Longthorpe

To my surprise and delight I found St Botolph open and whilst not terribly interesting finding it open restored my faith in humanity. I also stopped at Longthorpe Tower, which was closed for the winter, and think a revisit to see the wallpaintings is on the cards although the fact that it's only open on weekends & BH Mons from Apr-Oct might make this take a while.

ST BOTOLPH. Permission for the rebuilding of the church was given by the Abbot of Peterborough to Sir William de Thorpe in 1263-4. Nave and aisles and bellcote. No structural division between nave and chancel. The windows have pointed-trefoiled lights; the W window has a quatrefoiled circle over its two lights. Wide nave of three bays. Slender circular piers with circular capitals and abaci. Single-chamfered arches with hood-moulds. - PLATE. Cup and Paten, 1817.

LONGTHORPE TOWER. About 1300 the tower was added to a late C13 hall. The hall survives, but has no internal features of interest. The N window is of two lights divided by a shaft and has a quatrefoil in plate tracery. Access to the ground floor as well as the upper floor of the tower was only from the hall, not from the outside. The tower is square, and has walls 6 to 7 ft thick and square turrets on the comers. The windows are small, of single lights, with trefoiled heads or shouldered lintels. Some early C17 alterations. The ground-floor room has a quadripartite rib-vault. So has the room on the principal floor. The ribs are single-chamfered and stand on corbels. The second-floor room has no vault. It is reached by a straight staircase in the thickness of the S wall. The outstanding interest of Longthorpe Tower is the WALL PAINTINGS in the principal room, which were discovered only after the Second World War. They date from c.1330 and are more extensive than any of so early a date in any house in England. Subjects are taken from the Bible, as well as moralities such as the Three Quick and the Three Dead. Also a monk teaching a boy (the inscription here is in French), the Wheel of the Seven Ages of Man, the Wheel of the Five Senses (figured as animals), the Labours of the Months, and plenty of birds and flowers. In the vault figures of musicians and the Signs of the four Evangelists.* As for the style, it has been compared by Mr E. Clive Rouse with such somewhat earlier illuminated manuscripts as Queen Mary’s Psalter and the Bestiary at Corpus Christi College Cambridge.

* A detailed description will be found in the leaflet published by the Ministry of Public Building and Works.

LONGTHORPE. The cathedral city has begun to swallow it up, and Longthorpe is part of Peterborough, but it survives with an individuality of its own. At one end it has a small fortified 13th century house, and at the other is the historic Thorpe Hall, which Mr Alfred Gotch described as halfway between Elizabethan and Georgian.

A path shaded by fine trees and rambler roses brings us to the fortified house, a strange combination of an ancient and modern home, inhabited for about 700 years. The old staircase has gone, and a modern part has been added as a wing to the high embattled tower. The square doorway with a heavy nail-studded door remains, and there are wide buttresses between the windows. The one tower now standing is all that remains from the troubled and turbulent days of Edward the First; it is used as a house.

Thorpe Hall, at the end of the village nearer the city, is one of the few notable houses built during the Commonwealth, the artist being John Webb of the school of Inigo Jones, whose son-in-law he was. The influence of the master is clearly seen in the general style of the building. It is thought that the materials may have come from the ruins of the cathedral cloisters. The Hall once belonged to Oliver St John, the moderate man who quarrelled with Cromwell and took the side of General Monk at the Restoration. A wide avenue of limes leads us to the handsome gateway of this house, bronze eagles being mounted on the great stone posts, which are carved with heads of lions. Balustraded steps lead to the entrance with round columns which support a balustraded gallery. In the courtyard are some noble cedars and evergreen oaks.

The little church on the roadside has purple clematis and crimson creepers climbing its grey stone walls, and a medieval statue has been set on the roof of a new building outside the south aisle. The chancel, nave, and aisles are much as they were when the builders left them in the 13th century. There is a 13th century piscina, and a memorial shrine in memory of the men of the First World War; the altar rails are also in their memory. Hanging on a 13th century column of the graceful arcades is the translation of a deed dated 1623 providing for the rebuilding of a chapel here.

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Marholm

St Mary the Virgin [locked keyholder listed] was a definite contender for the church of the day but the keyholder was out so it lost out to Thorney. Having Googled and Flickrd it this is due a definite revisit. The interior looks and sounds, having read Pevsner, magnificent.

