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Sunday 28 September 2014

Cockfosters

Christ Church, LNK, dire.

COCKFOSTERS: CHRIST CHURCH, 1839, by H. E. Kendall. Still the London stock brick and the lancet windows of the Commissioners’ churches, but no longer symmetrical. The tower stands on the S side just E of the W gable. N aisle added by Sir A. Blomfield, 1898.

 Christ Church (2)  

Mee missed it.

East Barnet

St Mary the Virgin, LNK, should be a stonker but is sadly the ugliest church in Herts. A Norman nave has been subsumed by a ghastly Victorian east chapel and chancel, as for the west tower it can only be described as a water tower and that's being polite.

I was looking forward to this, having, unusually, done some research and was seriously disappointed although the churchyard was interesting.

ST MARY, Church Hill. Nave walls and three small windows in the N wall, Norman. The rest C19. Tower of  yellow brick in a Neo-Norman style, aisle 1868, chancel 1880. - PLATE. Cup of 1636. - Fine graveyard, with old cedar tree S of the church tower. In the graveyard MONUMENT to John Sharpe d. 1756, large urn on big base under a heavy arched baldacchino.

St Mary the Virgin (7)

Eastwards of the London road are East Barnet and Friern Barnet; in both places the chief building of interest is the church. East Barnet is dedicated to Our Lady and is the mother church to which St John’s at Chipping Barnet was once a chapel of ease. The nave walls and three small windows in the north wall are all that remains of the Norman church  - the rest is late 19th century and the most remarkable thing about the church is its, commanding position, for it looks out from the top of Church Hill across Pymmes Brook. A number of famous men are buried at East Barnet. Sir George Prevost was Governor General of Canada in 1812 during the last war between America and England. Of Swiss descent, he had opposed France on England’s behalf in the West Indies and had been rewarded with governorships there, but his appointment in Canada did not go well, for he intervened in military operations and was summoned to London for court martial but died, broken with anxiety, before the trial could be held. His father, General George Prevost, is buried beside him.

Another father and son are here too - Daniel Beaufort who helped to found the Royal Irish Academy and who prepared a map of Ireland, and Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, who drew up the table of winds still in use today and still known as the Beaufort Scale. Another benefactor of seamen lies here - John Hadley (1682-1744), son of a wealthy Londoner who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 35 and who produced the first reflecting telescope powerful enough to study the stars, and the reflecting quadrant which is still called by his name.

Near to the church in Park Road is the Abbey Arts Centre and Museum, where a collection of far eastern and primitive art is housed in a rebuilt 13th century tithe-barn which stands in an attractive garden with a well. The collection is open to the public on Saturday afternoons or by appointment. A visitor to the neighbourhood might well go on to admire Monkfrith Avenue Infants School, an outstandingly good example of modern architecture.

Lyonsdown

Holy Trinity, LNK, isn't mentioned by Mee or Pevsner but is a dreary pseudo Norman Victorian build entirely lacking merit - frankly it's the zit you wake up to on the morning of your wedding.

Since there's no Pevsner I am going to replace him with a rant about extreme, nay cultish, far right evangelical Christians.

Having taken, almost impossible, exteriors I tried the porch door and found it open but the church door was locked, which I was expecting. As I started to leave, however, the internal door was opened a fraction by a young man, and I mean a fraction - all I could see was his head leaning round the door - and the following conversation occurred:

Youth - "What do you want?"

Me - "Would it be possible to have a look around the church and take some photographs?"

Youth pauses for about a second (probably not even that long)and fires back in a tone that is antagonistic, hostile and defensive all at the same time - "No".

Which is fine and I leave. Except it's not. I came across this sort of Nazi Christianity in Plaistow last year and, whilst I'm fully open to the notion that he was a satanist who had broken in to the church and was sacrificing a virgin on the altar beneath an inverted crucifix, I think he was a fully fledged member of the evangelical church (I Googled Lyonsdown when I got home and they're plainly nutters); probably.

Why are the evangelic evangelicals so hostile and defensive whilst spouting their mission? I think that a simple open church policy would serve them far better rather than their simplistic literal interpretation of biblical learning.

Holy Trinity (2)


Saturday 27 September 2014

Barnet Vale

St Mark, keyholder listed, is a rather nice 1898 unfinished building with a not totally successful 2006 east end 'extension'.

ST MARK, Potter’s Road, 1898, by J. L. Pearson, but not a spectacular example of that excellent architect’s work. Nave only, the E end a temporary structure. Exterior flint with stone dressings, large Perp aisle windows with four-centred heads. The aisle arcades with tall piers; no clerestory.

St Mark (2)

The absence of Mee is explained by my having a 1965 edition of Hertfordshire by which time Barnet had been constituted and a new volume was published, London North of the Thames, which I've bought and will update the relevant pages when it arrives.

Having got the relevant volume Mee doesn't mention Barnet Vale.

Flickr.

Friday 26 September 2014

Barnet - Christ Church

I wasn't expecting much from this visit to sweep up the remaining north London churches that were once in Herts but two exceeded those expectations.

Christ Church was open - and this seems to be the normal state of affair since they appear to be a thriving low church with numerous community events, clubs and activities along with concerts, a thriving food bank and is a key part of the local community.

I know all this because when I entered the body of the church I encountered the verger and lay verger who, initially, rather suspiciously asked me if they could help (bear in mind I'm a 50 year old conservative church crawler lacking a hoodie). When I asked if I could look around and take photos - I failed to mention interiors rather than people - the verger, after asking why I wanted to, said he'd have to go and check with Management.

The lay verger then explained that because of the toddlers, baby and pre-school clubs everyone needed to be CRB'd, then gave me a detailed history of the church followed up with a mild, but fervent, critique of Anglican Catholicism - all bells and smells etc.

The verger returned with the verdict...no, I couldn't but if I emailed so and so I could arrange a time to do so, internal mutterings ensued but I was stupid in not pointing out that in the body of the church I wasn't in any danger of broaching decency.

Having been taken under the lay verger's wing I was shown, and told about, all parts of the complex but not around the church.

Will I bother to email for an appointment - I think not; although it looked like it had some good glass which is a shame to miss.

CHRIST CHURCH, New Road. Flint with stone dressings, 1845-52, by G. G. Scott. N aisle 1855.

Christ Church (2)

Flickr.

Wednesday 24 September 2014

Monken Hadley

St Mary the Virgin, open, is one of the darkest churches I've visited surrounded as it is by trees on all but the west side. It also contains more, for a church this size (fairly modest), monuments than I think I've come across in other comparable buildings. As you'd expect it's received a heavy handed makeover but despite that this was my church of the day.

