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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