ST LEONARD. An unpromising church when one approaches it from the W. The W tower and W end in general are all of 1886, and restoration has given the whole building too fresh an appearance. Yet the Roman bricks in the chancel masonry reveal a very great age, and inside a chancel arch of Roman bricks is preserved in the most curious of surroundings. These features may well belong to the church consecrated by Herbert Losinga, Bishop of Norwich (1094-1119). Of the later C12 the nave arcades of three bays with octagonal piers carrying square scalloped capitals with odd angle volutes. The arches have two roll mouldings. The C13 follows with the tower arch left standing when the new tower was built. It has two slight chamfers and rests on renewed shafts with original stiff-leaf capitals. Late in the C14 the renewal of the chancel and at the same time the erection of the stone rood-screen which (a most remarkable fact) respected the old Roman brick chancel arch. It was blocked, except for a doorway with fleurons in jambs and voussoirs and for charming little figures on sloping ledges to the E of it, and above is a two-light straightheaded window opening was made. To the l. and r. similar three-light openings. The whole would not look so improbable had not the restoration of 1886 replaced the upper E wall of the nave above the Screen and the Norman arch by wooden tracery. - FONT. Circular, Norman, with intersecting blank arches on colonnades. - PLATE. Chalice and Paten, 1776.
Do I feel cheated - yes.
Sandridge. We may feel here as we come past the mighty copper beech and the red chestnuts into the old church something of the thrill of a discoverer, for we stand where Roman, Saxon, Norman, and Tudor stood, and across the River Lea is the Jacobean house called Water End, believed to have been the home of Sarah Jennings whose parents were Sandridge folk.
The passing ages have stamped their mark on the church, but through all these dynasties, from the Caesars to the Stuarts, few things more beautiful can have happened than the devotion of Sarah Jennings of Sandridge to John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. He chose the title of Lord Churchill of Sandridge when he was made a peer, so marking his devotion to his wonderful wife. A vixen or a shrew she may have been, her life as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, but these two little letters of hers will surely never pass into oblivion. This was to him when she was away in 1689:
Wherever you are, while I have life, my soul shall follow you, my ever dear Lord Marl; and wherever I am I should only kill the time wishing for night that I may sleep and hope the next day to hear from you.
And this was after he had passed out of her life, when the Duke of Somerset wrote asking for her hand in marriage:
If I were young and handsome as I was, instead of old and faded as I am, and you could lay the empire of the world at my feet, you should never share the heart and hand that once belonged to John, Duke of Marlborough.
The church that she would know, and which the Duke of Marlborough must have seen, must go back to the Saxons in its unseen foundations, for Sandridge was a village in 976, when it was given to St Albans Abbey by the son of Offa of Mercia, and long before that were thrown up the mysterious lines of entrenchments known as the Devil’s Dyke and the Slad. We know the Saxons must have been building here, for in the walls are Roman bricks they preserved from some ruined Roman building hereabouts. There is, moreover, a remarkable arch of Roman bricks set above the stone chancel screen, a screen rare in itself, with a grave simplicity, erected when the abbot of St Albans rebuilt the chancel in the 14th century.
We have seen no other chancel screen like this, which runs from wall to wall with a beautiful pointed arch in the centre, and on each side three cinquefoil lights. The central arch rises on each side from a rough stone base like a bench-end, with a figure carved in relief on the sloping arm - one of an old bearded man with a rosary and a hand raised to his ear, the other an old woman in a slightly more comfortable position. The space above the screen has been filled in to the roof with a wooden framework divided into dozens of cinquefoil window like openings, but this is broken in the centre by a remarkable arch resting on the top of the screen. The arch was probably put together in the 14th century when the abbot rebuilt the chancel, but its materials, rough and rather crudely laid, are as old as any materials in any church in England, for they are Roman. The arch was probably here in Saxon days and may be Saxon work. In the midst of it is a tympanum with two lights to match those in the screen below.
The tower of the church fell in 1688, and with the clerestory, was rebuilt last century. The nave itself was built early in the 12th century, 200 years before the Abbot of St Albans gave the church the shape we see, and the aisles added about 1170. The east wall of the nave was replaced by the present wood screen in 1886.
The passing ages have stamped their mark on the church, but through all these dynasties, from the Caesars to the Stuarts, few things more beautiful can have happened than the devotion of Sarah Jennings of Sandridge to John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. He chose the title of Lord Churchill of Sandridge when he was made a peer, so marking his devotion to his wonderful wife. A vixen or a shrew she may have been, her life as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, but these two little letters of hers will surely never pass into oblivion. This was to him when she was away in 1689:
Wherever you are, while I have life, my soul shall follow you, my ever dear Lord Marl; and wherever I am I should only kill the time wishing for night that I may sleep and hope the next day to hear from you.
And this was after he had passed out of her life, when the Duke of Somerset wrote asking for her hand in marriage:
If I were young and handsome as I was, instead of old and faded as I am, and you could lay the empire of the world at my feet, you should never share the heart and hand that once belonged to John, Duke of Marlborough.
The church that she would know, and which the Duke of Marlborough must have seen, must go back to the Saxons in its unseen foundations, for Sandridge was a village in 976, when it was given to St Albans Abbey by the son of Offa of Mercia, and long before that were thrown up the mysterious lines of entrenchments known as the Devil’s Dyke and the Slad. We know the Saxons must have been building here, for in the walls are Roman bricks they preserved from some ruined Roman building hereabouts. There is, moreover, a remarkable arch of Roman bricks set above the stone chancel screen, a screen rare in itself, with a grave simplicity, erected when the abbot of St Albans rebuilt the chancel in the 14th century.
We have seen no other chancel screen like this, which runs from wall to wall with a beautiful pointed arch in the centre, and on each side three cinquefoil lights. The central arch rises on each side from a rough stone base like a bench-end, with a figure carved in relief on the sloping arm - one of an old bearded man with a rosary and a hand raised to his ear, the other an old woman in a slightly more comfortable position. The space above the screen has been filled in to the roof with a wooden framework divided into dozens of cinquefoil window like openings, but this is broken in the centre by a remarkable arch resting on the top of the screen. The arch was probably put together in the 14th century when the abbot rebuilt the chancel, but its materials, rough and rather crudely laid, are as old as any materials in any church in England, for they are Roman. The arch was probably here in Saxon days and may be Saxon work. In the midst of it is a tympanum with two lights to match those in the screen below.
The tower of the church fell in 1688, and with the clerestory, was rebuilt last century. The nave itself was built early in the 12th century, 200 years before the Abbot of St Albans gave the church the shape we see, and the aisles added about 1170. The east wall of the nave was replaced by the present wood screen in 1886.
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