ST MARY. Built probably in 1494, the date appearing in an inscription on the W tower. Flint and iron-stone with white stone dressings. W tower with diagonal buttresses, battlements and higher SW turret. C18 copper BEACON on top, a great rarity. Nave and aisles of two bays; the tower opens in a further bay into the aisles. In addition chancel aisles of one bay. Their arches have the simplest mouldings (concave double-chamfers). The nave piers have capitals only towards the arches, not towards the nave. The arches are four-centred. Squints from both chancel chapels to the chancel. - STAINED GLASS. E window by Warrington, 1846 (signed); S transept E window by Wailes; other contemporary glass. - PLATE. An unusually fine collection. Cup, 1562; Standing Cup and Cover, 1586; Flagon, 1609, of coffee-pot shape; Cup and Obelisk Cover, 1610; another, 1615, especially handsomely decorated; Paten, 1618. - MONUMENTS. Unusual number of small brasses: Lady, C15 (in front of the altar); two ladies (S transept E wall); man and woman, C16 (chancel S wall); woman in demi-profile, c. 1504 (S transept W wall); William Turnour d. 1500 and wife and children (S aisle). - In addition the following later monuments: Sir Roger Wilbraham d. 1616, by Nicholas Stone, epitaph with two busts of outstanding quality in oval niches, the attitudes of exquisite Mannerism. - Alice Stamford and her son, 1626, epitaph with painted portrait of the son, and painted decoration. - Elizabeth Davies d. 1678, epitaph without figures, signed by William Stanton. - Richmond Moore d. 1796, epitaph with female in mournful attitude by a broken column; unsigned.

Roger Wilbraham 1616 (3)

Thomas Goodere 1518 (1)

PUSH self closing door (1)

Today Hadley Green is one of the prettiest pieces of Georgian development to be found near London. Among the 17th and 18th century houses that border it, are the Wilbraham Almshouses, red-brick cottages built in 1612, and a white house, now marked by a blue plaque, where the missionary and traveller David Livingstone stayed in 1857 and wrote his Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa before returning there in 1858.

On the corner of the Green, screened by trees, is the parish church of St Mary the Virgin. A church existed in the 12th century, but the present building was erected in 1494 - the date is over the west door, a curious half-eight being used to represent a four -of flint and ironstone with white stone dressings. On top of the tower is a copper beacon or cresset, set up not as an Armada warning but during the 18th century, possibly to celebrate the recovery of George III from his illness, and last lit in rejoicing at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (1953).

Inside are a nave, two aisles, a chancel, and two side chapels, dedicated to St Anne and St Catherine. Squints pierce the buttresses between the chancel and the chapels so that mass could be celebrated simultaneously at all three altars. On the capitals of the pillars is the crest of the Goodyere family - a partridge with an ear of wheat in its beak. It was John Goodyere, the lord of the manor, who, dying in 1504, left money “to the making of [the] first floure of the stepull in the said church of hadlegh as moch as it will cost the making of carpentry”. His memorial, a brass, has disappeared, but his wife can still be seen in her long robe and elaborate headdress.

Hadley Church contains one of the finest collections of small brasses to be seen in the county. There is William Turnour (d. 1500) with his wife and four children and, lacking their inscriptions so that they cannot be identified, are two 15th century ladies and a 16th century man and his wife. In addition to the brasses there is a fine monument by the sculptor Nicholas Stone to Sir Roger and Lady Wilbraham who endowed the almshouses on the Green. Sir Roger died in 1616, having been Solicitor General of Ireland. His monument, which cost £50, shows busts of himself and Lady Wilbraham while underneath kneel three pretty daughters with long hair. In the corner of the chancel is another monument to Henry Carew (d. 1620) and his mother, Lady Alice Stamford (d. 1573); his family became lords of the manor after the Abbot of Walden in Essex had been forced to surrender the ownership at the Reformation.

St Mary’s also possesses an exceptionally fine collection of 16th and early 17th century communion plate - a silver gilt flagon, patten and cups - so valuable and so large that a good part of it is on loan to the British Museum.

Beyond the church are 200 acres of Hadley Common which was originally a part of Enfield Chase, the King’s own hunting ground.

Chipping Barnet

St John the Baptist, open, is essentially a Victorian building incorporating the old medieval church by William Butterfield but it's one of the better ones. Inside are some good Henry Holiday windows and a notable range of furnishings. Having said that it's slightly on the crisp side.

ST JOHN THE BAPTIST. The church points with its E end towards the High Street which comes up the hill from London. To its l. and r. the main roads fork to Watford and to St Albans and Hatfield. The architecture of the church, which is largely Victorian, makes the most of this position, more than the medieval church had done. This was built at the expense of John Beauchamp who died in 1453.* When William Butterfield was commissioned in 1875 to enlarge the old building, he decided to keep the medieval nave and N aisle and to add to it a new higher nave with its own aisle to the S. He also removed the old chancel and tower. So the present church seems to have two naves and two aisles. From the N you see a low aisle and a nave with a clerestory of three-light windows. These clerestory Windows on the S side look into Butterfield’s nave. His own clerestory has somewhat perverse alternating three-light and circular cinquefoil windows. The old church was of flint with sparing stone dressings; Butterfield’s has plenty of stone-bands and chequerwork to enrich the rhythm of the flint work. His W tower is most impressive, big and broad, a beacon when you come up from London, and a dominant accent for the town. Inside, the mid C15 church has an arcade with piers with four attached shafts, four hollows in the diagonals, and complex mouldings in the two-centred arches. Butterfield’s piers and arches are much more robust. - STAINED GLASS. N and S windows of the aisles, good Arts and Crafts style of the 1880s. - PLATE. Small Cup, 1679; Cup and Paten, 1706. - MONUMENTS. Thomas Ravenscroft d. 1630, excellent recumbent alabaster effigy under canopy. The details of the canopy an interesting example of Gothic Survival: cusped arches, rib-vault, quatrefoil frieze of the top cornice. - James Ravenscroft d. 1680 and his wife d. 1689, two fine small marble busts in an altered, Neo-Gothic surround.

* See the inscription in the spandrel of one of the arcade arches.

St John the Baptist (4)

Henry Holiday N aisle 1887 (3)

James Ravenscroft 1680 (2)

The London Borough of Barnet is a combination of the former boroughs of Hendon and Finchley, and the former urban districts of Barnet, East Barnet, and Friern Barnet. It includes the villages of Totteridge, Monken Hadley, Mill Hill, and Edgware. It lies to the north-north-east of the Greater London area, with high ground at Barnet, Mill Hill, and Hendon, and is watered by the Dollis Brook, the Mutton Brook, and the Brent. The Borough has a population of approximately 316,000 and covers an area of 22, 123 acres (35 square miles).

The Borough of Barnet takes its name from Chipping (or High) Barnet which lies to the north. Until 1965, Barnet with Totteridge and Monken Hadley lay within the county of Hertfordshire. The origins of Chipping Barnet are told in its name. The whole area was once a part of the great dense forest that covered Middlesex and beyond. A path led southward down the steep hill to the Dollis Brook and beside it a little village grew up in a burnt clearing - in Anglo-Saxon bare net, hence Barnet. To that village King John gave in 1199 the right to hold a market, and so Chipping was added to Barnet for it is derived from the Anglo-Saxon ceap, a bargain, as in Cheapside in London. That market became Barnet Horse Fair held in the first week in September, and famous till the First World War for the number and quality of animals which changed hands there. Today there is still a three-day fair, and in 1969 some 300 horses were on view there with plenty of traps, gigs, and chaises for sale as well, besides the more usual swings and roundabouts. The faces of the horse dealers were a study - pure-blooded gypsy or straight out of a Hogarth drawing.

