Bluntisham

It didn't strike me until I processed my photos that St Mary, locked keyholder listed but impossible to find, that it has a polygonal chancel which if I had I would have assumed that it was Victorian. It's not and is accredited to C14 and is really rather special.

The gate to the churchyard appears to be normally bicycle chain locked [slightly pointless since the wall is knee high] and a notice in the porch says something along the lines of "we really want you to visit our church, you can find the key 200m to the right (?) of the church" - is that facing it or with your back to it or possibly sideways? Not much help as directions go and after walking around the immediate vicinity for about 15 mins I gave up and decided to head home.

I might have considered a revisit until I read this - tbh it doesn't seem worth the effort.

ST MARY. Rubble and brown cobbles. The amazing thing about the church is that it has a polygonal apse which is a genuine Dec piece. That, as everyone knows, is an extreme rarity in England. The windows are small and of two lights. Dec also the arches from the tower into the embracing aisles; they have three wave mouldings. The tower carries a recessed spire. Perp the high four-bay arcades with a typical pier section. The chancel arch matches. The four-centred aisle windows, another unusual trait (of East Anglian origin), are internally placed under much broader blank arches. So here - which is also not at all usual - the whole of nave and aisles is one unified design. The nave roof stands on good stone corbels, mostly of angels with shields or musical instruments. - FONT. Perp, octagonal. Panelled stem, quatrefoiled bowl, big flowers and also a Green Man on the underside. - SCREEN. Three divisions of the dado kept under the tower. Two are painted crudely with St George and the Dragon and St John Baptist. - STAINED GLASS. In the apse by Wailes, 1851. - PLATE. Chalice and Cover of 1569; Paten on foot inscribed 1693; Plate of 1702; Flagon of 1705; undated Salver.

BLUNTISHAM. Here lay a Roman god for 1500 years till his small bronze figure, inlaid with silver, was picked up near the Ouse and taken to the British Museum. Now its oldest possessions are the church, a 16th century inn, a row of 17th century houses, and an earthwork set up in the Civil War a mile away in the neighbouring hamlet of Earith. It lies between two “cuts” made by the Duke of Bedford in the 17th century as part of an attempt to solve the drainage problem. The rectory has a doorway brought from Slepe Hall, a house at St Ives which once belonged to Cromwell, and is now replaced by a school.

It is the church which draws the traveller to this place, where we look across ten miles of meadows to the noble tower of Ely. It has an apse unique in the county, most surprising from the outside, triangular, its three walls, crowned with gables, giving it a quaint appearance. The windows have flowing tracery, and between the gables are curious gargoyles. Graceful inside and out, the apse gives character to the 14th century chancel, with its fine south windows and its 15th century arch; but the interior of the apse is spoiled by the poor glass in the windows.

There is a handsome 14th century tower, its graceful spire enriched with 12 windows. The 15th century nave has splendid arcades with lofty arches. Its roof is as old as the walls it rests on, and among the stone corbels under it are musical angels and a man with a scroll.
The roof of the north aisle is nearly 500 years old, and rests on stone brackets with a bearded man and a crowned an gel among the carving.

Lovely things abound in this grand old church. There is a tall font with a bowl carved in the 15th century, its flowers, leaves, and grotesque heads very quaint. There are medieval tiles in the south aisle, and among much carved oak is a door made 400 years ago and an altar table by a 17th century carpenter.

One of the most precious possessions of the church is a fragment of its ancient screen, three panels made 500 years ago, and interesting for what is left in them of paintings by a 15th century artist showing through the work of an artist a century after him. Here is John the Baptist among flowers, and a fine St George with plumed headdress. He is riding a white horse, and seems to have two lances.

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Somersham

St John, open, is a huge church with a large churchyard which is undergoing a reparation to the chancel roof, which slightly marred the visit as the chancel was more less covered in protective sheeting and almost knee deep in detritus from the roof.

This should be, for such a large church, full of interest both externally and internally but sadly it's not. Perhaps tellingly the most interesting item I found was the same WWI memorial bench that I found at Ramsey.

ST JOHN. An almost completely E.E. church, perhaps so sweepingly done because at Somersham was a palace of the Bishops of Ely. Externally the chancel has single widely spaced lancets along its sides and a group of over-restored lancets in the E wall. The S and the N aisle doorways have mature stiff-leaf (N badly preserved) and arches of many mouldings. The windows of the aisles are Perp, as is the clerestory. Only the W tower with its spike is later. One W window looks c.1300, and the bell-openings are Dec. Internally the four-bay  arcades have piers of four shafts and four thin polygonal shafts in the diagonals and typically E.E. moulded capitals. The crenellation is of course a Perp re-cutting. The bases, except those of the responds, are also re-cut. Double-hollow-chamfered arches with a step between the chamfers. Moreover E.E. tower arch with keeling, chancel arch with keeling, and PISCINAS in the chancel, S aisle, and N aisle. In the chancel the SEDILIA have responds in the form of stiff-leaf corbels. The chancel side lancets are surrounded by a continuous thin roll, but the E lancets are fully shafted. The nave roof is Perp and has a large number of carved bosses. The structure consists of tiebeams on arched braces, the braces sweeping up in the same curvature to the ridge-piece, a very fine effect. - CHANDELIER. of brass. 1787. Two tiers of arms. The centre is of a very Baroque, baluster-like shape. - PLATE. Cup 1569-70; Flagon 1638-9; Paten 1812-13; Plate undated. - BRASS. Priest, early C16, 2 ft long (chancel floor).

SOMERSHAM. Here the Bishops of Ely had a palace for centuries, and the manor is known to have been part of the settlement on Henrietta Maria at her marriage to Charles Stuart. Its church has been keeping watch 700 years upon these meadows with their Roman memories; its weathervane has been showing the way of the wind since the 18th century.

It is good to see that in our own day the village has made good the noble roof of its nave, with beams and bosses of the 14th century, the work of splendid craftsmen. It is boldly carved; we noticed Richard the Second and his Queen, a bishop and a mermaid, a wolf and a lion, an eagle with two heads, and the serpent with the apple which has brought us all so low. The wall-posts rest on remarkably fine stone corbels, on which is an angel with a sword, a man crouching and a man on one knee, praying men in tunics, and a man with a hood thrown carelessly back. The 13th century chancel arch has heads of a man and a woman and there are old stone faces in one of the aisles. There is a Tudor brass with a rather crude portrait of an unknown priest, a Tudor chalice, a Jacobean chair carved with flowers, and a chest dug out of a rough tree trunk guarded with five locks. A sundial has been marking time 200 years.

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Pidley

Unusually for a new build [1864-5 by William Fawcett of Cambridge] I rather liked the exterior of All Saints, locked with two keyholders listed, but, after  peering through the windows, not enough to warrant a search for the key. Apparently there's a good 1930s window.

ALL SAINTS. 1864-5 by William Fawcett of Cambridge. Nave and chancel. W tower with tiled broach spire. Small lancet windows. Inside exposed brick. - PLATE. Cup of 1576-7; Cover Paten of 1758-9.

PIDLEY. It has two 18th century houses, a farm which was ploughed when Cromwell was a farmer in Huntingdon, and a modern church which seems to have climbed the hill for the magnificent view. In a corner of the churchyard is a fragment of a stone coffin lid with a cross on it, the one thing that has survived the passing of seven centuries in this small place.

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Woodhurst

St John the Baptist, locked keyholders listed, is so over restored that I took it for a Victorian build and having peered through the windows I decided not to look for the keyholders [there are two listed with addresses but no directions]. I suspect I missed very little.

ST JOHN BAPTIST. Chancel, nave, S aisle, and weather boarded bell-turret. The blocked N doorway is basically Norman, the S arcade E.E. Four bays, round piers, double-chamfered arches. The S windows are Perp, the clerestory post-medieval, and the chancel C19, unfortunately of yellow brick. - BENCH ENDS. Four, with elementary poppyheads. - PLATE. Cup, Paten, and Paten on foot, all 1763-4.