I revisited today [29/03/18] and found the church locked again.  So I set off to find the keyholder and realised that the house I'd knocked up before was not the keyholder address. I found No1 Stamford road but was unable to locate No2, so to anyone who is not local this is a locked church; and good luck with them with that.

ST MARY. The visual memory of the church is of four cedar trees to the W and three to the E, and of the contrast between the ambitious chancel and the rest. Short Norman W tower with clasping buttresses and slit-windows. Tower arch narrow, single-stepped, with responds carrying late C12 crocket capitals. C13 arcades and chancel arch. The arcades have quatrefoil piers and double-chamfered arches. The aisles externally mostly C19. The chancel was rebuilt by Sir William Fitzwilliam of Milton, who died in 1534 and wished to be buried in the chancel ‘lately edified’ by him. Ashlar-faced to the S. Five-light E and four-light side windows. - STAINED GLASS. Some of the original glass is preserved in the chancel. - FONT. Octagonal, probably of the 1660s, with panels each with a leaf and a rose. - PLATE. Breadholder, 1633 (?); Cup and Cover Paten, 1687; Flagon, perhaps German, c.1750. - MONUMENTS. In the nave recumbent effigy of a Knight, the tomb-chest mostly C19. The effigy is of c.1400. - Sir William Fitzwilliam d. 1534. Kneeling brasses against the back wall of a recess. The architectural parts of plaster. Tomb-chest with ornate quatrefoils. Colonnettes with raised lozenge pattern. Four small ogee arches. - Sir William Fitzwilliam d. 1599. Two recumbent effigies. - Edward Hunter alias Perry d. 1646. Bust of a boy in front of a black needle obelisk. Below a cartouche with weeping putti and an inscription commemorating him as a ‘courteous soldier’, ‘grassante bello civili’, and ending with

‘Noe crucifixe you see, noe Frightfull Brand
Of superstitions here, Pray let me stand.’

- William, first Earl Fitzwilliam, d. 1719 and wife. By James Fisher of Camberwell. Standing white marble figures. Unusual, restless draperies. Grey surround with detached Corinthian columns and a broken, open, segmental pediment. The magnum opus of this little known sculptor.

MARHOLM. It has a thatched farm with a stone dated 1633, inlaid with initials and a spray of flowers in lead, and the farmhouse has round and pointed window arches looking charming in their new coat of white paint when we called. On the south wall is a sundial from last century, and four tiny ones at the corners; and the blocked medieval windows leave no doubt that this old farm has been here since Marholm was mentioned in a Papal Bull seven or eight centuries ago. It has a big tithe barn.

The churchyard is ringed in with the sombre glory of stately cedars, and through it the village folk have been coming to this church for 20 generations. The low tower has a small pyramid spire and round-headed openings deeply splayed; it is 13th century. On the north of the tower are some 14th century coffin lids. The arch into the nave has capitals carved with flowers by craftsmen 700 years ago, who set in the wall above it a little carving of a head and shoulders. Both arcades of the wide clerestoried nave have the deep mouldings of the 13th century in their capitals, and the chancel arch is by the same builders. The clerestory, with three windows on each side above the three arches of the nave, is 15th century.

The glory of the church is the great chancel, which is as wide and as long as the nave, and flooded with light from l6th century windows. The east window has five wide lights with shields in old glass, and a border of 15th century glass fragments. There are similar old fragments in the borders of two other sanctuary windows, and in the middle of the south window is old glass with a picture of a complete 15th century church with an octagonal tower and battlements, its foreground a mass of bright gold.

The Fitzwilliams have held the manor of Marholm for centuries, and one of them built the chancel in which he lies. He was William Fitzwilliam, Sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1524. He was 70 when Cardinal Wolsey fell, and was then living at Milton Hall. The cardinal on his way north sent his servant Cavendish to ask if he could rest at his house, and the answer came that no man except the king could be more welcome. Wolsey, who was “seeking a little earth to lie in,” stayed for the night and had “great and honourable entertainment, lacking no good cheer of costly viands.” Sir William rebuilt Marholm chancel, and here they laid him with his wife, the brass portraits showing them kneeling beneath a canopy, he in armour, she in a mantle emblazoned with the Fitzwilliam arms. The brasses are dated 1534 and are on the back of the dark grey chalk and marble tomb, which has a frieze of fleur-de-lys on the top, and three twisted columns on the front to support a richly carved canopy. The brass of the knight has red and white diamond squares on the surcoat, and there are 12 coloured shields about the kneeling figures, more shields being in the panelling on the sides and front of the tomb.

