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.

Flickr.