WOODHURST. A few silver birches are pleasant company for its little church among the trees. Its shingled oak turret is perhaps 300 years old, but the nave was here soon after the Conqueror’s day, and keeps its Norman doorway. There is an oak chest like a big money box, four pews from Cromwell’s century, bench ends with poppyheads 400 years old, and a font as old as anything here except the Norman doorway. A coffin lid seven centuries old in used as a coping stone for the churchyard wall.

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Oldhurst

I loved St Peter, locked no keyholder, which seemed to me more of a chapel of ease than a church and was sad to find it locked even though I suspect the interior would be a disappointment.

ST PETER. Nave and chancel in one. Space for two bells in the gable.* The building is E.E., see the S doorway with a pointed-trefoiled head, the lancets and pairs of lancets as windows, and the Y-tracery of the E and W windows. Perp tiebeam roof with crown-posts. - FONT. Octagonal. Probably of c.1300. Blank windows with intersecting tracery on all eight sides. - PILLAR PISCINA (SE corner). Norman, with decorated stem. - PLATE. Cup and Paten, late C16.

* Mr McHardy points out that on the nave E gable is a very odd rood, the figures of the Virgin and St John being replaced by foliage of roughly human shapes.

OLD HURST. It has a farm of Shakespeare’s day, church walls enshrining 600 years of village life, and an Abbot’s Chair which would seem to many its most historic possession.

The farm has a magnificent barn, timbered and thatched, and one of the best for miles around. The church has a tiny nave and chancel under one roof, a font older than the Canterbury Tales, a chalice by an Elizabethan craftsman, and one of a group of stone altars we have found hereabouts which survived the Reformation.

The Abbot’s Chair is a mile on the road to St Ives; the children will tell you that the man with seven wives rested in it. It is a great stone something like an armchair which may have been the base of a wayside cross. It is said that the courts of the old Hurstingstone Hundred were held here. The truth probably is that it marked the boundary of the rule of the Abbot of Ramsey, for the monks had a quarry of the same kind of stone and may have set it up as the limit of their jurisdiction.

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Broughton

I very nearly made a serious mistake by not  seeking out a keyholder - there are three or four listed - for All Saints, thinking it was unlikely to contain much of interest. How wrong I was.

The exterior must be impossible to photograph from late spring until the end of Autumn, surrounded as it is surrounded by trees; it was hard enough in mid April.

The interior is very stripped back in a pleasing way and contains a quality font, a fantastic west millennium window by Benjamin Finn, six roof angels and a Doom wallpainting along with the expulsion and Adam & Eve delving and spinning.

All in all a definite mistake avoided.

ALL SAINTS. Stone W tower with broach spire. Two tiers of lucarnes. Mostly Perp. Contributions to the building are mentioned in 1528. Exceptions are the E.E. chancel (see the remains of the low-side S lancet and the DOUBLE PISCINA), the nave S doorways of c.1300, and the Dec four-bay arcades of standard elements, but the arches starting with breaches. - FONT. Square, Norman, with blank arcading. - BENCHES. Perp and plain. - COMMUNION RAIL. C18. - PAINTING. Doom; above the chancel arch; C15. The rising of the dead is most clearly visible. - Also, round the S corner, Expulsion, and Adam delving and Eve spinning. - PLATE. Cup of 1597; Paten inscribed 1620. - BRASS. Laurence Marton and wife, c.1490. Only his head, the lower part of his body, and a shield with rebus are preserved. The figures were 33 in. long.

BROUGHTON. It has two old friends in a sleepy green hollow, the Elizabethan rectory with the garden where a rector tended his flowers over 60 years, and a church in which he preached thousands of sermons. He was Robert Hudson, and a tablet tells us he was greatly loved for his long ministry, which covered so much of the 18th century. In his garden there is still an ancient stone coffin complete with lid.

The church has a tower and spire of about 1500, and a 14th century chancel between two walls built by Normans. They gave the font its fine arcading about the year 1100. Two notable pieces of 15th century art the church possesses, the work of carvers and painters who may have fought at Bosworth Field. In the roof of the nave is an angelic orchestra with a striking figure of St Andrew among the choir, and over the chancel arch is a series of paintings finely preserved, probably by artists of the same generation. One painting shows a Resurrection scene, another the Day of Judgment, and there are quaint pictures showing Adam and Eve before and after they were driven from the garden.

There are two birds keeping watch on a Jacobean chair, a few 16th century pews, fragments of 16th century glass, and a brass of which everything is gone save the head and the legs of Lawrence Martin. Behind the pulpit is the old turret stairway to the roodloft.

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Warboys

If I'm honest I thought the best thing about St Mary Magdalene was the fact that it was open. It's one of those interiors where the rendering has been removed which I simply don't like and always leaves me feeling cold. There are, however, a couple of good memorials and I rather liked the chancel interior [notably rendered].

ST MARY MAGDALENE. A stately church of brown cobble, but how could they, in 1832, rebuild the chancel in yellow brick, even if they chose lancets to match the superb C13 W steeple - C13 to the top of the broach spire? The tower is high and has broad flat buttresses with shallow set-ofis, a lancet window, once it seems not divided across but of its whole astounding length in one. The next stage has a cusped W lancet, shafted. Then the bell-openings, pairs of the lights each with Y-tracery with a foiled spandrel and much shafting. The lowest of  the three tiers of lucarnes is in exactly the same style. The broaches are quite low. After this most impressive piece one must look at the oldest piece: the Norman chancel arch, with scalloped capitals to the triple responds, a tiny tree motif on one of the capitals, and an arch with two rolls and zigzag. Then, still chronologically before the tower, both arcades. They are of four bays and quite different one from the other; yet both date from the early C13. N has round and octagonal piers and arches with one chamfer and one more complex moulding including keeling, S has round piers, round capitals, and round abaci and double-chamfered arches, i.e. a more conventional parti. Very good bases. Then, to continue chronologically, the tower. What has not yet been said is that the arch to the nave goes with all the rest, and so do the lower N and S arches. So embracing aisles were provided for, although they (see the E arches) and most of the fenestration of the church are Perp. Nice N doorway of c.1300. - FONT. The font was obtained at the time when the enlargement by aisles took place. It is of table-top form and has stiff-leaf of the mature kind to the N. All the other sides are re-cut out of recognition. - DOOR KNOCKER. Chancel N. A small C12 piece with a lion’s head, and the ring made into two dragons fighting. - PLATE. Set of 1841-2. - MONUMENTS. John Leman d.1781. By Bacon. Hope pointing to an urn. - Mrs Strode d. 1790. Also by Bacon. Mourning woman by an urn. On the pedestal a fine small relief of the Good Samaritan.

WARBOYS. It has a delightful 17th century manor house with a most unusual east front, an inn in the High Street from the same century, and a church which was here centuries before either. We found two lions here, one at the church door and one hiding behind the organ. The lion at the door is the finest little thing that Warboys has; it reminds us of the famous knocker at Durham Cathedral. It is one of the best pieces of metal work in the country, showing the lion’s head biting a ring like two fighting dragons, and it was made by a man who must have found himself working with Norman masons. The other lion is carved on a stone bracket and is 15th century. Another notable carving is in the hood over the rectory door; it is 18th century. Very impressive are the handsome arcades of this clerestoried church, its tower and spire of great beauty. The spire springs from the edge of a low corbel table above eight belfry windows, and three rows of dormer windows rise high above anything else in Warboys. Men who remembered the signing of Magna Carta would look up at this spire with its little windows, so old is beauty here.

The pride of the village .for over 700 years, the church has a lovely Norman chancel arch with three shafts at either side and much fine ornament. The font is 700 years old, with flowers and leaves on its bowl, looking little worse for its long years of service. There is a stone coffin carved with rosettes in the 14th century.

Warboys remembers a sad story of the days of witchcraft. Here at the end of the 16th century a whole family was put to death: Mother Samuel over 80, her husband, and their only child. They were convicted on the evidence of the five daughters of their next-door neighbour, one of whom developed fits and imagined Mother Samuel to be responsible. Poor Mother Samuel was persecuted for two years, and in the end her family paid the bitter price of superstition.