Here lies also Sir William’s grandson, another Sir William, one of Queen Elizabeth’s ablest viceroys, though he had little but ill fortune in his public life. It is said that on one occasion he saved the army from destruction in an Irish campaign, but he suffered from pain and poverty and begged that he might come home. The queen sent him a thousand pounds to save him from beggary, but at last he had the good fortune to spend twelve quiet years in England, during which he was Governor of Fotheringhay and had Mary Stuart as a prisoner. We see this knight with his wife Ann lying on an altar tomb, their coloured figures being carved in chalk. He died in 1599. A white marble pedestal with a black obelisk high above it, behind two cherubs and a portrait bust, is in memory of a young son of the family who died at 22 in 1646. He was Edward Hunter, and was evidently a stout Protestant, for his inscription ends with quaint words telling us that no Crucifix here we see, no frightful brand of superstition: “pray let me stand.”

An impressive white marble monument in the chancel, with four columns and lifesize figures, is to the first Earl Fitzwilliam and his wife; it is signed by the sculptor, Jacob Fisher of Camberwell, 1719, and has a background of brilliant heraldry above the heads of the earl and countess, a gilt helmet lying loose between their feet. Also in the chancel is a modern monument to Evelyn Fitzwilliam, almost startling in the lifelike character of the white marble bust.

Older than all these is the altar tomb of Sir John de Wittlebury, lord of the manor in the reign of Henry the Fourth; of great interest are the figures holding hands. He is wearing a complete suit of armour such as was worn at Agincourt and the collar that shows he was a personal servant of the king; delightful and most unusual is the animated frieze of little animals beautifully carved running all round the tomb. The 15th century chapel where it stands has an open timbered roof, and helmets, a sword, gauntlet, and spear are hanging on the walls.

The font is carved on its eight sides with double roses, and from each rose hangs a big leaf, each one different. It is medieval.

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Werrington

I, incorrectly as it turns out, wrote St John the Baptist [LNK] off as a new build and failed to notice much, if anything of interest but Pevsner corrects this mistake. In my defence I think I was jaded after the run of locked churches in Peterborough itself although most of the evidence for it being old was inaccessible.

ST JOHN BAPTIST. Primarily a Norman church, see the S doorway with one order of colonnettes carrying decorated scallop capitals and an arch with an outer zigzag at r. angles to the wall plane; see also the chancel arch, which is narrow and has responds of two shafts with decorated scallop capitals; and see finally the S aisle W window with its deep splay. The double bellcote with continuous roll mouldings around the arched openings and a gable may be a little earlier, but is also no doubt still C12. The arcades of three bays are early C13. That on the S side has piers with four shafts and in the diagonals four rectangular projections. The moulded capitals are simple but have a little nailhead. The bases have angle spurs. The arches are round, double-chamfered, and have stiff-leaf label-stops. The N arcade is much simpler: round piers, round capitals and abaci, round double-chamfered arches. Also of the early C13 the chancel chapel. One wide, round, double-chamfered arch on semicircular responds. Fine stiff-leaf details. Wide Dec chancel with four-light E window.*  Reticulated tracery. Beautiful head-corbels inside to its l. and r. Dec also the outer entrance of the s porch (cf. Peakirk). - FONT. Plain C13 bowl, octagonal, on shafts with moulded capitals. - PLATE. Breadholder, 1723; Cup and Cover Paten, 1758.

* The chancel was rebuilt with the old materials in 1901-2.

WERRINGTON. It is an easy walk from Peterborough to this attractive little place of grey houses looking on to wayside greens sheltered by great trees. The memory of the past gathers about it, for the main road leads us toward the Roman canal known as Car Dyke. The church is a legacy of the Normans, and on the roadside is the black pile of a brick tower windmill, now without sails but still used for grinding corn when we called in the war days.

By the churchyard gate is the memorial cross to the men of the First World War, looking down the wide village street. The outside view of the church is unusual, for the dark stone roofs sweep without a break over nave and aisles, wide buttresses holding up the walls against their pressure. There are two mass dials on the walls, and inside is a very old chest which must have been known to the men who found  the time of the mass from the dials in the days before clocks.