The path through the forest gradually broadened and developed till it became the Great North Road. In coaching days, Barnet was the first stage out from London and its chief inns were the Red Lion, the White Hart, and the Mitre. The first two have been rebuilt but the Mitre remains unaltered, looking as it did in 1660 when General Monk, Cromwell’s former lieutenant, stayed there in his march south to put Charles II on the throne of England.

Today, the approach from London is dominated by the parish church dedicated to St John the Baptist. It is a fine bold building with an impressive west tower and a spire. A church stood here in Norman times but was replaced about 1420 by another built partly at the expense of John Beauchamp, a wealthy maltster of Barnet. In 1875, William Butterfield was called in to enlarge the old church. The exterior he rebuilt, making it more imposing and dressing it in flint with bands of stone and chequerwork, but inside he retained the old nave and the north aisle, adding to them a new longer nave and a south aisle. In one of the spandrels of the old arcade with the clerestory windows above, is a red tablet with yellow letters recording Beauchamp’s work, with the date 1453. The corbels that supported the ancient roof are still in place, though the roof has gone. What remains of the old tower is now part of the new nave and one of the old arches leads into the new tower. On these stones are mason’s marks and set in the thick walls are two niches, one with a grimacing head in its tracery, the other with carved flowers. The mediaeval chancel has become a vestry and its old piscina is set in the east wall; there is another piscina at the end of the mediaeval north aisle. The vestry has a 15th century doorway with the old door still on its hinges, with an ancient ring and a massive lock. St  John’s original font is now in St Stephen’s Church in Bell’s Hill, having been thrown away and then found, after many years, in a garden in Totteridge. The present font has a cover rising nearly 15 feet high, with eight little carved statues.

The 19th century woodwork is particularly interesting and varied. The pulpit is by J. C. Traylen and on it are figures of six missionaries and preachers - Hugh Latimer, John Wesley, Canon Liddon, St Augustine, St Aidan, and St Hugh of Lincoln. The canopy is richly carved and there is more elaborate carving on the choir-stalls, while on 159 pew-ends there are scenes or devices in relief, among them Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop, the Good Samaritan, the Stoning of Stephen, and the Vision of Paul.

The new south aisle leads us into the Ravenscroft Chapel in which Thomas Ravenscroft lies on a huge canopied tomb, a dignified figure in ruff and puff sleeves, with much painted heraldry about him and the heads of three angels. He is declared to have been a man of untarnished integrity, of a happy disposition, exceedingly well known for the greatness of his mind. In the wall above the vestry door is a tablet to his wife, who died in 1611, and

Whom Nature made a lovely modest maid,
And marriage made a virtuous loving wife.


The bust of his son, James Ravenscroft, is on the wall of the chapel, with that of his wife, beautifully carved little portraits set in niches. Both the Ravenscrofts were benefactors to Barnet.

Outside the church is a plain cross, raised as a war memorial and to the west stands Barnet Technical College. The college has a fine new building but the site has a long association with education for here was the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School founded in 1573 for the boys of Barnet. The school flourishes today in modern premises in Queen’s Road, and the old red-brick building with its octagonal stair-turrets and Great Hall is used for staffrooms and student meetings. In the middle of the hall rises a solid oak post that supports the roof and must often have been used as a whipping post.

Just behind the Technical College are the nine acres of Old Court House recreation ground - the new Court House is southwards, down the hill. The little park has been well landscaped and beyond it, off Wood Street, is Wellhouse Road where, among suburban houses, a Wellhouse still marks a spring that Samuel Pepys used to visit for its healthgiving properties. He reached it at seven o’clock on August 11, 1667, after a bitterly cold coach journey, on his way to Hatfield.

Further along Wood Street, there are a number of pretty 18th century houses and cottages, one of which houses a local museum and another a maternity hospital, and beyond are four groups of almshouses. Nearest to the church is Jesus Hospital founded in 1679 by James Ravenscroft for six poor women; the founder’s initials are on the gate-piers which are topped with lions. Beyond them in Union Street, surrounding three sides of a green courtyard and screened from the road by fine iron gates, stand the Leathersellers’ Almshouses. Originally founded in 1544 by James Hasilwood near St Helen’s Bishopsgate in the City of London, they were moved to the purer air of Barnet in 1837, largely at the expense of the Master of the Company, Richard Thornton, and since 1964 have been rebuilt as 19 flats to the design of that fine architect, Louis de Soissons. Nearby are houses for six elderly couples built in 1873 but supported by lands left in 1558 by Eleanor Palmer, and a red-brick group of dwellings for six old ladies founded under the will of John Garrett who died in 1728.

Wood Street leads on to Arkley on the way to St Albans, and there the Gatehouse public house marks the site of a former toll-gate and can be recommended for its hospitality, while to the east of the road, Arkley windmill still stands, now in the grounds of a private house, but opened occasionally to the public in aid of the local church féte.

If we follow the Great North Road which runs to the right of St John’s Church, we pass on our right the Hyde Institute founded in 1888 by Miss Julia Hyde who left £10,000 for the purpose; it is now part of the public library system. A mile along the road, there is a broad green with a grey stone obelisk upon it. The stone, erected in 1740 by Sir Jeremy Sambrook who lived at Gobions near North Mimms, marks the supposed site of the death of the Earl of Warwick at the battle of Barnet fought in a heavy mist before dawn on the morning of Easter Sunday, April 14., 1471. The battle lasted some three or four hours but by ten o’clock news had been brought to London and the bells of the City were ringing out for Edward IV, because Warwick the Kingmaker, who had turned his coat to support Henry VI, was lying dead, with some 1500 men from the two armies beside him, on Hadley Green and the ground beyond, called Deadman’s Bottom to this day. Edward and his men refreshed themselves in Barnet and gave thanks to God, possibly in St John’s Church, and then marched on to London where the gates were opened to him. Henry VI was deposed, paraded through the streets, and murdered on May 21.

Barnet - St Stephen

The interest at St Stephen, LNK, really lies in the attached Bells Hill Burial Ground since the church is a drab 1896 brick built mundanity. To quote their website "the late Victorian red brick building does not have the picturesque attraction of some of our older churches"

Neither Pevsner nor Mee mention it.

St Stephen (2)


The London Borough of Barnet is a combination of the former boroughs of Hendon and Finchley, and the former urban districts of Barnet, East Barnet, and Friern Barnet. It includes the villages of Totteridge, Monken Hadley, Mill Hill, and Edgware. It lies to the north-north-east of the Greater London area, with high ground at Barnet, Mill Hill, and Hendon, and is watered by the Dollis Brook, the Mutton Brook, and the Brent. The Borough has a population of approximately 316,000 and covers an area of 22, 123 acres (35 square miles).