It transpired at the trial that Alice Samuel, visiting the sick child, sat down in the chimney corner with a black cap on her head, and the child, pointing to her, cried, “Grandmother, look where the old witch sitteth.” The child became worse, and the doctor declared that he verily believed there had been witchcraft at work. The child’s sisters were afterwards seized, and all complained of “Mother Samuel.” Her repute as a witch grew. One of the children growing worse, the father entreated Mother Samuel to charge the spirit to leave her, and after much protestation she said, “I charge thee, spirit, in the name of God, that Mistress Jane never have this fit.”

The charge was repeated for all the rest, and the story at the trial was that immediately the children, who had been in the fits for three weeks, “wiped their eyes and stood up.” The poor woman, startled out of her wits, and imagining herself responsible, begged forgiveness. She was thrown into gaol, and in the course of time was interviewed by Lady Cromwell (wife of the Golden Knight of Hinchingbrooke) who now also became ill and died. In the end the three Samuels (father, mother, and daughter) were found guilty and executed. If windows can see and walls can hear this church at Warboys has seen and known it all.

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Wistow

St John the Baptist was, for unfathomable reasons, locked no keyholder. I know that, having looked it up on Flickr, a keyholder was listed two years but that [to quote Simon Knott] "in general the church felt rather cluttered and unloved, as if it was now beyond the power of its small, elderly congregation to care for it properly, or even keep it going very much longer". I fear his prediction has come true.

Having said that I think the exterior more than made up for its locked status.

ST JOHN BAPTIST. Of cobbles, but the Late Perp W tower of stone. Is it post-Reformation? Perhaps the top part. Perp also the high and wide two-bay arcades. Piers of continuous mouldings to the nave, shafts with capitals to the arch openings and fleurons in the mouldings. To each bay corresponds a pair of two-light clerestory windows. A higher rood-stair turret at the E end of the clerestory. The nave roof has figures against the wall-posts and against the sub-principals. The N aisle roof has figures on the wall-posts only. The chancel arch corresponds to the arcades, the tower arch is plainer. In the chancel ogee-headed SEDILIA and a low-side window of two lights with a transom. The lights are ogee-headed too, and the chancel was indeed consecrated in 1347. Close to the S doorway is evidence of the church preceding this: a fragmentary Norman tympanum with diapering of four-petalled flowers and a bit of zigzag. - SCREENS. In the S chapel of three- and four-light divisions. - Under the tower arch plainer, of one-light divisions. - SOUTH DOOR. Symmetrical sparse iron scroll-work of the early C14. - STAINED GLASS. The S aisle w window is complete, with figures of the Virgin of the Annunciation and the Resurrection and small angels below and in the tracery head.It is all early C15 and was originally in the chancel E window. How is it no-one smashed it up? - In the chancel N and S windows glass by Wailes. - PLATE. Two Chalices of 1809-10.

WISTOW. The finest things it has have never been moved since the builders and the craftsmen put them here 500 years ago. They are its splendid collection of wood carvings and a lovely aisle window.

All that is best in the village is gathered into its fine church, rich in 15th century screens with delicate oak tracery and with a splendid company of angels, apostles, and men looking down from its roofs and its walls. There are ten angels looking down from the modern chancel roof, and a remarkable group in the grand roof of the nave, in which we noticed angels and women, priests at prayer, and a bishop and a king. The stone corbels have angels and grotesques. The clerestory windows have double lights and are very fine.

One of the windows of Wistow has still in it the glass that was shining in the church before the 15th century builders took down their scaffolding. It is no longer where they left it, but has been removed from the east window to the west window of the south aisle. It glows with colour, and is a pure delight. It has in it Gabriel bringing the good news to the Madonna, who is seen at a desk with a dove above her head and a bowl of lilies by her. The same tenderness is seen in the picture of the Resurrection, in which Christ is rising from the tomb; below are quaint winged angels with golden hair, their hands raised in benediction. Very odd is a face peeping round the corner of the picture, and splendid the canopy work above it all.

Another piece of craftsmanship not to be missed is in the hinges of the doors, which are decorated with sprays of leaves hammered out by a smith 500 years ago, when most of the church was new. There are poppyheads carved then, a font still older, and a medieval chest hollowed out of oak and strengthened with iron bands.

In this fine place Thomas Woodruff preached for 51 years last century. Sir Oliver Cromwell was lord of the manor, and a Philip Cromwell was rector for ten years in Stuart days. The village is mentioned in Domesday Book.

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Upwood

St Peter, open, has many Norman features and is a pleasingly simple building but I've found it to be one of those churches that are chiefly forgettable and for the life of me I don't know why. The setting is lovely, the interior simple and pleasing and it should be memorable but, for me, it just isn't.

ST PETER. The nave has a Norman N arcade, but above it appear the traces of two Norman windows from the time before the arcade was built. The arcade is later C12. Round piers, cruciform multi-scalloped capitals, one-step arches with two tiny chamfers. The W bay was rebuilt when the tower was built, but the Norman pier shows that such a bay had existed already in the C12. Norman also the chancel arch, depressed rounded. In the chancel N and S walls a long round-headed lancet, i.e. late C12. The tower is late C13, see the bell-openings with two sub-arches on a polygonal shaft. To the W a small Dec niche with a kneeling figure and a soul in a napkin. The S arcade is ambiguous. The arches are C13, but the capitals Perp. - (FONT COVER. Jacobean, with nicely decorated ribs. GMCH) - SCREENS. Modest screens of one-light divisions to chancel and N chapel. - STAINED GLASS. In two S aisle windows good C15 canopies. - PLATE. Spanish silver-gilt Dish ornamented in repoussé, the centre engraved with an Annunciation, partly enamelled. Early C15. - Cup and Cover Paten 1613-14. - MONUMENTS. Tablet to Peter Phesaunt d. 1649, still Elizabethan in style. Latin inscription. - Tablet to Sir Richard and Lady Bickerton. She died in 1811. Urn above inscription.

UPWOOD. It seemed all cottages and haystacks, we thought, except for Upwood House in its small park, its walls and its big chimneys much as they were 250 years ago.

But we found in its church one of the most beautiful small things that ever left Spain, an alms-dish about nine inches wide, the masterpiece of a craftsman who died long before they brought his countryman Columbus home in chains. It has an engraving of the Annunciation, and in its two wonderful borders is elaborate ornament showing strange animals among leaves.

Here, in memory of one of King Charles’s judges, is a pheasant perched above his coat-of-arms, for his name was Peter Phesaunt. He must have seen the carpenters making the roof over the chancel in the first year of the Civil War; he would hear them talking of the bad times they were living in, though none of them would dream of the king walking out to die. The church has two Norman windows in the chancel, three Norman arches in the north arcade, and a queer chancel arch looking as if it had been pushed out of shape in the 800 years since they left it. The roofs of the nave and the aisle have tracery carved before an Englishman had seen a printed book, and there are a few bench-ends of the same century. The font is 500 years older than the 17th century pyramid which covers it. The chancel has a magnificent screen with seven bays between panels, and there is a smaller screen in the north aisle, both the work of 15th century men.

Much later is a roughly carved altar table and a money chest. A little old glass in two windows is 15th century, the fragments showing oak leaves and small figures. A kneeling figure and a lady in a wimple have looked out on the churchyard since King John’s day.

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Ramsey

St Thomas a Becket, open, is a] a very large Norman building attached to a large tower, rebuilt in 1672, with some excellent Morris & Co glass and b] is not, technically, a church at all but rather the hospital for Ramsey Abbey, the gatehouse of which lies to the  south of the church.

This splendid building would normally be the church of the day but it was facing stiff competition from two Cambridgeshire churches later in the day - Over and Swavesey.