We come into the church by a plain 14th century porch which has a glorious Norman doorway carved with zigzag, and with a scratch dial on one of its capitals, the second scratch dial being on the front of the porch. The massive door itself, white with age, its ironwork worn by the centuries and its woodwork strengthened in modern days, is medieval or Norman, we are not sure. We pass through this great doorway to find more impressive Norman work, the north arcade of three bays being plain solid Norman masonry, as are also the west windows of each aisle. The 13th century builders inserted the neat triple lancet window in the west wall of the nave and set up the clustered columns of the south arcade; and the chancel dates from the 14th century, which gave it three handsome windows, but did not replace the round arched and trefoiled piscina left by the Normans. Fortunately also they did not replace the chancel arch, which is the chief glory of the church. The arch is Norman, narrow but massive and highly ornamented, with richly carved capitals and very bold mouldings. On the east wall are two big stone heads of bearded and long-haired men, once used as brackets for statues. The font is 700 years old.

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Paston

I imagine All Saints is normally LNK but I found it open as a wedding was being prepared for. This is another church with a fantastic graveyard but apart from the terrific tower corbels it's not terribly interesting either outside or in. Of note however is Edmund Mountsteven's epitaph by which he left the equivalent of over £100,000.00 to charitable uses viz:

In Memorie of
Edmund Mountsteven
Of Paston, within ye libertie of Nassaburgh in ye County of Northampto" Esq: Where he lived 45 yeares, plus minus, a Justice of peace & quorum and where he died so in ye yeare of his age 73 & in ye yeare of our Lord 1635, March 4 style Angliae. He bestowed his whole estate in pious & charitable vses. He gave a thousand poundes towards ye founding of two fellowships and two scholarships in St. John's College Cambridg of wch College himselfe was sometime a student; These to be chosen into that College out of Peterborough Schole. He builte and endowed ye Almeshouse on Paston Greene. He gave lovingly and liberally to ye Poore of this Parish & towards ye repare of this Church & Chancell. He gave an hundred pounds towards ye repare of ye Cathedrall Church of St. Peter in Peterborough, & an hundred pounds towards ye repare of ye Cathedrall Church of St. Paul, in London. His debts dischardged, and legacies payd, the remainder He devised to good vses. He was a learned & religious Gent, a bountifull housekeeper to ye utmost of his abilitie & very Beneficial to very many poore. His workes praise him in ye Gates.
In memoria aeterna erit iustus.
Ivstitia eius manet in seculum:
Sibi, in praemium,
Tibi, in exemplum.

ALL SAINTS. W tower of c.1300 with a big quatrefoil window, bell-openings of two lights with encircled motifs in bar tracery, and a broach spire with two tiers of lucarnes. The finest piece in the church is the triple-chamfered tower arch towards the nave. It rests on two splendid horizontal figures. But the earliest part of the church is the N chancel chapel. Two bays, semicircular responds, octagonal pier, single-chamfered arches. One stiff-leaf label stop. The date may be c.1225. Of the late C13 the SEDILIA in the chancel. The straight-headed  chancel windows look as if they were Perp, but in spite of the Perp principle of panel tracery the details are mid C14 - and extremely pretty at that. Perp arcades of four bays with octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches. Perp chancel arch, aisle windows, and clerestory windows. - SCREEN. Tall, Perp, with one-light divisions. - SCULPTURE. Inside the E bay of the S aisle fragments of very small blank arcading. - PLATE. Cup and Cover Paten, 1715; Almsdish, 1807; Cup, 1836. - MONUMENT. Edward Mountsteven d. 1635. Tablet with kneeling figure between black columns.

PASTON. We come to it through a countryside of sleepy villages, where the dykes are bordered with sedges and wild flowers and the landscape is broken here and there by windmills, but the old village is being absorbed by Peterborough. As we approach it we pass a row of almshouses built in the days of Charles Stuart, a perfect group of 17th century architecture with wide flower gardens in front, and a glorious sweep of trees behind.

If we come in due season through the fine lychgate in memory of the Fallen, the air is filled with the fragrance of limes in the avenue to the 15th century porch, with a sundial dated 1756 in its gable. The south porch is 14th century and is shaded by a great yew, very old but not so old as the door still swinging on its hinges as it has been for 600 years. The tower and spire are 14th century, and the tower has a ballflower cornice from that time. A few fragments of Norman work remain from the earlier church, built into the plaster of the wall of the south aisle; and by the medieval font, used as a stand for the ewer, is an interesting Saxon stone on which a mason carved some decoration about a hundred years ago.