The Borough of Barnet takes its name from Chipping (or High) Barnet which lies to the north. Until 1965, Barnet with Totteridge and Monken Hadley lay within the county of Hertfordshire. The origins of Chipping Barnet are told in its name. The whole area was once a part of the great dense forest that covered Middlesex and beyond. A path led southward down the steep hill to the Dollis Brook and beside it a little village grew up in a burnt clearing - in Anglo-Saxon bare net, hence Barnet. To that village King John gave in 1199 the right to hold a market, and so Chipping was added to Barnet for it is derived from the Anglo-Saxon ceap, a bargain, as in Cheapside in London. That market became Barnet Horse Fair held in the first week in September, and famous till the First World War for the number and quality of animals which changed hands there. Today there is still a three-day fair, and in 1969 some 300 horses were on view there with plenty of traps, gigs, and chaises for sale as well, besides the more usual swings and roundabouts. The faces of the horse dealers were a study - pure-blooded gypsy or straight out of a Hogarth drawing.

The path through the forest gradually broadened and developed till it became the Great North Road. In coaching days, Barnet was the first stage out from London and its chief inns were the Red Lion, the White Hart, and the Mitre. The first two have been rebuilt but the Mitre remains unaltered, looking as it did in 1660 when General Monk, Cromwell’s former lieutenant, stayed there in his march south to put Charles II on the throne of England.

Today, the approach from London is dominated by the parish church dedicated to St John the Baptist. It is a fine bold building with an impressive west tower and a spire. A church stood here in Norman times but was replaced about 1420 by another built partly at the expense of John Beauchamp, a wealthy maltster of Barnet. In 1875, William Butterfield was called in to enlarge the old church. The exterior he rebuilt, making it more imposing and dressing it in flint with bands of stone and chequerwork, but inside he retained the old nave and the north aisle, adding to them a new longer nave and a south aisle. In one of the spandrels of the old arcade with the clerestory windows above, is a red tablet with yellow letters recording Beauchamp’s work, with the date 1453. The corbels that supported the ancient roof are still in place, though the roof has gone. What remains of the old tower is now part of the new nave and one of the old arches leads into the new tower. On these stones are mason’s marks and set in the thick walls are two niches, one with a grimacing head in its tracery, the other with carved flowers. The mediaeval chancel has become a vestry and its old piscina is set in the east wall; there is another piscina at the end of the mediaeval north aisle. The vestry has a 15th century doorway with the old door still on its hinges, with an ancient ring and a massive lock. St  John’s original font is now in St Stephen’s Church in Bell’s Hill, having been thrown away and then found, after many years, in a garden in Totteridge. The present font has a cover rising nearly 15 feet high, with eight little carved statues.

The 19th century woodwork is particularly interesting and varied. The pulpit is by J. C. Traylen and on it are figures of six missionaries and preachers - Hugh Latimer, John Wesley, Canon Liddon, St Augustine, St Aidan, and St Hugh of Lincoln. The canopy is richly carved and there is more elaborate carving on the choir-stalls, while on 159 pew-ends there are scenes or devices in relief, among them Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop, the Good Samaritan, the Stoning of Stephen, and the Vision of Paul.

The new south aisle leads us into the Ravenscroft Chapel in which Thomas Ravenscroft lies on a huge canopied tomb, a dignified figure in ruff and puff sleeves, with much painted heraldry about him and the heads of three angels. He is declared to have been a man of untarnished integrity, of a happy disposition, exceedingly well known for the greatness of his mind. In the wall above the vestry door is a tablet to his wife, who died in 1611, and

Whom Nature made a lovely modest maid,
And marriage made a virtuous loving wife
.

The bust of his son, James Ravenscroft, is on the wall of the chapel, with that of his wife, beautifully carved little portraits set in niches. Both the Ravenscrofts were benefactors to Barnet.

Outside the church is a plain cross, raised as a war memorial and to the west stands Barnet Technical College. The college has a fine new building but the site has a long association with education for here was the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School founded in 1573 for the boys of Barnet. The school flourishes today in modern premises in Queen’s Road, and the old red-brick building with its octagonal stair-turrets and Great Hall is used for staffrooms and student meetings. In the middle of the hall rises a solid oak post that supports the roof and must often have been used as a whipping post.

Just behind the Technical College are the nine acres of Old Court House recreation ground - the new Court House is southwards, down the hill. The little park has been well landscaped and beyond it, off Wood Street, is Wellhouse Road where, among suburban houses, a Wellhouse still marks a spring that Samuel Pepys used to visit for its healthgiving properties. He reached it at seven o’clock on August 11, 1667, after a bitterly cold coach journey, on his way to Hatfield.

Further along Wood Street, there are a number of pretty 18th century houses and cottages, one of which houses a local museum and another a maternity hospital, and beyond are four groups of almshouses. Nearest to the church is Jesus Hospital founded in 1679 by James Ravenscroft for six poor women; the founder’s initials are on the gate-piers which are topped with lions. Beyond them in Union Street, surrounding three sides of a green courtyard and screened from the road by fine iron gates, stand the Leathersellers’ Almshouses. Originally founded in 1544 by James Hasilwood near St Helen’s Bishopsgate in the City of London, they were moved to the purer air of Barnet in 1837, largely at the expense of the Master of the Company, Richard Thornton, and since 1964 have been rebuilt as 19 flats to the design of that fine architect, Louis de Soissons. Nearby are houses for six elderly couples built in 1873 but supported by lands left in 1558 by Eleanor Palmer, and a red-brick group of dwellings for six old ladies founded under the will of John Garrett who died in 1728.

Wood Street leads on to Arkley on the way to St Albans, and there the Gatehouse public house marks the site of a former toll-gate and can be recommended for its hospitality, while to the east of the road, Arkley windmill still stands, now in the grounds of a private house, but opened occasionally to the public in aid of the local church féte.

If we follow the Great North Road which runs to the right of St John’s Church, we pass on our right the Hyde Institute founded in 1888 by Miss Julia Hyde who left £10,000 for the purpose; it is now part of the public library system. A mile along the road, there is a broad green with a grey stone obelisk upon it. The stone, erected in 1740 by Sir Jeremy Sambrook who lived at Gobions near North Mimms, marks the supposed site of the death of the Earl of Warwick at the battle of Barnet fought in a heavy mist before dawn on the morning of Easter Sunday, April 14., 1471. The battle lasted some three or four hours but by ten o’clock news had been brought to London and the bells of the City were ringing out for Edward IV, because Warwick the Kingmaker, who had turned his coat to support Henry VI, was lying dead, with some 1500 men from the two armies beside him, on Hadley Green and the ground beyond, called Deadman’s Bottom to this day. Edward and his men refreshed themselves in Barnet and gave thanks to God, possibly in St John’s Church, and then marched on to London where the gates were opened to him. Henry VI was deposed, paraded through the streets, and murdered on May 21.

Arkley

St Peter, keyholder listed, is a very odd building - the west end being a very rough and ready brick build of 1840 and the chancel, 1898, a more conventional high Victorian neo-Gothic build. All in all I really liked it but didn't bother looking for the keyholder since a peak through the windows showed little of interest.

ST PETER. Rough brick church of 1840 with aisleless nave and transepts. Lancet windows. The chancel was added in 1898 (by Traylen; GR). - STAINED GLASS. E window 1903 by Kempe. - MONUMENT. Very simple epitaph to Enosh Durant d. 1848, at whose expense the church was built; the epitaph is signed by the Westminster Marble Company, not by an individual sculptor, a sign of the coming Victorian times.