ST THOMAS OF CANTERBURY. This is not the original dedication; there was none, and with this is connected the sensational impact of the building. It was not built as a church at all; for at the time to which most of its details point, the laymen had parochial rights in the abbey church. It was built as a HOSPITIUM, i.e. a guesthouse or maybe a hospital. Such a hospital was founded c.11I80 and seems to have been dissolved before 1291. A dedication date 1237 for the parish church appears in the literature but seems unconfirmed. As a guesthouse-hospital its position is not unusual (cf. Sawtry). Its size appears spectacularly large, but it is not larger than other hospitals, e.g. the former Hospital of St John at Huntingdon of a few years earlier. The details of the building point to dates between c.1180 and c.1190. Work proceeded from E to W. The chancel is pure Norman, and it is distinguished by a heavy rib-vault with broad, unmoulded ribs. The chancel arch has triple responds, the main shaft keeled, and scallop capitals. There were S and N two-bay chapels as well. That is recognizable from outside (i.e. for the N from the vestry). The supports have keeling again, and apart from scallop capitals one with some kind of waterleaf. The E wall has three lancets, still round-headed and inside with a continuous roll, but an almond-shaped window above and a small round-headed one in the gable. But the chancel arch is again pointed. The aisle walls have all Late Perp windows, but inside the Late Norman or rather Transitional story goes on. There are seven bays of large, spacious arcading, and there were formerly eight. The arches are all of one step and one slight chamfer and pointed, and the piers are a most instructive assortment of late C12 possibilities. They ought to be looked at one by one. The sections from E to W go as follows: triple respond with keeling, quatrefoil with thin shafts rather indistinctly attached to the foils, quatrefoil with subsidiary diagonal shafts, round, quatrefoil with subsidiary shafts all keeled, octagonal, eight keeled shafts. The capitals are as varied. They still comprise many scallops (E responds, but also pretty far W), waterleaf of several varieties, and crockets of several varieties but none of French purity. The W doorway ends this story. It is probably re-set. Even here there is still waterleaf, and even some more conservative Late Norman capital types. The arch here, with several rolls, is still round. There are three orders of shafts, with shaft-rings. The doorway is built into a W tower which in its present form, ashlar-faced and big, is of 1672. But the bell-openings and other places, e.g. the arch to the nave, show clearly the re-use of C13 materials. If then a W tower was built into the hospitium by then, the use must have changed and the building become a church. - FONT. Hexagonal, absolutely plain, and of some species of dark marble. Probably C13 too. The existence of a font, as Mr Dickinson remarked to me, would also point to parochial use in the C13 - i.e. if the font is in its original habitat. - LECTERN. The stem is C15, with diagonally set, openwork, traceried supports. The rotating top is mostly C19. - PAINTING. Dim remains of a man and an angel in the nave above the N arcade. - STAINED GLASS. Much of Morris & Co., but all, except the S aisle Adoration of the Child, of after the deaths of Morris and Burne-Jones. The dates recorded are about 1920. - There is also completely indifferent glass in the S aisle signed by Morris & Sons, but there is no risk of confounding the one with the other. - PLATE. Cup and Cover Paten of 1568-9; Cup and Paten on foot of 1648-9; Britannia silver Flagon of 1712-13; Cup and Cover Paten of 1730-1 ; Paten on foot and Almsdish of 1838-9. - MONUMENTS. W. H. Fellowes d. 1837. Large, ornate standing monument in the Gothic style with two small allegorical figures. By Hopper. The Fellowes family had been lords of the manor since 1737. - (Memorial to Edward Fellowes, 1843-4. Cartouche with garlands a la Gibbons. This and the leaf decoration look very improbable for 1844. GMCH)

The GATEHOUSE is an uncommonly ornate piece. Part of it is now at Hinchingbrooke. What remains is E of the original carriageway. It has a small doorway from the inner side with a two-light oriel window over, all with fleuron and quatrefoil friezes. The buttresses are panelled. In the gatehouse on the ground floor is the MONUMENT to Ailwin who founded the abbey. It is of Purbeck (Alwalton?) marble and dates from about 1230, and resembles the abbots’ monuments of Peterborough. The head is in a cinquefoiled pointed arch. The face has a short beard. Stiff-leaf crockets run up the edges. - Also a Norman (?) stone with blank arcading and some bosses found in the churchyard wall. They may be C14 work.

RAMSEY. It stands on what was once an island in the Fens, with a few old houses that were not destroyed in its great fire of the 18th century, some ruins of an abbey and of a moated house, and a church magnificent. In the old abbey has been found a splendid home for the grammar school, and an inscription tells us that “this ancient monastic building has become once again a seat of learning through the generosity of Diana Rosamund Broughton whose childhood home it was.” She lies in the churchyard. One of the fine houses is Bodsey House, which every traveller likes to see, once a hermitage attached to the Abbey and now a private dwelling-place. It is supposed by tradition to have been a hunting-lodge of King Canute.

The lonely ruin in the moat was once Biggin House, a 16th century structure crumbling away. The ancient Saxon abbey has vanished, but in its place is the 15th century gatehouse with panelled walls and buttresses and two lovely windows, leading us to the fine house which was built when the monastery came down. Some of its walls were raised by Sir Henry Cromwell, and in them are 13th century stones and a lady chapel going back 600 years. Through all these changes this place has preserved the marble figure of a man who may have known Ramsey and its abbey in the days of King John. There is a treasure from the old abbey in the Victoria and Albert Museum, a silver censer 600 years old.

Ramsey’s church is the finest Norman building in the county, and truly noble it is with the 14 arches of its long nave as sound as when the Normans left them. They rest on splendid pillars, no two pairs alike, all enriched with bold carving with foliage. Standing by the tower and looking to the chancel, this lofty nave is like an avenue of stone, about 100 feet long. It has become a church in spite of itself, for it was built as a house of charity.

The small chancel is an architectural gem, with three steps to the altar; very charming it looks through the chancel arch, with a simple vaulted roof and three graceful east windows, above which is another window shaped like an eye. Four chancel windows have fine modern glass with Christ, the Madonna, and angels, and a window in an aisle has portraits of three saints with scenes from their lives. They are Thomas Becket and his martyrdom, Ethelreda laying the foundation stone of Ely Cathedral, and the funeral of St Felix in the ancient abbey.

From the old abbey comes the lectern, perhaps the most precious historic possession of the church. It was used by the monks in the abbey’s greatest days, and its fine English oak seems strong enough to last another 500 years. It has a book chained to it.

There is an Elizabethan chalice, a 13th century font, and on one of the walls a painting of a man in a red cloak is fading away after six centuries. The churchyard has a fragment of a 14th century cross, and we noticed two odd uses of ancient coffin stones, one made into a stile and one into a lintel over a door.

There is a pathetic page in the Ramsey registers. It records the burial of William Cromwell, Oliver’s cousin, and it is pathetic because it is believed he was innocently responsible for bringing the plague to the village. He had a piece of cloth sent down from London in 1666 to make him a fine coat, and it was cut up but never finished, for before the coat could be worn he and all his family, and the tailor and 400 people, had perished from the plague.

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Ramsey St Mary

St Mary, locked no keyholder, is a not very likeable large new build and I'm fairly sure the interior would have been as drab as the exterior had I gained access. It felt rather rundown and unloved.

ST MARY. Built in 1858 at the expense of Miss Emma Fellowes (cf. Ramsey). It is a strikingly large church for its situation in the sparsely populated fenland. But churches in such neglected parts were specially urgently needed (cf. e.g. the Parts of Lindsey in Lincs.). Yellow brick with a NW tower, nave, aisles, and chancel. Tracery of before and after 1300. The chancel arch rests on demi-figures of angels with a positive-organ and a lute. The STAINED GLASS is original.

Mee ignored it.

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Little Raveley

St James was deconsecrated in 1975 and is now a private house.

ST JAMES. Nave and chancel, no bellcote. Perp, but the two-light E window and the chancel arch Dec. - FONT. Perp. Against the underside an eagle, a tree( ?), and two unidentified figures. - STAINED GLASS. Small fragments in one nave N window. - PLATE. Cup and Cover Paten, late C16.