The nave arcades of four bays were set up when the clerestory was built in the 15th century. The lofty chancel arch has a wooden screen as old as itself, deeply carved 500 years ago with flowers above a pierced design in the lower panels. The chancel windows are 15th century. The very small sedilia almost touching the floor is 13th century, and the piscina near the aumbry on the south wall of the sanctuary is a little younger. The tower arch has two great figures holding it up which seem to be growing a little tired of their burden. One is holding a cloak round his head with both hands, and the other is clutching for something behind his back.

Here lies the kindly man who built the little group of Jacobean houses facing the green; he was Edmund Mountsteven, and we see him as a small kneeling figure in black marble under a canopied niche. Another old friend of the village is remembered in the east window, which is a tribute to the long and faithful service of Joseph Pratt, who was vicar here for 65 years of last century; his portrait is in the vestry.

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Peterborough

We can sail rapidly through the last five city churches, all, with the exception of St Peter & All Souls [which is RC and was heaving with people at prayer hence no interiors] and St Barnabas along with Westgate which are redundant, LNK and mostly dull.

ALL SAINTS, Park Road. 1894 by Temple Moore, a sensitive design and quite original. In the Dec style. The tower stands beyond the S chancel aisle at its E end. The s aisle is uncommonly wide, and there is no N aisle.

ALL SOULS (R. C.), Fitzwilliam Street. 1896 by Leonard Stokes. Of small squared rubble with only a small polygonal bellcote. This is at the W end, where the Priest’s House is attached. Interior with aisle of no more than passage width. Tall aisle windows. The arcade arches are so tall as to embrace them.

ST BARNABAS, Taverners Road. 1900 by W.Bryer (GR). Brick; no tower. No interest inside.

ST MARK, Lincoln Road. 1856 by E. Ellis. Quite an original and picturesque design. Early Dec style with a NE tower and spire. Nave with stone dormers with fanciful circular windows. Also a half-timbered dormer.

ST MARY, Boongate. 1859 by Ewan Christian. E.E., rock-faced, with apse. Steeple of 1883 with a saddleback roof. Demolished and rebuilt in the late 80s/early 90s.

ST PAUL, Walpole Street. 1868 by James Teale (‘bullied by Lord Grimthorpe’, GR). In the E.E. style, with lancet and Geometrical windows. Big central tower open to the inside. Apse. Quite an impressive, though a coarse design. - STAINED GLASS. Several windows by Cakebread.

WESTGATE, redundant, is now used as a well-being centre while the congregation have moved round the corner in to a new build.  It's a large yellow brick Victorian build originally constructed in 1859 and rebuilt in 1891 following a fire.

All Saints

St Peter & All Souls

St Barnabas

St Mark

St Paul

Westgate

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Eye

St Matthew [LNK] is honestly one of the strangest, if not to say bonkers, building I've seen to date. Victoriana gone mad, I'm almost glad it is inaccessible, I liked the village sign though.

ST MATTHEW. 1846 by Basevi, one of his last works. The steeple built shortly after by F. T. Dollman. Cruciform, the W tower carrying a broach spire. Lancet windows. Dull. - FONT. C14. Octagonal, on eight supports not set back. The spaces between the supports form recesses, and the decoration of the bowl is their ogee gables. - STAINED GLASS. E window 1863 by Gibbs (TR). - PLATE. Paten, 1798; Cup, 1809.

EYE. In ages past it was an eye, or island, in the Fenland marshes now it lies amid stretches of level land with dykes in place of hedges and the wide arch of the sky extending from horizon to horizon. A giant windmill 80 feet high keeps company with the slender church spire.

The stone-roofed church is separated from the long village street by a narrow strip of ground with lavender bushes which scent the air in due season. The church is 19th century, built on the site of the old one, and has in its keeping the 14th century font with eight arches, each arch having below it a recess decorated with window tracery. All the windows in the church are lancets, and the painted glass in one of them represents the innkeeper at Bethlehem refusing accommodation to Joseph and Mary.

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Thorney

Only part of the nave of the old monastery, now called SS Mary & Botolph [open], remains but it is simply stunning; it's in a great location surrounded by other lovely buildings, the graveyard is full of interest, the C17th west end additions are interesting and well executed and the interior is magnificent [even cathedral like]. Although light on interesting monuments there are plenty to various Huguenot families and there's a smattering of old glass. Definitely at this point, a late contender enters the ring later, the church of the day.

