When I left I decided to make no reference to the following, but after spotting the contact number for access I've changed my mind; when I arrived an elderly gentleman was pottering around - I assume it was his appallingly parked car in the car park - and who I assumed was either grave tending or visiting (he appeared to be in his late eighties so I thought it likely he was tending his wife's grave). He couldn't have missed the fact that I was photographing the church and environs moving in a NWSE direction as one does (or perhaps that's just me). Having checked all the doors as I went round, which were all locked, I arrived back at the north aisle where a conveniently placed bench is placed under a clear glass window east of the north door, so as you, or I, do I stood on the bench and had a look at the interior but couldn't see much of interest as the angles were all wrong. As I was about to descend from the bench the south door opened and said old man entered the nave; a stroke of luck I thought to myself and scuttled round to the south porch - to find the south door locked. I rattled the door enough so that unless he was profoundly deaf he couldn't fail to hear me but to no avail. As I returned to the car I noticed two collections of coffins to the south and north of the tower which I'd missed earlier and the man, who I assume is a churchwarden, came around the SW corner so I gave him a cheery afternoon to which the miserable fucker barely responded and left with a distinct wish to let all his tires down [I could have done at least two before he got to his car] but being British didn't.
St Peter is awesome, in the proper sense of the word, and is down for a revisit.
Revisited today [29/06/18] but misunderstood that you have to call ahead to arrange a visit - as usual not much good if you're not local. Good news, however, they're now open Mon-Fri 10.30-12.30 - again not of much use if you're not local. I presuppose that this church is already past its congregations' upkeep ability so await a CCT takeover and accessibility - hopefully soon.
ST PETER. Yaxley church is one of the most rewarding in Huntingdonshire. It is large, and it represents all medieval styles after the Norman and yet does not lose its unity. One niche in the E wall of the S transept with a round head and a continuous roll moulding might even be accepted as Late Norman, but it is most probably re-set. The transepts themselves are E.E., see the E lancets and, in the N transept, a W lancet too. But the N transept in its N wall received a three-light window of stepped lancet lights with trefoils in the tracery, which is typical of c. 1300, and the same type also occurs in the N chapel. The S transept on the other hand had its S window replaced early in the C14 by a large window with elongated reticulated tracery. To the late C13 belongs the W bay of the S aisle, which now embraces the later tower. The windows are of three stepped lancet lights as in the N chapel but without tracery, and it is incidentally worth noticing how wide this S aisle already was. Such wide aisles only came in in the later C13 (cf. e.g. Grantham). Again late C13 the S doorway. It has three orders of thin shafts with rings and three orders of thin roll mouldings, two with fillets. Of c.1300 the two E windows of the N aisle. They have three stepped lancet lights with tracery under one arch. The other aisle windows, N and S, are Perp. Three stepped lancet lights under one arch and with tracery occur also in the S chapel, but the dominating window here is that in the E wall, which has lively flowing tracery of, say, c. 1330-40. Also flowing tracery, but much more exuberant (and much more restored), in the chancel E wall. Five lights, a delightfully sinuous pattern, and inside the window two high niches with ogee canopies. The interior in fact largely confirms the exterior. Late C13 chancel arch, late C13 two-bay N chapel arcade with quatrefoil piers and double-chamfered arches, three-bay S chapel arcade with quatrefoil piers with fillets. Double-chamfered arches again. In the N chapel also good late C13 SEDILIA and PISCINA (pointed-trefoiled arches under gables). There now only remains the Perp contribution, and it is considerable: not only the S porch with the three niches above the entrance and three supporter beasts on the gable, but four-bay arcades (of piers with characteristic mouldings and capitals only on the shafts towards the arch openings) and the clerestory, and of course the grand W tower. This is high, ashlar-faced, and kept together by clasping buttresses with many shallow set-offs, and it has large three-light bell-openings and a recessed crocketed spire with two tiers of lucarnes. The spire is