LITTLE RAVELEY.  It is rightly called little, for there are very few houses and a small church. But it has a chancel 700 years old and a nave of Chaucer’s day. The chancel arch and the roof come from the 16th century, and the altar table with a decorated rail is 17th century. An Elizabethan craftsman made the altar cup, and a 15th century sculptor shaped the font, with its carvings of a bishop and an eagle. In the windows of the nave are fragments of red and gold glass which have been shining undisturbed for over 400 years.

Kings Ripton

St Peter, locked no keyholder, is a Hobbiton building, slightly ramshackle and rundown but utterly charming. Simon Knox gained [accidental] access in 2015 and, judging from his Flickr set, keeping it locked means I haven't missed much but the principle of locked churches stands. "Not much of any great excitement" doesn't stand as an excuse to keep your church locked particularly when it's in the heart of the village as here; as I was taking externals two cars slowed down and the occupants eyed me suspiciously, surely proving sufficient deterrent to unwell wishers.

ST PETER. A rough building. W tower, nave with N aisle, and chancel. The chancel PISCINA is of the second third of the C13, but the exterior of the chancel is faced with early bricks, mostly headers. Perp N arcade of three bays; standard elements. - FONT. Square, with tapering sides. Norman stylized leaves on the sides, including on three sides colonnettes to separate the leaf motifs.

KINGS RIPTON. Its farm has been here about 400 years and its church about twice as long. The best possession of the village is its splendid Norman font, with a massive bowl enriched with foliage, all as dignified as when its craftsmen finished it 800 years ago. Its clerestoried church is 700 years old, and has one of the rare stone altars older than the Reformation. The roof over the nave rests on eight carved heads.

A curious thing we noticed on one of the walls, a word about a curate here who does not seem to have enjoyed the charms of this countryside or the friendliness of these people, for we read that “his lot, alas, was not so envious here.” Poor William Hodgson!

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Abbots Ripton

St Andrew, along with St Peter at Kings Ripton, is notorious for always being locked but I was still disappointed as I thought I'd possibly find it open during Holy Week.

It's a fairly run of the mill building in a pleasing churchyard and I liked it a lot; such a shame it's needlessly inaccessible.

ST ANDREW. Externally all Perp, of different materials and dates, with windows with two-centred arches and panel tracery, and four-centred arches, and also - in the tower W - uncusped. The bell-openings of the tower may well be post Reformation. E.E. S doorway and E.E. S arcade piers. But the spacing of the bays is too wide for E.E. work, and the arches are Perp. So is the W respond. The N arcade is Perp throughout, with capitals to the shafts towards the openings, a moulded continuous order, and the outer order or hood-mould given its own minor shafts with capitals towards nave and aisle. In the S aisle the Perp windows are set internally in much wider blank arches. Perp one-bay N chapel. The chancel roof has figures against the wall-posts. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with plain quatrefoils. - PLATE. Plate of 1656-7; Flagon of 1744-5 ; two Cups of 1828-9. - BELL. One bell is of c.1400, by William Dawe.

ABBOTS RIPTON. Its Moat Farm has timbers of Shakespeare’s day and an ancient gargoyle watching all who pass; and there are charming 16th and 17th century cottages by the church, which is a dignified place among the trees, with ancient stone heads looking out from its windows. The tower, about 400 years old, looks down on a nave, aisle, and porch of the 13th century, and has a bell which was ringing over these fields long before the tower was built, for it was made about 1400, another being dated 1671. There is a font with carving of the 15th century, a 13th century piscina, an Elizabethan altar table, and a window glowing with shields in fragments of 15th century glass; but perhaps its best possession is a group of figures looking down on the chancel, six men and women who have been holding up the beams since the 15th century, four more on the splendid timbers.

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Wood Walton

St Andrew was declared redundant in 1972 and came under the auspices of the Friends of Friendless Churches in 1979. When they took it on subsidence was a major problem, its built on clay, and whilst a huge amount of conservation has occurred there's still a lot to do.

The FFT site says: "St Andrew’s is one of the most acute of all the conservation challenges faced by the Friends. The church has been moving for a century or more and it was this coupled with its remoteness which led to its abandonment thirty years ago. We have repaired the exterior since then and have been monitoring the internal movement before resorting to a full scale programme of conservation."

"We have applied to English Heritage for grant aid but have a lot more to do to ensure this church is repaired and restored for future generations."

 Apart from for Ride and Stride the church is kept locked.

ST ANDREW. Outside the village, by the railway line. Dec W tower with pyramid roof. Dec chancel with straight-headed windows, including a low-side window. The S arcade is E.E., of four bays with two round piers and arches of one step and one chamfer. The W pier and W respond and the E respond are Perp. Perp also the N arcade. The piers are double-chamfered, the outer chamfers continuous, the inner with capitals, two with shields, two with crenellation. - STAINED GLASS. In a chancel N window two complete C14 figures. - PLATE. Cup of 1821-2. - MONUMENTS. An unusual number of early coffin lids with foliated crosses.

WOOD WALTON. It gathers round a green with chestnuts shading an old cross. For 17 centuries it had a secret hoard of money, several urns containing some 2000 early Roman coins which were found last century ; but its treasure is the church among the fields. It has a little glass among the oldest in the county, rare fragments that were glowing here 600 years ago. In it is St Catherine in blue and gold, and St Laurence in a green robe. The glass is in the 14th century chancel. The south arcade is 13th century, and there is a stone coffin lid which may have been here when it was built. The north arcade has embattled capitals like tiny castles.

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Sawtry

All Saints, locked no keyholder. Dull exterior but it would have been nice to see inside since that's where the interest is.

ALL SAINTS. 1880 by Sir A.Blomfield. With a very steep bellcote of tricky details. Old materials were much used, e.g. the two-bay arcade of the N chapel, the late C13 N aisle W window with bar tracery, and one straight-headed N window. - Inside, from Sawtry Abbey, a number of C13 ARCHITECTURAL FRAGMENTS, and also some TILES, C13 and C14. - STAINED GLASS. In two chancel windows, fragments from Sawtry Manor House, C15 and C16, including ten heads. - MONUMENTS. Four coffin lids with foliated crosses are displayed. - Brasses to Sir William le Moyne d. 1404 and wife. Outstandingly good, in line-work as well as interpretation. The figures are 4ft 6 in long.

SAWTRY. It has a high distinction and a noble pride, for here lived almost the first Englishman who walked into the fire for his faith. He was William Sawtry.

His house has gone, for he lived about 600 years ago, but this enchanting place, where naturalists hunt rare butterflies, has still the lanes and fiields he knew. The bell that summoned him to prayer still summons Sawtry folk, and there are tiles in the church on which walked the monks of Sawtry Abbey whom the brave William would know. Nearly 600 years old, the tiles are set in a frame like a jig-saw puzzle. There are ancient pictures in glass, some of it from the manor house which William may have seen; there are ten faces 500 years old, fragments of a 17th century Betrayal, a lion and a unicorn, and cherub’s faces set among oak leaves.

The church William Sawtry knew was refashioned last century, the stones from two old churches being used to make the new one. It has kept the 13th century arcade in the chancel and three old windows. There is an altar table 300 years old, two old chests (one painted), and four 13th century coffin lids.

But Sawtry’s chief treasure is the fine brass portrait of Sir William le Moyne. He must have known the brave William, for he died soon after Sawtry’s martyrdom. He is here in armour with his sword and dagger, his feet on a lion, his head supported by a little monk holding a scourge, apparently a symbol of servitude. His wife is with him in a veiled headdress with a dog at her feet. It is one of the finest brasses in the county, delicately engraved in 1404.

William of Sawtry comes upon the stage of history at King’s Lynn, where in 1399 he was a priest at St Margaret’s, suspected of political sympathy with recent disturbances in the country, and known to be a resolute follower of Wycliffe, a Lollard. Henry the Fourth was no bigot, but Richard the Second, whom he had deposed, was believed to incline to the Lollards, so Henry’s policy must differ. To this he was urged by Archbishop Arundel, friend of his exile, and a prime mover in his election as King. Moreover the Lollards were held to have travelled so far from Wycliffe as now to propose methods harmful to State and Church.