ST MARY AND ST BOTOLPH. A monastery was founded here c.670. It was destroyed in the Danish raid of 870 and re-founded in 972 for Benedictine monks. After the Conquest Abbot Guenther rebuilt the church. He must have begun immediately after he had been elected in 1085; for in 1089 the monks could move in. By 1098 the chancel and crossing tower were ready. The church was completed in 1108, though consecrated only in 1128. All that remains of it is part of the nave, shorn of its aisles and of its E end. The total original length was nearly 300 ft. However, the crossing, with crossing tower, the transepts and chancel, and practically all the monastic buildings have disappeared. The present E end is by Blore, in the Norman style, 1840-1. The original fragment, inadequate as it may be, is yet very impressive, owing chiefly to its tall W front. This is a composite structure to which the C12, the C15, and the C17 have contributed. Norman are the angle turrets, starting as broad buttresses and continued octagonal. They end in Perp battlements. These buttresses originally separated the W end of the nave from that of the aisles. Their stepped plan makes it probable that the Norman W front of Thorney had three giant niches on the pattern of C11 Lincoln. Perp W window partly blocked; probably Perp the doorway. In 1638 the ruined church was restored as the parish church of Thorney. It was then that, to the l. and r. of the doorway, blank arcades were carved with ogee heads and a frieze above decorated with heads like fleurons. All this is in a typical imitation-Perp of which a contemporary example is e.g. Peterhouse Chapel at Cambridge. The Perp W window may belong to the same date. Along the N and S sides the design of the Norman arcades can be studied, as the arcade openings were blocked in 1638, when the aisles were pulled down. One bay of the Norman clerestory also survives, a plain arched window (blocked) on the S side, but decorated by billet friezes on the N. The interior elevation is quite evident when one enters the church. The arcades are designed with alternating supports, but the principal motif, the shaft rising without interruption from floor to ceiling, is the same everywhere. The design towards the arch openings, however, differs between segments of fat circular projection and three stepped shafts - just as at Ely. The arches are single-stepped, but the capitals are scalloped. The gallery openings are not subdivided (cf. e.g. Colchester St Botolph). They are now filled with C15 tracery, perhaps from the former clerestory. The piers have two shafts towards the openings, and the arches two roll mouldings. The capitals are mostly of the primitive volute type, but others are also scalloped. - STAINED GLASS. German or Swiss panels in the nave E windows. - The E window is a copy from Canterbury. - PLATE. Cup and Paten of 1709; Almsdish of 1750.

THORNEY. Thorney’s natural beauty is all the more enhanced because of its place in the plain fenlands. Its lanes are perfect bowers of greenery, gabled houses are everywhere, and there is a fine green space by the church in which the village is passing rich, both for itself and for its story. For this is holy ground, and this island in the fens, once an oasis in a wilderness of marshes, is a witness of the thousand year struggle of Englishmen for their altars and their homes.

Grand as it is today in its simplicity and strength, the Abbey Church has come through much change of fortune to be but a fragment of its old self which was five times as big when the Normans left it, and it is the only part extant of the monastery founded here for anchorites in 662, though traces of foundations of the monastic buildings have been found. Its story begins when Wulpher, King of the Mercians, went to Peterborough in 662 for the consecration of the minster. Saxulph, the Abbot, told him that some of his monks wished to live the hermit’s life, and the king granted them permission to retire to dreary Thorney Island in the marshes. There they dwelt in huts and built themselves a chapel, and though little is known of them their names are not wholly forgotten. Tancred, Tortred, and their sister Tona were for ever remembered for their renunciation, and sleep as canonised saints somewhere beneath the stones of the once great Abbey Church.

Other saints found the same sanctuary, but not all can be said to have rested in peace, for the Danes swept down on the monastery, burning and pillaging, and the monks took refuge in the woods. In 972 it was refounded by Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, and King Edgar endowed it. A hundred years later the monastery suffered at the hands of its friends, for when Hereward the Wake made his stand against the Conqueror Thorney Island was one of his fastnesses, and suffered in the attack.