St Peter (2)

St Peter (4)

Another one Mee missed.

Borehamwood

I visited two churches in Borehamwood - St Michael & All Angels and All Saints, St Michael keyholder listed, All Saints LNK.

When I saw the first I couldn't think for the life of me why I'd included it, it's a hideous yellow brick 1954 build but looking at the excellent Hertfordshire Churches in Photographs entry I see it was for the west window glass. I didn't make the effort of trying to find the keyholder.

I think Pevsner accurately reflects All Saints:

ALL SAINTS, 1910, by Francis & Minty (GR). Arty-crafty and not good of the kind.

St Michael & All Angels (2)
St Michael & All Angels

All Saints (2)
All Saints

Mee missed Borehamwood in my edition.

Elstree

St Nicholas - technically keyholder listed but as the notice just says that the key may be obtained from the rectory but not where the rectory is, it is as good as LNK - is irredeemably hideous, end of.

ST NICHOLAS, 1853, by P. C. Hardwick, with the use of the short octagonal piers and capitals of the C15 church. The C19 building rather ugly outside with low SW spire. - FONT. Perp, octagonal, with little decoration. - SCREEN between nave and chancel, very pretty wrought metalwork, designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield, 1881. - The stencilling on the N side of the chancel is probably by George Walton.

St Nicholas (3)

Elstree. It is the home of the English film, and if it would put a thrilling story on the screen it needs only to turn its cameras on to the story of Elstree. Along old Watling Street came stones from the Roman city of Sulloniacae for building the old church, but, alas, it has been rebuilt, facing a row of black-and-white cottages in the narrow street. The 600-year-old gargoyles are back on the walls, and the pillars of the south arcade bear the mark of the 15th-century mason, but mostly the church built with Roman stones has been made new. It has an elaborate iron chancel screen designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield, and has something which will greatly interest the traveller who is sorry to have lost the old church. It is a collection of fragments kept in a case here, so old that they carry our thoughts back to St Paul, for they are from the temple of Diana of the Ephesians, expressive little heads and some vases, one of them marked with the bee we find stamped on Ephesian coins by silversmiths like Demetrius, who, fearing that his trade in idols was threatened, roused the people of Ephesus against Paul so that they cried out for two hours, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.

It is in the graveyard that we come upon the drama so appropriate for an Elstree film. Here lie Martha Ray and William Weare, whose deaths stirred all England in the 18th and 19gth centuries.

Martha Ray was an attractive young woman, elegant and musical, who became the mistress of the fourth Earl Sandwich, who lived at Hinchingbrooke, Huntingdon. There a young soldier named James Hackman met her one day in 1772 and fell in love with her, although she had given the earl several children. Hackrnan became a lieutenant, but eventually left the army to become a clergyman, yet for six or seven years he paid his unwanted attentions to Martha Ray, in spite of her refusing his offer of marriage. One night he waited for her outside Covent Garden Theatre and shot her dead, being less fortunate in his attempt to kill himself. Within a week she was buried in the chancel here, and within a fortnight he was found guilty and hanged at Tyburn, Dr Johnson’s friend Boswell riding with him in the coach.

William Weare was a solicitor who had been accused of cheating by John Thurtell, a ne’er-do-well son of the Mayor of Norwich, who, having failed in his father’s business, became the associate of a low sporting set and was well known as a boxer. George Borrow mentions him in Lavengro. He opened a tavern in London, and managed to get £2000 insurance for a mysterious fire, and began gambling it away. He lost heavily to William Weare, but after a quarrel and charges of trickery they became reconciled, and Thurtell arranged to pick up Weare and take him to the house of a friend at Elstree for a shooting party. Thurtell drove him in his gig, and between Elstree and St Albans suddenly took out a pistol and shot him, then stunning him and cutting his throat. He threw the body into a swamp two miles away, but he had two associates who turned king’s evidence, and in spite of an eloquent appeal before the judges he was hanged. The case attracted wide interest. Even Hazlitt was impressed by Thurtell’s rhetoric, and Sir Walter Scott made a commonplace book of the newspaper accounts and visited the scene of the murder. Bulwer Lytton is said to have used some incidents of the crime in one of his novels, a drama based on it was given with success in the Surrey Theatre, and a ballad writer made £500 out of it.

On the church porch are the old arms of St Albans Abbey, whose towers may be seen from one end of the village, while Aldenham reservoir gleams 200 feet below to the west. Also within sight from here is Brockley Hill, where the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital stands on what was a battlefield 20 centuries ago. An obelisk has been put up to mark the site of this historic event, for it was here, in the second Roman invasion of 54 BC, that our British ancestors checked the Roman advance on what is now St Albans, a victory of much significance in itself, and of great interest because the British tribesmen were led by Cassivellaunus, who by virtue of this triumph became the first Briton living in these islands to have his name in history. We hear of him in the writings of Julius Caesar, and we know that his people were warlike and powerful, and that his Kingdom was in the area now known as Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, and Hertfordshire.

Elstree has become the chief centre of British films. A mile and a half beyond Elstree village lies Boreham Wood, where stand the great studios. The trek of the film men to Elstree began in 1913, in the days when a good natural light was essential for film work. The high position of the village gives it a clear atmosphere. We found still standing a small brick studio built in that year, now entirely dwarfed by the gigantic white structures with green roofs built for the modern films. These can be seen beyond the shops and houses on the Shenley road, but on the main road itself lies the group of iron buildings which maintain a steady output of film plays, giving employment to hundreds. When a big production is in hand, calling for crowds, these normally quiet roads are scenes of great excitement. The passer-by may be intrigued to see the funnels of an Atlantic liner over the roofs of houses here, or a medieval castle suddenly appearing on the skyline; odd it is suddenly to pass to the side or the back of such a place and realise that it is all unreal. We are in the land of make-believe.

Bushey Heath

St Peter, LNK, is a Victorian new build, the original foundation was in 1836 but the church was rebuilt in 1891, when the chancel was added, by James Neale and two further refurbs took place in 1911 and 1921. A not unpleasing building but I'd liked to have got inside for the Henry Holiday windows.

In 1915, Holiday was commissioned by the Perrins to design a new window in stained glass for the west end of the church in memory of their nephew and which he named The Holy Spirit Window. It was made by Lowndes and Drury at the Glasshouse, Fulham. The five light masterpiece depicts Love, Wisdom, Power, Joy, Truth and Faith, and also incorporates the text "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts" It was dedicated on Sunday the 14th April 1918. The Queen of Sheba & Queen Esther Windows were commissioned from Henry Holiday in 1921 to commemorate the death of Edith Sommers.

Pevsner doesn't mention it.

St Peter (3)

A little way of lies Bushey Heath, long noted among botanists for its wild lily-of-the-valley. From the stately tower of its modern church the valleys of the Thames and the Colne lie spread before us, and on a clear day we may see the red walls of Hampton Court and the round tower of Windsor Castle. It is from here, at Merry Hill, that Watford draws some of its water supply, a great reservoir 500 feet above the sea, holding two million gallons.