Sawtry’s offence was not political, but purely doctrinal. He insisted that even if bread after consecration might be the body of Christ it yet retained the elements of bread. He refused to adore the Cross, maintained that money spent on pilgrimages might be better distributed to the poor, and declared that men were more worthy of adoration than angels. He appealed to the King and Parliament, and although the Archbishop wrestled with him for three days he met every argument by quotation from the Scriptures. Arundel was anxious to convince and save him, but Sawtry refused submission, "save where such decision be not contrary to the divine will."

And so sentence was passed, Sawtry was unfrocked and degraded from the priesthood, and burned in chains at Smithfield on March 2, 1401. He was the first Christian martyr in England since the Conquest, but not the first man sent to the stake for his religious opinions, for in 1222 a deacon who embraced the Jewish faith was burned at Oxford, and, of course, Alban had been martyred in Roman days.

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Glatton

St Nicholas was the first church in a long time that  I was really angered by finding it not just locked but padlocked with no keyholders listed. This was not so much because I desperately wanted to see something inside {it actually looks quite dull inside by what I've seen on Flickr] but more that the church is in the middle of the village by a busyish road and there is no obvious reason it should be padlocked shut.

Having said that the location is attractive and the exterior is cracking but that didn't stop me heading off to Conington with a bad taste in my mouth, I think it might have been bitterness.

ST NICHOLAS. A proud, ashlar-faced Perp W tower. The doorway has traceried spandrels, and the quatrefoil base-frieze runs right round it. Above it a four-light transomed window, then a blank crenellation frieze, to the W with quatrefoils, to the W also a beautifully rich transomed four-light window over, and above that, to the same design, the bell-openings. Top frieze, battlements, pinnacles with animal supporters on them. The body of the church is embattled. The aisles embrace the tower. The S aisle is of c.1290-1300 externally - see the intersecting tracery in the W and E and the Y-tracery in the S windows. The chancel has one low-side window with Y-tracery too, but the rest is Perp, over-restored in 1857. The N transept is again of the date of the S aisle - see the E windows with a quatrefoil placed diagonally above two lights. On the N vestry to the E another quatrefoil frieze. As for the interior, the chancel arch goes with the chancel, but the three brackets above it for the rood are Perp. And the arcades are earlier than anything outside, though much changed. They were built about 1200, but were then considerably lower. They are of three bays with round piers and moulded octagonal capitals - except for one which is still many-scalloped. That is a Norman motif, but so are the round arches. They already have double chamfers. In the transept is a big bracket with nailhead - i.e., like the window, late C13. The vestry is vaulted in two bays of quadripartite ribbing. The clerestory is of course Perp; large three-light windows. The windows are unusually large for Huntingdonshire clerestories. - SCREEN. High, Perp, with one-light divisions. Ogee arches and panel tracery - all almost entirely C19. - BENCHES. A specially good set of poppyheads on the ends, including e.g. a bearded man and a woman with a square headdress. - PAINTING. On the nave E wall, N St Mary Magdalene, standing, against a background with ornamental crowns, S Christ rising from the tomb, a kneeling priest round the corner on the nave S wall. Both are of c.1500. - PLATE. Cup of 1695-6. - MONUMENT. Large, unidentified hanging monument with two arched recesses with shell tops between three columns. On the columns weird short pilasters of bulgy outline. The most likely date is c.1600.

GLATTON. One of the fairest villages in the county (the village in which Beverley Nichols wrote his first garden book) it has a noble church and lovely houses. Many of them are 17th century, and one of the cottages is a gem, its thatched roof overhanging white walls and grand timbers.

Who could pass this church without stopping to admire its parapets and windows, and who could come to it without pausing to look up at the lovely corbel table of 25 little faces outside the south wall? The Norman arches of the nave remain, and both doorways of the  roodloft. The transepts are 13th century, the spacious south aisle is 14th, and the clerestory, the small chancel, and the massive tower (which seems to take up more than its fair share of the nave) are all 15th. The tower has great dignity, a beautiful west doorway, a neat band of tracery, and a fine parapet with heraldic beasts at the corners. In the sill of one of its top windows are some stones thought to be Saxon.

Opening out of the chancel is a beautiful chapel once used as a vestry, a handsome little room with rough walls and stone vaulting, a fireplace built up, and a 16th century studded door on very fine hinges. On the chancel wall are two stone brackets helping to support the roof, one with a grotesque head seeming to be pulling down one side of its face like an impish schoolboy.

There is an altar table with Jacobean carving, a 17th century pulpit and chest, and a modern font on a 15th century base. The chancel screen has tracery and foliage from the hands of a craftsman born before America was on the map; and there are 16 benches he might perhaps have sat on, some enriched with carvings of heads, and one with two birds bowing to each other. But what this place perhaps treasures most is the group of paintings on both sides of the chancel arch. They have been here 500 years and are still fairly clear, showing Mary Magdalene in a black tunic and white cloak, Christ rising from the tomb, and a kneeling priest.

In our own time there has been dug up in the foundations a very old stone which is now in the west wall indoors; it has a crude carving of a couple looking as old as Adam and Eve. There is a chalice of 1675, and the registers date from 1578.

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Denton

All Saints, ruin, is an incredibly romantic ruin in a wood [or possibly a copse] and what I particularly like about it is that whilst the fabric has been stabilised, and the building is obviously looked after, it has been allowed to retain a certain shabbiness which is the secret of its charm. It is not unusual to find overly restored ruins with chick pea gravel and manicured lawns which always detracts the romance for me.

ALL SAINTS. In ruins. It was essentially a C17 church. Nave and chancel, and a small, short SW tower. Certain minor old parts were re-used (e.g. the C13 chancel arch), but the windows - three lights with transom in the nave, two lights in the chancel - are of 1629, and the mouldings of the chancel arch responds too. The N porch (not the mouldings of the entrance) is of 1665 , the W tower of unknown date. The E window tracery looks c.1800. The work of 1629 was paid for by Sir Robert Cotton, the antiquary (cf. Conington), the work of 1665 by his grandson Sir John.

DENTON. From this tiny hamlet came one of England’s famous men, and Scotland’s Robert Bruce owned it. Bruce was patron of the living when he was Earl of Huntingdon.

The small church has a chancel arch 700 years old, but the rest of it was new in the 17th century. It has three old doors still swinging on their hinges, one with a big wooden lock, all made by carpenters who would hear the latest news of Cromwell. They may have made the altar table and the altar rails, and the old part of the canopy of the 18th century pulpit. Three bench-ends in the nave, one with fleur-dc-lys, were made in Shakespeare’s day, and there are two Elizabethan chalices.

Denton’s proud son is Sir Robert Cotton, an antiquarian famous in Europe. The house he was born in has gone and a barn has taken its place, but the font at which he was baptised in 1570 is here. He was one of the most learned men of his day, and his Library is now a priceless national possession. It was his boast that he descended from kings of Scotland who owned the land of this place. He lies amid much pomp at Conington.

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Caldecote

St Mary Magdalene, redundant, was deconsecrated in the mid 1970s and converted for domestic use in the late 1980s. It is now a private house.

ST MARY MAGDALENE. 1874 by Edward]. Tarver. Nave with double-bellcote and chancel. The chancel lancets and the shafts of the chancel E window are C13. So is the handsome DOUBLE PISCINA with a fleur-de-lis in the spandrel and the bracket opposite. The chancel arch responds are made up of twin-scalloped Norman capitals. The W window has a late C13 quatrefoil in the spandrel. - PULPIT. 1646. Plain panels and small arabesque panels over. - SOUTH DOOR. With C13 iron straps and scrolls.

CALDECOTE. It is one of the sleepy hollows with a church which has been refashioned without destroying the features of the 13th century church which went before it. The pulpit is 17th century, and there is a chest which has been keeping it company all the time. The font is 15th century. A stone coffin has been found hereabouts, six centuries old, and is now in the church; and a long walk away are the mounds and ditches of a village of forgotten time. The big house is Washingley Hall a 17th century home in a fine park.

