centuries the church has seen many changes, but the south and west walls of the nave are as the Saxons built them, the walls having been thickened at the end to support the Saxon tower, which is no more. The central tower which has replaced it was built in the 15th century, and there is 13th-century work in the two transepts and the chancel. Most of the rest is modern. The chief possession of the church is a grand Flemish chest deeply carved 500 years ago, a beauty. Some of the new windows are attractive. Four bells hanging in a frame of 1615 are mid-17th century, and we found a stone set up by the ringers in memory of one of their company who had rung these bells for over 70 years.
A gravestone outside the church porch marks the last resting-place of a piteous waif of circumstance, Peter the Wild Boy, whose picture is on a brass. He was found wandering in the forest near Hanover as a boy of 13, walking on his hands and feet, climbing trees like a squirrel, and eating grass. King George I took an interest in him and placed him in a home, but Peter escaped and took refuge in a tree, from which he could not be rescued save by cutting the tree down. The king had him brought to England, where he was at first shown as an object of interest to the nobility; but it was found impossible to teach or train him, and he never spoke more than a few syllables. It was clear that poor Peter was an imbecile, but he remained a sort of popular craze in those days, and Dean Swift, on a visit to London, wrote home that little else was talked about. He wrote that Peter was a Christian, and had been taken to court all in green to the great astonishment of the quality and gentry, and he followed this with a pamphlet, by himself and Dr Arbuthnot, called The Most Wonderful Wonder that ever appeared to the Wonder of the British Nation. Many absurd things were said about this poor wild boy, such as that he neighed like a horse in his joy. Queen Caroline tried to educate him, but the brass in the church tells us that “after ablest masters had failed to make him speak he was sent to a farm, where he ended his inoffensive life in 1785, aged about 72 years.” For years poor Peter had wandered about these fields and woods with a collar round his neck requesting all who found him straying to return him to Mr Fenn of Berkhamsted, and in the end they laid him in this churchyard, the saddest human mite known to this countryside.
From the 16th century comes a timbered church house with an overhanging storey, now turned into cottages, a delightful break in the houses closing in on the overcrowded motor road from London to Aylesbury, and another pleasant reminder of days that are gone is the 300-year-old dovecot, of brick and timber, in the grounds of Norcott Court a mile away.
In its nine centuries the church has seen many changes, but the south and west walls of the nave are as the Saxons built them, the walls having been thickened at the end to support the Saxon tower, which is no more. The central tower which has replaced it was built in the 15th century, and there is 13th-century work in the two transepts and the chancel. Most of the rest is modern. The chief possession of the church is a grand Flemish chest deeply carved 500 years ago, a beauty. Some of the new windows are attractive. Four bells hanging in a frame of 1615 are mid-17th century, and we found a stone set up by the ringers in memory of one of their company who had rung these bells for over 70 years.
A gravestone outside the church porch marks the last resting-place of a piteous waif of circumstance, Peter the Wild Boy, whose picture is on a brass. He was found wandering in the forest near Hanover as a boy of 13, walking on his hands and feet, climbing trees like a squirrel, and eating grass. King George I took an interest in him and placed him in a home, but Peter escaped and took refuge in a tree, from which he could not be rescued save by cutting the tree down. The king had him brought to England, where he was at first shown as an object of interest to the nobility; but it was found impossible to teach or train him, and he never spoke more than a few syllables. It was clear that poor Peter was an imbecile, but he remained a sort of popular craze in those days, and Dean Swift, on a visit to London, wrote home that little else was talked about. He wrote that Peter was a Christian, and had been taken to court all in green to the great astonishment of the quality and gentry, and he followed this with a pamphlet, by himself and Dr Arbuthnot, called The Most Wonderful Wonder that ever appeared to the Wonder of the British Nation. Many absurd things were said about this poor wild boy, such as that he neighed like a horse in his joy. Queen Caroline tried to educate him, but the brass in the church tells us that “after ablest masters had failed to make him speak he was sent to a farm, where he ended his inoffensive life in 1785, aged about 72 years.” For years poor Peter had wandered about these fields and woods with a collar round his neck requesting all who found him straying to return him to Mr Fenn of Berkhamsted, and in the end they laid him in this churchyard, the saddest human mite known to this countryside.
From the 16th century comes a timbered church house with an overhanging storey, now turned into cottages, a delightful break in the houses closing in on the overcrowded motor road from London to Aylesbury, and another pleasant reminder of days that are gone is the 300-year-old dovecot, of brick and timber, in the grounds of Norcott Court a mile away.
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