The impressive church has an attractive interior with windows from the workshops of William Morris, paid for largely by children who collected farthings. The Morris windows are in the baptistry and represent the Children of the Bible surrounding the Child of Bethlehem.

Bushey

St James, open - although I got locked into the car park and had to exit cross country - is a foursquare church more in the Essex vernacular than Herts, which is slightly odd to find this far west. The octagonal stair turret adds to the external charm and whilst the usual Herts refurb is obvious it's not quite as in your face as others. Inside there's a good pulpit, remnants of old, and some nice newer, glass and a set of Queen Anne's arms. Not a great church but nevertheless pleasing.

ST JAMES. In a neatly kept churchyard at an equally well kept widening of the High Street. Flint, with a C13 chancel, a higher C15 nave and W tower with big diagonal buttresses and a NE stair-turret, and C19 aisles and N porch. On the inner N and S walls of the chancel tall wide blank arcading with Purbeck marble shafts and moulded capitals. The N and S lancet windows are also original. The chancel is separated from the nave by that rare feature a ‘tympanum’, that is a plastered partition with the Royal Arms (of Queen Anne), resting on a big beam. The nave roof is of the C15. - PULPIT. Jacobean with strapwork motifs; the tester is preserved. - CHANDELIER. Brass, C17 or C18, in the chancel. - PLATE. Cup and Paten, 1633; Flagon, 1634; Salver, 1671; Almsdish, Wafer Box and Wine Strainer presented in 1754; Set presented in 1887.

Remounted glass (5)

Conflict cross

No confetti 1941

Bushey. Each year its houses spread a little farther, but the panorama from Bushey Heath remains a fair reward for climbing the hill from Watford, and an old inn hangs out its sign of The Merry Month of May as a reminder that that is the best time to come, when even the birds in the aviary of old Hartsbourne Manor park are chattering about spring.

The view has had its artists, for old Thomas Hearne, the painter who had something to teach Turner, lived and died here at the beginning of last century, and at the end of the century came Hubert Herkomer, followed by the younger artists flocking to his famous school. Two artists and a storyteller poet this village has known, and they lie in the churchyard of Bushey’s oldest church, St James’s, shaded by the park trees where the hill dips down to a deep valley. Perhaps no village in Hertfordshire has a more interesting group of graves in its churchyard than those of Thomas Hearne, Hubert Herkomer, and Barry Pain.

Thomas Hearne, an 18th-century water colourist who lived on till after Waterloo, did much to revive interest in Gothic architecture, and it is known that his work was an inspiration to the immortal Turner. There are fine collections of his drawings in the British Museum and at South Kensington. The first great experience he gave himself may seem to us extraordinary, for he went out to the Leeward Islands and spent three years sketching the life of the islands and their people. Then he came home and became one of our forerunners, for he made a grand tour of England, spending four years on it and making a great collection of drawings of our antiquities.

Sir Hubert Herkomer was the son of a Bavarian craftsman, who went out to America and then came to England, sending his son Hubert to the School of Art at Southampton. A picture of a Gipsy Encampment started him on his way, and in 1870, when he was 21, he was doing successful water colours. He took a cottage at Bushey, married, and in 1875 was a great success at the Academy with his famous painting of the Chelsea war veterans in their scarlet coats, The Last Muster. He settled down at Bushey in a house like a mountain schloss to which he brought his father and his grandfather, who enriched the house with their woodcarving. A delightful man, he longed to be not only a painter but a craftsman, and he wrote music and operas, designed scenes for the stage, took an interest in the early films, lectured everywhere, and died while holidaying in Devon, just before the war which would have broken his heart. In the years of depression that followed the Great War his palace of art has been pulled down because nobody wanted it.

Barry Pain was one of the bright writers of the last generation, humorist, poet, and storyteller. He wrote one of the most famous poems of the Great War, addressed to the Kaiser, who had telegraphed that God had magnificently supported them. These were the closing lines of Barry Pain’s poem:

Impious braggart, you forget;
God is not your conscript yet;
You shall learn in dumb amaze
That His ways are not your ways,
That the mire through which you trod
Is not the high white road of God.

To Whom, whichever way the combat rolls,
We, fighting to the end, commend our souls.


On his grave in Bushey churchyard, in which Barry Pain was laid in 1928, are the last words of another of his poems. He was dreaming that up in the sky he saw the army of the dead go by, and he called upon us all to pay homage in these words which are on his stone:

Look upward, standing mute; Salute.

On another tomb in Bushey churchyard 12 loaves of bread used to wait for 12 poor people every Sunday morning, the gift of Dame Fuller of Queen Anne’s day who also endowed the Free School at Watford. A stone in the vestry, and his daughter’s stone outside, remind us that here, too, was laid to rest that humorous, vigorous Presbyterian Silius Titus, the Parliamentary colonel who turned Royalist and plotted to release Charles I while guarding him at Carisbrooke, though Cromwell grew suspicious and moved him from his post. Even then he continued to correspond with the king, and we can still read the letters the imprisoned king wrote to him. In the end he saw the return of the Stuarts and survived till the reign of the last of them.

Though most of the church to which all these folk made their last journey was made new at the end of last century, the fine open roof of the nave and the tower remain from the 15th century; there is an original bell. In place of a chancel arch is a 500-year-old beam supporting the arms of Queen Anne painted on plaster, and the side windows of the chancel are framed in shallow 13th-century wall arcades. The Jacobean pulpit, with its sounding board, is a mass of rich carving which must have delighted the old woodcarvers from Bavaria.

A little way off lies Bushey Heath, long noted among botanists for its wild lily-of-the-valley. From the stately tower of its modern church the valleys of the Thames and the Colne lie spread before us, and on a clear day we may see the red walls of Hampton Court and the round tower of Windsor Castle. It is from here, at Merry Hill, that Watford draws some of its water supply, a great reservoir 500 feet above the sea, holding two million gallons.

The impressive church has an attractive interior with windows from the workshops of William Morris, paid for largely by children who collected farthings. The Morris windows are in the baptistry and represent the Children of the Bible surrounding the Child of Bethlehem.

Tuesday 23 September 2014

South Oxhey

Oxhey Chapel, a redundant CCT church (keyholder listed), is, to my mind, one of Hertfordshire's treasures - and that's just the exterior, inside it gets better (even if the seating is Victorian) as the CCT guide explains:

1604: James Altham, a respected judge and Baron of the Exchequer to Queen Elizabeth I and King James l, acquired the Manor of Oxhey and the ruins of the former monastery and built Oxhey Place Hall here.

1612: On the site of the former monastery church he built this chapel for his family, staff and servants. The Althams lived here until 1639.

1688: Sir John Bucknall, then lord of the manor, rebuilt the great house and restored the chapel. He bricked up the eastern doorway and installed the splendid altarpiece, using woodwork from the old Hall.

1712: The interior was restored, the pews and pulpit were repaired and the altarpiece was whitewashed to add brightness.

