I was disappointed to find it lnk but not surprised since I was expecting this to be a largely inaccessible area, 15 churches in and around Rickmansworth and Watford plus 2 missed churches further east. It actually turned out that 8 were accessible and 9 weren't so not a bad return in Herts terms.
Still and all it would have been nice to find it open having travelled so far.
HOLY CROSS. Small church of flint, in its cross-plan and the masonry of short nave, transepts, and W parts of chancel C12 (see particularly the arches between these parts). The chancel was lengthened in the C13 (see the double Piscina) and again in the C14 (see the design of the renewed E window). The short W tower is of the C17 with an upper storey of the C16, which has pretty brick windows, brick quoins, and a brick top with saddleback roof. - PULPIT. C17, hexagonal with ornamented linenfold panelling and double balusters at the angles; square tester. - Plain old BENCHES in the N transept. - WALL PAINTINGS, very faded, on the E wall of the S transept. - PLATE. Paten, 1635; tall Chalice and Paten, 1764; Flagon, 1792. - MONUMENT. William Kingley d. 1611 and wife, the usual epitaph with kneeling figures facing each other.
Sarratt. We remember it for its long village green, running between an odd assortment of houses for about a quarter of a mile, with 17th-century farmhouses in the background, Rose Hall Farm having a Tudor rose in the plaster of its kitchen ceiling. And then, a little way off, is another picture - the church’s cheerful cluster of red-roofed gables seen against the red-roofed barns. Even the tower, rebuilt in the 15th century with Roman bricks in it ends in a gable, and the short nave, cross-shaped with its transepts, has a gabled saddleback roof, the only one in the county.
The Normans planned the nave and transepts, and though their walls are patched with later work the chancel is much as it was when it was lengthened in the 13th century; it has a flower-carved piscina, a double sedilia, deep sunken windows, and old roof beams. The chancel arch was made at the end of the 12th century, and similar arches open into the transepts. The arches opening into new aisles are modern, but the tower arch has stood 500 years and is littered with the names of louts of long ago. A mighty old roof beam crosses over it.
The tiny heads of a man and a woman, not three inches long, are among fragments of old brasses, their hands still raised in prayer. Another medieval head is in the glass of a window close by. Over the sedilia a Jacobean couple kneel in their sculptured memorial, William Kingsley and his wife, she in a flat hat, with five sons and a daughter all wearing ruffs, and below them a winged hourglass. Some of this family may have heard Richard Baxter preach from the carved Jacobean pulpit, which has a fine sounding board; it is said that Baxter once preached here. One of the bells was ringing at that time, and the chalice has been in use 300 years. Here is the font bowl to which the Normans brought their babies, and the stone lid of a coffin in which someone was laid to rest seven centuries ago.
On the walls the red outlines of frescoes are fading almost beyond recognition after 700 years; but Professor Tristram has interpreted them for us and his reconstructions are in the tower. We see a dramatic Ascension, with Christ’s feet showing below his robes and the hands of watchers raised towards them. There is an Annunciation picture, a high priest giving his blessing, and a curious kind of Pan playing the pipes while a shepherdess offers him a sheep from her flock. Modern artists have put their pictures in the windows, where we see little St John going with his mother to greet Mary and her Child, a charming scene; St Helena with her cross, and Barnabas laying money at the feet of the Apostles. By the church stand the Baldwin almshouses, founded 400 years ago, but rebuilt last century; and in Church Field, near Sarratt Bottom Farm, are the foundations of a Roman building, now covered over. It may be that the bricks in the church tower came from this buried Roman house.
The Normans planned the nave and transepts, and though their walls are patched with later work the chancel is much as it was when it was lengthened in the 13th century; it has a flower-carved piscina, a double sedilia, deep sunken windows, and old roof beams. The chancel arch was made at the end of the 12th century, and similar arches open into the transepts. The arches opening into new aisles are modern, but the tower arch has stood 500 years and is littered with the names of louts of long ago. A mighty old roof beam crosses over it.
The tiny heads of a man and a woman, not three inches long, are among fragments of old brasses, their hands still raised in prayer. Another medieval head is in the glass of a window close by. Over the sedilia a Jacobean couple kneel in their sculptured memorial, William Kingsley and his wife, she in a flat hat, with five sons and a daughter all wearing ruffs, and below them a winged hourglass. Some of this family may have heard Richard Baxter preach from the carved Jacobean pulpit, which has a fine sounding board; it is said that Baxter once preached here. One of the bells was ringing at that time, and the chalice has been in use 300 years. Here is the font bowl to which the Normans brought their babies, and the stone lid of a coffin in which someone was laid to rest seven centuries ago.
On the walls the red outlines of frescoes are fading almost beyond recognition after 700 years; but Professor Tristram has interpreted them for us and his reconstructions are in the tower. We see a dramatic Ascension, with Christ’s feet showing below his robes and the hands of watchers raised towards them. There is an Annunciation picture, a high priest giving his blessing, and a curious kind of Pan playing the pipes while a shepherdess offers him a sheep from her flock. Modern artists have put their pictures in the windows, where we see little St John going with his mother to greet Mary and her Child, a charming scene; St Helena with her cross, and Barnabas laying money at the feet of the Apostles. By the church stand the Baldwin almshouses, founded 400 years ago, but rebuilt last century; and in Church Field, near Sarratt Bottom Farm, are the foundations of a Roman building, now covered over. It may be that the bricks in the church tower came from this buried Roman house.
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