Elton

All Saints, open, is a sturdy perp, ashlar clad building with a prominent tower, set in a lovely churchyard and internally fairly run of the mill; for me the highlights were the two Saxon crosses and the very good turn of the 18th century Morris & Co windows.

ALL SAINTS. Outside Perp dominates, inside it is the decades around 1300. Proud ashlar-faced W tower with clasping buttresses, a base frieze, a doorway with traceried spandrels, a three-light W window with a niche over, three-light transomed bell-openings, a frieze below them and another at the top. No spire. High arch to the nave. Ashlar-faced also the S porch. Late Perp aisle windows. The aisles embrace the tower. Only the chancel points to what the interior has to say. Here is a window with bar-tracery (quatrefoiled circle), a window with cusped Y-tracery, and one later one with flowing tracery. Inside, the chancel arch is definitely some time before 1300. Triple shafts and nailhead. The SEDILIA and PISCINA and the AUMBRY opposite have cinque-cusped arches. Then the arcades. Four bays. Quatrefoil piers, differing a little in the details. Arches S with one chamfer and one hollow chamfer, except the easternmost, which, like the N aisle, already has two sunk quadrants. - FONT. Octagonal, with simple cusped blank arches, c.1300 too. - BENCHES. The ends with traceried blank arches and also some linenfold. - CROSSES. In the churchyard two Anglo-Danish Crosses with wheel-heads and interlace. - STAINED GLASS. By Morris & Co. chancel S (1891), tower W (1893), and S aisle W (1901). - PLATE. Two Cups and Cover Patens 1571-2; two Patens on foot and Flagon 1669-70. - MONUMENTS. In the S aisle N wall a carved coat of arms and inscription to Sir Richard Sapcote. - Robert Sapcote d 1601, a large incised slab (S aisle floor). - Tablets of black and white marble with columns to Sir Thomas Proby d. 1689 and Sir John d. 1710. - Lord Proby d. 1858. Tablet by Tyley. Georgian looking seated female figure in front of a grey, summarily indicated mausoleum with arched entrance.*

* I missed the Sapcote monuments.

ELTON. We should come to see its autumn glory by the river Nene, a spot which charmed us with its cottages, its grey 17th century almshouses, and its 16th century parsonage with big gables and tall chimneys, one of the loveliest old houses in the county.

It was for two years the home of a man whose name is known to the ends of the hymn-book world, Frederick William Faber. He came here from Ambleside in the autumn of 1842, when Wordsworth wrote to him, saying, “I do not say you are wrong, but England loses a poet.” It was while he was here that he became a Roman Catholic, and when he left he was on his way to fame as the founder of Brompton Oratory and a writer of beautiful hymns.

One of his delights was the charm of Elton Park, with its 200 acres of loveliness and its fine hall, of which the road gives us a peep. The 15th century gatehouse, with its overhanging parapet, is very imposing, and the hall, refashioned in the 17th century by Sir Thomas Proby and still occupied by his descendant, has a magnificent collection of pictures, Bibles, and other treasures, including portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Most of the clerestoried church belongs to the beginning of the 14th century, but the wide chancel arch is 13th century and the clerestory 15th. The porch, also 15th century, has two scratched sundials. The 15th century tower is majestic. Remarkable for its two bands of ornament, it has a niche ornamented with a bird which has kept watch since the day the builders left. Two things in the churchyard are older still, finely ornamented crosses with wheel heads, believed to be the work of Saxons who may have fought at Hastings.

The beautiful stone seats and the piscina have been here since Chaucer’s day, and the font has kept them company all the time. Its modern cover is crowned with a small figure of John the Baptist. There is a chair carved about 300 years ago, and a modern altar table with two painted angels which have come down in the world, having been up in the roof in the 15th century.

Here sleeps Robert Sapcote, whose portrait is engraved on a stone in the chancel. He is in armour, and was brought here from Elton Hall in 1601. The south aisle has many monuments to the Probys, who became Earls of Carysfort, the last earl with this title having been sleeping here since 1909. He was a knight of St Patrick, and his banner hangs over his monument. One of the Probys was John, who died in 1828, after a long career as a politician far enough ahead of his day to support Wilberforce. His son Granville, who was 17 when he went on board Nelson’s flagship, fought in the Battle of the Nile and at Trafalgar, and became an admiral.

We should come to this fine church when the last sheaves of corn have been gathered and when the trees are crimson and gold, for the nave and the chancel are a picture of delight when the villagers bring a little autumn indoors. Very proud they are to remember that the first harvest festival in England was held in their church, the lovely idea of Piers Claughton, rector from 1845 to 1859. He became Bishop of St Helena and St Colombo, but his heart was in this village, and he has been sleeping since 1884 in this spacious churchyard, like a lovely garden shaded by the elms he loved. There is a tribute to his memory in the church and in St Paul’s Cathedral, and he deserves a niche in the Temple of Fame for teaching us to be thankful for seedtime and harvest, and to lay on our altars the first-fruits of the earth.

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Wansford

If I'm honest St Mary, open, which is in a lovely village setting and has an intimate churchyard, is at the end of the day little more than a rather nice exterior built around a fantastic Norman font. Another point of interest here, although not church related, is the bridge across the Nene.

ST MARY. The church is N, the village S of the Nene. In the W wall a Saxon window which now looks into the C13 tower. This has lancet windows, bell-openings of two lights with a separating shaft, a dogtooth frieze, and a not too tall broach spire with two tiers of lucarnes in alternating directions. The spire seems early C14. The S wall of the nave and the porch redone in 1663 and hence very domestic-looking. But the coarse s doorway is of c.1200: two orders of shafts and a round arch. A little later the N arcade of two bays. Short quatrefoil pier, a little nailhead decoration, round double-chamfered arches. The chancel is of 1902. (The PULPIT and SEDILIA have Jacobean panels. GMCH) - FONT. Circular, Norman. Primitively carved figures under arches. A border of leaf-trail above. The figures include a Baptism, two Knights fighting, two other groups in communication. Dr Zarnecki supports c.1120 as the date. - PLATE. Cup, c.1570; Cover Paten dated 1570.

WANSFORD BRIDGE. A splendid specimen, in spite of the irregularity of its arches. On the village side there is after a small round arch a very wide one, dated 1795, and then the cutwaters begin on both sides. The next three arches are of 1672-4, the following seven of 1577 (dated). These latter have stepped arches.

WANSFORD. Here the River Nene makes its great eastern bend towards the open freedom of the North Sea and is crossed by the western arm of the Roman road to York, our Great North Road. The motorist coming from Huntingdonshire has a striking view of this lovely old bridge, with bastions and ten wide arches, with the meadows on the river bank, and the ancient church in the distance. For nearly 2000 years this has been the highway for all men passing to and fro between York and London. The old bridge, only 14 feet wide, had 13 arches, and in 1796 part of the south side of it was rebuilt after great destruction by a flood. Now a new bridge has been opened a little way downstream, enabling motor traflic to bypass the twisting road through the village.

The three attractions of Wansford are the old bridge, the old church, and the old inn. The inn is named after a queer story told by Richard Braithwaite in a doggerel rhyme of Charles Stuart’s day. He tells of one Barnabee, who in his travels reached Wansford while the plague was raging there, and, fearing to enter a house, slept on a haycock on the river bank and was carried off in his sleep by the flood. They believed in the story enough to name the fine old inn The Haycock, which has the date 1632 on a stone. It was one of the most important inns at which the stage coach stopped on its four-days journey from north to south; and as it stands today, with its high-pitched roof and its wide gables, with the signboard of Barnabee on his haycock, it is a delightful reminder of olden days. We may say that it speaks of the past and of the future, for The Haycock was one of the first hotels in England to provide a private landing place for flying men. The house stands just outside the county, on the Huntingdonshire side of the bridge.

Something of the church has been here for a thousand years, for the eastern wall of the tower was the west wall of the Saxon church, and high up in it, looking on to the nave, is a very remarkable Saxon window. The 13th century builders of the tower and spire covered up this curious window, and a gallery long hid it from view inside, but it was rediscovered on the removal of the gallery, and in it were found fragments of the original sticks used by the Saxon builders to hold the splay in place, an early example of reinforced concrete. On the sides of the window are the marks of the Saxon builders’ tools.