1852: By this time a small hamlet had grown up nearby and the great house had been demolished. Thomas Grimston Bucknall restored the chapel for regular worship, removing the old pews and pulpit and also the whitewash on the altarpiece. Services were conducted here by the Vicar of Watford until 1880 when St Matthew's church, Oxhey, was built and the chapel came under the care of its parish priest.

1897: Thomas F Blackwell (of Crosse & Blackwell) who used the chapel as his family chapel, had the building restored to the designs of Messrs J E K & J P Cutts, who designed several London suburban churches. They added the western porch and vestries, opened up the blocked northern windows and installed the present seating.

1962-63: The severe winter saw the collapse of the chapel roof, and also the transfer of the building from the Blackwell family to the vicar of All Saints and the diocesan authorities. In 1963, a thorough restoration took place to the designs of Messrs Seely & Paget, the architects of All Saints’ church. The hipped roof was taken down (its tiles were sold to celebrated violinist Yehudi Menuhin for his cottage in Highgate Village) and the roof was restored to its original 1612 pitch. The bell was hung in a new bell turret and cupola and the chapel came back into use by the people of All Saints.

1976-77: The chapel was formally declared redundant in 1976 and in 1977 was vested in the Redundant Churches Fund (now The Churches Conservation Trust). Since then essential repairs have been carried out under the supervision of Mr PF E Mark (architect) by Messrs R Gibson of Northwood (contractors).

The setting of this chapel is memorable: it occupies a quiet corner in the vast London County Council housing estate which is home to some 25,000 people. To the north is All Saints’ church, with its brick wall and colonnades, and to the south is the vicarage, the chapel appearing to be almost in the vicarage garden. What an oasis of antiquity this small building brings to an environment filled with the architecture and bustle of the 20th century.

There is no graveyard here, the chapel never having been a parish church, although there are two graves in the little paved enclosure near the entrance. That on the north side is of Samuel and Frances Judd (d.1944 and 1946 respectively), who lived and worked at Oxhey Place Hall, whilst to the south is the grave of Thomas Anthony Blackwell, who died in 1942.

The plan of the chapel is very simple: it is a rectangle, measuring 47 feet (14.3 m) by 22 feet (6.7 m), with walls 30 feet (9.1 m) in height. To this were added in 1897 the western porch and vestries on either side, which are perfectly in keeping with the original work.

The walls are attractively faced with a chequerwork pattern of bricks and knapped flints and are capped with parapets of brick. In the east wall may still be seen traces of the 1649 doorway. The windows are square-headed, in the Gothic style used during the late Tudor and Stuart periods. There are pairs of three-light windows on the north and south sides, whilst the east and west walls have four-light windows. The vestries of 1897 have two-light windows, flanking the porch entrance. The oak west door is the original, of 1612.

Above the western gable is the hexagonal bell turret, with its copper-covered cupola. It contains the bell which was cast for St Matthew's church, but which was brought here when that church received a new ring of bells in 1887.

The simplicity of the exterior gives little hint of the riches inside: a dignified interior with splendid woodwork and other features, flooded with light from the clear glass in the windows. Here is still the atmosphere of a church which was built for the Prayer Book worship of the Established Church in the 1600s and 1700s, which tasteful 19th-century refurbishing has enhanced rather than spoiled.

The chapel still has its original roof of 1612, with moulded timbers and carved spandrels. The black and white paving in the chancel floor is also original.

The west doorway is framed by a wooden surround, maybe dating from the 1688 restoration, with carved Corinthian columns, a rich entablature and a strongly Baroque quality.

The circular bowl of the font is an exquisite piece of woodcarving in oak, as is also its cover, which has radiating flowers and foliage surmounted by an urn at the top. This too is 17th-century work.

The seating in the chapel is very worthy craftsmanship of 1897 in teak, to the designs of J E K & J P Cutts. It is arranged in collegiate fashion, with two tiers of stalls on the north and south sides, facing each other, and four canopied stalls at the west end, facing east. 'B' for Blackwell is carved in the western stalls. Of 1897 also is the panelled wainscotting round the lower parts of the walls and the western set of communion rails at the chancel entrance. The original 17th-century rails surround the communion table on three sides. Such rails were recommended for all churches by Archbishop Laud, so that dogs could not defile the sanctuary; and indeed the columns are set so closely here that not even a puppy could get through.

The table was given for use in the wooden mission church of St Alphege, built to the east of the railway line in 1944, but demolished when All Saints’ church came into being. The beautiful brass altar cross is 19th century.

At the east end and dominating the interior is the magnificent altarpiece (or reredos) of 1688, built with timber from the demolished Oxhey Place Hall. Its two great twisted barley-sugar columns support an open pediment with a central golden flame. The middle panels beneath are inscribed with the Ten Commandments, with the Lord's Prayer to the north and the Apostles’ Creed to the south. Flanking the altarpiece are wooden cartouches each side, above the sanctuary panelling.

On the south side of the sanctuary is a large chair, with Gothic and linenfold carving and a coat of arms. This was in St Albans Abbey until 1923, when it was given to the Watford Peace Memorial Hospital. At a much later date it was presented to the chapel. The lectern is mostly of 1897, although there is 17th-century woodwork in its double-sided bookrest.

Hidden beneath the limewash on the upper parts of the walls are painted texts in cartouche frames, and other traces of colouring. One on the north wall has been revealed: it is inscribed with the opening verse of Psalm 46, ‘God is our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble’. Traces of others may be seen on the east wall.

On the south wall is a monument to the founder of the chapel, Sir James Altham (d.1616) and his wife, Dame Helen (d.1638), with their effigies facing (sic) each other, their hands folded in prayer, kneeling on cushions. He is dressed in the robes of a Baron of the Exchequer and she in the widow's clothing of the period.

To the west of this is a memorial in Adam style, by C Regnart of London, to John Astell Bucknall, who died in 1796, having been ‘an ornament to his friends and the protector of his neighbours’.

Beneath this is a brass plaque recording the building of the Chapel in 1612, with a text from Ecclesiastes, chapter 4: ‘Take heede to thy foote when Thou enterest into the House of God and bee more neere to Heare then to give the sacrifice of Fooles’.


Why Simon Jenkins ignored it is beyond me.

Pevsner: The pre-C20 appearance of Oxhey is now completely lost. The village has grown into an appendix of Bushey, a suburb of Watford and even a suburb of London. The most interesting area is indeed the new L.C.C. housing estate in the centre of which wise planners have chosen to preserve a chapel ....and to the E a CHAPEL, the best individual building at Oxhey. It was built in 1612 as a plain rectangle of brick and flint with straightheaded Perp four-light windows. - Original W door. - Fine late C17 Font with Font Cover. - Reredos with twisted columns also late C17. - Altham epitaph of 1616 with kneeling figures, columns, and big semicircular pediment.