Then, in the last years of the Conqueror’s reign, a change took place in its fortunes. Thorney was born again. The old Saxon church was taken down and a new great one raised in its stead, and with its new foundation there was born a new vigour in well-doing. William of Malmesbury paid a tribute not merely to the piety of the monks, but to their courage and industry in coping with the fenland. A very paradise bearing trees, he called it, extolling the vines and apples of this wonderful solitary place for monks of quiet life. The abbey buildings were enlarged from time to time, and a chapter house was built early in the 14th century where the vicarage is now, and the abbey gateway was renowned in the same century for being “one of the hundred celebrated places in England.” The place grew in fame, and its mitred abbot sat in the House of Lords till the Dissolution, when the monks were driven away, the lead of the roofs was stripped and melted down in fires fed perhaps by the woodwork of the Abbey Church, and of its stones 140 tons were taken for building the new chapel of Corpus Christi College. The fruitful fields went back to marshland and desolation.

Nearly a century passed, and there was another turn of fortune’s wheel. It began with the great adventure, led by the Earl of Bedford, of draining the fens, and one of the chapters in that story included the restoration of the remains of the Abbey Church in 1638. Inigo Jones is said to have been the architect.

Gone are the six aisles, the central tower, and the spires which crowned the western towers of the Norman church, which was nearly 300 feet long, but it stands majestic in the shape of a T formed by the old nave with its splendid west front, and transepts added at its eastern end last century. The Norman masonry gleams light and lovely in contrast with the 19th century’s rust-coloured stone. The five great bays of the Norman arcades now in the side walls are magnificent, some of the round arches on clustered pillars. Under the arches, and in the Norman triforium above them, the later windows are set. The imposing west front is mainly Norman, though later turrets crown the two Norman towers which flank it, and are now 83 feet high. A smaller window lights the west wall, set in an earlier arch which rises to a fine gallery of nine saints in niches, who are thought to have either lived at Thorney or to have been buried here. The third in the row, from the right, is Tatwin, a hermit here who took St Guthlac in a boat to Croyland when he was finding a site for his hermitage.

The east window is a great lancet without tracery, about a century old and striking with a rich mosaic of roundels in purple tones glinting with gold and greens, representing the miracles of Thomas Becket. It is a copy of a window in Canterbury Cathedral. Other windows have old shields of the Duke of Bedford, John of Gaunt, and Henry the Eighth and Catherine of Aragon, and lovely Flemish panels with scenes of Bible story, among them a fine Pieta, the Upper Room at Emmaus, and Christ receiving the saved from a tomb, with a demon trapped under His feet and another demon fleeing.

A tablet on the wall gives us another strange chapter of Thorney’s story. It is a French inscription to Ezekiel Danois of Compiégne in France, the first minister of the Huguenot colony which fled to England to escape persecution and settled here. He was a worthy successor to Thorney’s saints, and we read that “in unwearied zeal, learning, and strictness of life, he was second to none; a great treasure of literature was here hidden from the world, known to God and himself, few besides.” Twenty-one of his 54 years of service were spent at Thorney Abbey, and he was buried here in 1674. It is one of the strangest episodes in Thorney’s history that Huguenot pastors continued to minister here till 1715.

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Colne

I was on my way to Peterborough and its environs when the radio announced that the A1 northbound was closed following an accident, so I took the next exit off the A14 and headed cross country. This resulted in two unplanned visits the first of which was St Helen [open]. I liked the exterior, and even more so when I discovered it was a new build of 1896-1900 [the old church collapsed], but found the inside rather dull - this may have been partly due to the overcast conditions.

The second unexpected church was Chatteris in Cambridgeshire.

ST HELEN. 1896-1900 by Fawcett of Cambridge, with materials of the old church, e.g. the piers and arches of the arcade, the PISCINA in the S aisle, a tower lancet, etc. The tower is at the SW end and has a lead spike. - ORGAN CASE. A pretty, early C19 piece.
OLD CHURCH, 600 yds WNW of the new church along a lane. All that survives is the S porch. The entrance has a basket arch.

COLNE. It is tranquillity among the orchards, which are a stirring picture in spring. It has a small green, a pond, old cottages, and a new church with many stones from the old one which fell down. Only its 16th century porch is standing, a pathetic guardian of what was once a lovely place; but the neat little church built in our own day keeps some of its 13th and 14th century windows, an arcade of 600 years ago, and fragments of ancient coffins and crosses; and the children of Colne are still christened at the font from the poor lost church.

A little way from the village is what is known as Camp Ground, the site of a village where fishermen and hunters lived in Roman days. It covers about 15 acres, and has traces of huts and docks where the boats of the Fen people were kept nearly 20 centuries ago.

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