When the tower was built up outside the Saxon wall the aisle was added on the north side of the nave, and 200 years later, in the 15th century, the clerestory windows were raised. The north arcades spring from clustered columns with bead ornament on their capitals. Between the Saxon and the English builders came the Normans, who gave the church the high doorway through which we come in, with two columns on each side, an indication of the changing style. They gave the church something more, its magnificent font, a round bowl with 13 arches under a winding band of foliage. Four of the arches filled with foliage, and in the other nine we see Our Lord with his right hand raised in blessing, six priests or disciples, and two warriors.The priests are holding books, and the warriors, with coats reaching only to their knees, are holding clubs and heart-shaped shields.

The chancel is 20th century, and in it are five Jacobean panels covering the space on the wall once occupied by the sedilia in the ancient church. There are four more of these in the top row of panels the modern pulpit. The porch was built in the 17th century to protect the Norman doorway.

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Upton

Unusually for me I'd done some research on St John the Baptist, locked keyholder listed, because I'd included it on an earlier visit but the postcode listed on achurchnearyou took me to Sutton [for the record the correct postcode for Upton is PE6 7BB], so I knew this was going to be special.

The location, up a low rise in the middle of grass fields and surrounded by sheep, is stunning, the exterior attractive and the interior, with its quirky mix of Norman and C17th building, is extraordinary quite unlike any interior I've seen before. All in all very special.

ST JOHN BAPTIST. A very odd but very engaging church. Intensely domestic front. Nave and N aisle of the same width and height and with the same gables and domestic windows. The windows are straight-headed, of arched lights. A third smaller gable in the middle with a buttress up its centre. The other windows also all straight-headed. Chancel rebuilt 1842. The rest looks C17 Gothic - and such it is indeed. All the more surprising is the interior. For now we are transported into a much earlier time. The chancel arch has early C12 shafts with scalloped capitals with decoration and a C17 arch. N arcade of two bays, late C12. Shortish circular pier, square abacus. Capitals with upright leaves and crockets. Arches C17. The C17 work is connected with the erection of the MONUMENT to Sir William Dove d. 1633 and his two wives. The monument stands in the N aisle, and the aisle was rebuilt to receive the monument. The floor is raised by four steps, and the space is separated by a big classical balustrade with vertically symmetrical balusters. The monument is a four-poster. Three recumbent effigies, that of the second wife (d. 1665) in wood, i.e. made after the rest of the monument. One would like to date it from the balustrade and the big open segmental pediments as c.165-60 rather than c.1633. - COMMUNION RAIL. Jacobean with flat openwork balusters. - PULPIT. Jacobean, elaborate, with tester. - PLATE. Slender Beaker, c.1610 (German P); Paten, 1680; Cup, 1769.

UPTON. It is near Peterborough, and not to be confused with Upton by Northampton. The road runs by its thatched cottages and stops at the gate of a field in which stands a little towerless church made new in the 17th and 19th centuries. It has three gables on its west wall, the middle one for the bell, and it still admits us by a doorway through which the Normans came. We see the influence of the Normans also in the north arcade and in the chancel arch, but the capitals supporting these round arches have the stiff foliage which is the sure mark of the 13th century men.

This ancient arcade divides the nave from the Dove chapel, and its arches are filled in with a 17th century stone balustrade to form a screen. From this balustrade at one end steps lead to the great Dove Monument with classical columns and arches. It is the tomb of Sir William Dove, lord of the manor in the 17th century and son of that eloquent Bishop of Peterborough whom Queen Elizabeth used to call her Silver Dove. Sir William lies in armour between two wives, Frances in a close-fitting hood and Dorothy in a dainty embroidered gown and lace fichu, her curls clustering round her face. The figure of Dorothy, who lived on for 32 years after her husband, is believed to be the work of Nicholas Stone. A doggerel verse would have us believe there was no one like this rich Elizabethan lady.

There are Jacobean altar rails, a Jacobean table, and a little masterpiece of a pulpit made for a corner; it is set on a standard and everywhere covered with delightful panels carved with bunches of grapes. Two old candlesticks are fixed to it. The 15th century font has a carved 17th century cover.

The old manor house of the Doves is now a farmhouse, and in the orchard remains a curious sundial which Bishop Dove is said to have set up.

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Wittering

I almost made a grave mistake at All Saints, locked but with a keyholder notice, by deciding not to bother with the interior since it didn't strike me as being likely to be of particular interest but as I was leaving I drove past the shop which acts as the keyholder and decided that since I was here I should, after all, have a look. And thank goodness I did because although there's little in the way of monuments the Saxon chancel arch is breathtaking and there is a very good 1968 NE chapel window by Harry Harvey.

The graveyard also has about 85 CWGC, mostly RAF, headstones which is far more than I've previously encountered in the area [obviously due to the adjoining RAF base]. In fact this area has the least amount of CWGC headstones than any other county I've covered.

ALL SAINTS. People who visit the church come to gaze at the Saxon chancel arch, which, in its cyclopean crudity, is without equal. A half-roll in the respond, a half-roll just outside the angle, a rectangular projection further out. Combined capital and abacus block 18 in. tall and tapering out towards the top but without any moulding whatever. The three mouldings or bands are carried on round the arch. It all makes even Barnack look refined. Yet of its rude force there can be no question. Perfect long-and-short work is preserved at the angles of the chancel and the nave (the NE angle to be seen inside). Mid C12 N arcade of two bays with big circular pier and square abacus. Many-scalloped capital. Similar triple-shafted responds. Arches with one big roll and an outer band of zigzag combined with lozenges and lozenges broken at r. angles. Late C13 W tower, see the pointed-trefoiled windows and the bell-openings of two lights with a quatrefoiled circle. Short spire with two tiers of lucarnes in alternating directions. Of about the same time the chancel S window and the S doorway of the nave. Early C14 N chapel, opening to the chancel in one arch of two chamfers, the inner on a head corbel. Early C14 also the tomb recess in the chapel. - STAINED GLASS. E window by Kempe, 1903.

WITTERING. For a thousand years it stood remote on a bleak upland between the Welland and the Nene, and all these years the work of the Saxons has remained untouched in the archway to its sacred altar. If there are any who believe that a thing cannot be simple and magnificent, let them come to Wittering and gaze upon its chancel arch.

Though the church has been refashioned by the Normans and the English builders who followed them, the simple nave and the low square chancel retain their ancient shape, and even in this county of famous Saxon towers we know of no piece of Saxon England more impressive than this massive chancel arch which looks today as it looked a thousand years ago, when its solid pieces were hewn into shape with rough axes, and these immense crude capitals were raised into their place. It is difficult to describe the sense of rude and overwhelming strength expressed in these huge blocks of stone, unchiselled, unworked, unadorned, masses of rock hewn out of the earth and brought to sanctuary in Alfred’s England. The arch rests on four pillars and has four orders, and it has the appearance of having been put together by primitive builders without any plan, yet put together with such strength and skill that in the warless world to come it may be standing in another thousand years.

The long and short work in the angles of both nave and chancel (some of it now within, owing to the addition of the north aisle and a chapel) is proof that this is the handiwork of the men who lived and died before the Conqueror set foot in England. The Normans came and added a fine arcade of two arches with zigzag and other bold carvings, and the 13th century English builders gave the church its tower and its bulging spire; they also built the porch with its deeply moulded inner doorway, and set windows in the south wall of the Saxon chancel, facing the pointed arch with two big queer faces on its moulding, one with a long tongue hanging out, the other with a veil across its mouth.

It is difficult not to be moved as we look at the simple stone of honour between the Norman and the Saxon arch in this small place, for on it one family name is repeated ten times, a witness to the devastation wrought by war in one small English village.

As we turn to take a last look at this fascinating little church, a tiny quatrefoil window not six inches across, so worn that it is almost round, seems rather like a human eye peeping out from the thick walls of the tower, and we notice against the outer wall of the church the coffin lid of a medieval priest.

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