South Oxhey Chapel (3)

Looking east (1)

Decalogue

Oxhey. Here a group of early Christians settled 100 years before King Alfred, when much of England was still heathen, and here in 1612 Judge James Altham built a red chapel on the site of their house of prayer. Two copper beeches overhang the chapel, a green grass carpet bordered with flowers leads to its door, and inside we find Judge Altham in his red robes saying endless prayers in stone, his wife with him. When his house was rebuilt in 1688 its old oak was used for the handsome reredos, with massive twisted columns and a pediment. More old woodwork and finely carved modern teak fills the rest of the chapel. Framed on the wall is a facsimile of a Latin charter of 1007 now in the Bodleian Library, with a translation telling that King Ethelred grants once again to St Albans Abbey Offa’s stolen gift of Oaxanehaeg, or, as we call it today, Oxhey.

Oxhey Hall is an early 16th-century house with a fine panelled ceiling in one of the rooms and an old barn near by.

The rural character of the neighbourhood is now completely lost and it has become an appendage to Bushey and a suburb of Watford.


Oxhey

St Matthew, keyholders listed, is a rather dull brick built c. 1880 building so I didn't bother seeking out the keyholders. This may have been a mistake since it looks like they've got some good glass by Karl Parsons, an artist I've not come across before.

From their website:

"The church was built to the designs of Messrs. Coe & Robinson. The construction was largely of red brick and the distinctive spire, with its three bands of white stone, is a familiar landmark locally, as well as to travellers through Bushey on the West Coast mainline. The building is Grade II Listed.....The original design for the church has been altered slightly over time. An extra pair of doors was added at the main entrance to help prevent draughts. The original vestry was converted into the present Lady Chapel in 1891 when a new vestry was built on to the west end of the church. Other changes to the interior were made in 1939, under the direction of Sir Charles Nicholson. The Chancel and Sanctuary walls were whitened and the roof coloured. The original altar and reredos were moved to the north aisle, to be replaced by a stone altar in the English style."

 St Matthew (3)

Oxhey. Here a group of early Christians settled 100 years before King Alfred, when much of England was still heathen, and here in 1612 Judge James Altham built a red chapel on the site of their house of prayer. Two copper beeches overhang the chapel, a green grass carpet bordered with flowers leads to its door, and inside we find Judge Altham in his red robes saying endless prayers in stone, his wife with him. When his house was rebuilt in 1688 its old oak was used for the handsome reredos, with massive twisted columns and a pediment. More old woodwork and finely carved modern teak fills the rest of the chapel. Framed on the wall is a facsimile of a Latin charter of 1007 now in the Bodleian Library, with a translation telling that King Ethelred grants once again to St Albans Abbey Offa’s stolen gift of Oaxanehaeg, or, as we call it today, Oxhey.

Oxhey Hall is an early 16th-century house with a fine panelled ceiling in one of the rooms and an old barn near by.

The rural character of the neighbourhood is now completely lost and it has become an appendage to Bushey and a suburb of Watford.

Watford, St James

St James is a redundant brute of a church now used as the next door schools gym. A seriously ugly turn of the last century build utterly without merit.

Neither Pevsner doesn't mention it and Mee only in passing.

St James (2)

Watford. It is Hertfordshire’s biggest town, and though it is fast losing its old buildings, with factories springing up in their place, it has kept something from its ancient days. There are old houses in the narrow High Street, and behind them eight 16th-century almshouses with steep gables. Close by is an imposing building of 1704, with a wooden bell turret, once the Free School. Reset in a new timbered inn at the corner of Market Street is a 15th-century oak window. Cassiobury Park, though it has seen the last of the home of the Earls of Essex, has not lost all its ancient beauty, serving now partly for golf and partly as a park where all may sit in the shade of the willows of the River Gade. Watford has about 900 acres of parks and playing fields.

The old church is tucked away behind the High Street in a large churchyard. The massive 15th-century tower with a tiny spire rises up 100 feet. The wide chancel arch is 13th century, as is the south arcade; the broad nave and aisles are 15th, with a massive roof of tie-beams supported on a dozen angels and some quaint heads left from the 13th century. The north chancel chapel was added in 1595. The altar table, the ornate chairs, and two chests are Jacobean. There is a chair of Cromwell’s time, and a tall chest of the 18th century carved with medallions of the Evangelists and their winged emblems. The 18th-century carving on the pulpit is so delicate that its craftsman (Richard Bull) is believed to have been a pupil of Grinling Gibbons. The modern choir stalls are surely unique, for among their elaborate ornament are the portraits of two curates carved as poppyheads by their vicar. On a window-sill we found a fierce-looking dragon which was once the weathervane.

On the wall behind the stalls are portraits in brass of Judge de Hollis (buried here in Agincourt year) and his wife. Kneeling in stone, a serene dignified figure at her prayer desk in the chapel she built in 1595, is the widow of Sir Richard Morrison, and a unique brass tablet on the wall portrays three faithful servants of her son’s family. The family themselves, the Morrisons, are here in two elaborate monuments by Nicholas Stone, who himself records that he carved them royally and in the best manner. We see Sir Charles Morrison lying in his armour, with his daughter, the Countess of Sussex, and his son Charles kneeling in separate recesses at each end. This same son we see again on the other monument, this time reclining on a ledge above his beautiful wife, who gazes at the canopy. At their feet kneel their two sons, and at their head kneels their daughter Elizabeth, whose own son was the first Earl of Essex of Cassiobury Park. All around are memorials of their descendants.

Remembrances of many other Watford families are in the 15th-century chapel of the Heydons of the Grove, a lovely park by the River Gade, with a stately house owned long after them by the Earl of Clarendon. An anchor memorial is to George Pidcock, who fell boarding a pirate’s junk off Amoy in 1853. Robert Clutterbuck, the famous historian of Hertfordshire, lies in the churchyard, and his son James is also remembered here; he fell carrying the colours of the West Suffolks at Inkerman. A group of officer friends who died in the Indian Mutiny have a window picturing David and Jonathan. Thomas Bevan, who was organist here for 48 years, has a window with a lovely figure of St Cecilia.

Watford has a group of modern churches of much interest. The great tower rising above the roofs with a spire turret 117 feet high belongs to the Roman Catholic church, a place of much grandeur and beauty designed by John Bentley, the architect of Westminster Cathedral. St James’s Church received as a contribution from the old church the pedestal of her Norman font, with its wavy mouldings and beaded ornament, and St John’s Church received from the old mother church her 18th-century font, which stands beside a modern stoup with two delightful cherubs. The pride of St John’s, however, is in its dark oak chapel screen with a gilded St Michael on one side and a silvered St George on the other. It is in memory of 47 men victims of the Great War, among them the famous General Maude, who lies far away at Baghdad, where he was struck down in the midst of his triumph. He was one of the bravest soldiers of the Great War, taking part in two masterly operations on Gallipoli, and leading his men with consummate genius to the relief of Kut and on to Baghdad. It was his last great victory. Baghdad was in the grip of cholera, and General Maude drank a glass of milk at a children’s party, and in four days was dead of cholera. He was a man of high integrity and deep religious faith, a bitter loss to the Army.

Chandler's Cross

St Martin is a dilapidated, redundant, tin tabernacle now in use as a garden shed. I really liked it but I have a soft spot for iron churches.

Neither Pevsner nor Mee mention it but, as I've noted before, they never cover tin tabernacles.

St Martin (2)