steadied - so the eye feels - by the delicate flying buttresses with openwork quatre-foils which connect it with the pinnacles in the four corners of the tower. The arches towards nave and aisle W bays are all Perp too. - FONT. Octagonal, the panels simply bordered by a thin roll-moulding. This probably represents the late C13. - PULPIT. Dated 1631. With back panel and sounding-board. The patterns are mostly stylized leaf. - STALLS. The kneeling desks are Perp, with arched panels in front and poppyheads on the ends. - SCREEN. Tall, of one-light divisions. - Above it rises the large ORGAN GALLERY and CASE, 1904-10 by Temple Moore, who then restored the church well. - Much plain WOODWORK is re-used in benches, the N screen, etc. - DOOR to the rood-loft, with linenfold panels. - PAINTINGS. Nothing any longer that would be enjoyable. Above the arcade on the S side of the N chapel are late C14 scenes from the Resurrection. Above the chancel arch early C16 Doom. On the W wall of the nave C17 texts, a gravedigger, a skeleton, a man in Roman armour, etc. - STAINED GLASS. In the S chapel window humble but characteristic glass of 1849. - The E window, alas just as characteristic of its date (in its refusal to accept the C20 at all), is by Comper, and of 1947. - MONUMENT. In the N transept one arched panel with sunk carving of two arms holding a heart. This represents a heart burial, and the small tubular box found behind it contained the heart. The burial is convincingly attributed to William de Yaxley, Abbot of Thorney, who founded a chantry at Yaxley in 1291 and died in 1293. The chantry foundation may in fact help to date the large amount of ambitious late C13 work in the church.
YAXLEY. It has a grim witness of the days of Napoleon in the two imposing stones at the churchyard gate, for they come from an old prison close by at Norman Cross, now marked on the spot by an impressive column with a French eagle above it. Only a few mounds remain to show us where the prison stood, but for 17 years French sailors and soldiers poured into it, thousand after thousand, and 1800 went home no more. The column with the eagle has been put up this century in memory of those men, and the stones at the churchyard gate are all we see hereabouts of the prison of those tragic days.
The few military prisons of those days were horribly crowded with 800 men to the acre, and this prison on the Great North Road was built to cover 40 acres, planned like a Roman camp with low timbered buildings, each holding 500 men. After Nelson’s victory at Cape St Vincent there arrived here the first body of 6000 seamen from many European coasts, hardy Bretons and Provencals, dark Spaniards, Danes and Dutchmen, the Dutchmen being brought along the River Nene and its canals, which their engineering grandparents may have helped to make. Often in antique shops today we come upon model ships made of bone and many of them must have been made by the prisoners at Norman Cross, carved from the bones saved at their meals, with rigging made from hair from their own heads.
Norman Cross was a mushroom town for twenty years and when the Napoleon wars were over its possessions were scattered through the countryside, a nine-day auction disposing of the whole place, and bringing in ten thousand pounds to a Government which was very glad to have it at the end of an exhausting war.
The 13th century tower of Yaxley church is remarkable for its great windows and the flying buttresses from the pinnacles to the spire. The buttresses have open quatrefoils in them, giving us a fairylike peep of the sky through them.
The church has one of the best interiors in the county, with fine transepts about 706 years old. The font has been here all the time. The oak chancel screen is the fine work of a 15th century craftsman who probably carved the chancel stalls, and the Jacobean pulpit stands on a trumpet-shaped stem beautifully enriched with carving 500 years ago. Four bench-ends have been here 400 years. There is a 17th century chest big enough for a man to sleep in, and there are two 16th century doors and one of the 17th century. One of the older ones has fine ornamental hinges, and the other is the rood stair door with linenfold.
Here master masons were at work 600 years ago, and one left behind him a remarkable stone carving of two hands holding a heart. It is under a small arch and is believed to be in memory of William of Yaxley, an abbot of Thorney about 1293. Heart shrines are rare, and we have come upon only one with the heart still in it - at Leybourne in Kent. Here the heart has gone, but this memorial is perhaps unique for having a small oak box which once held the heart of William of Yaxley; it is now in a small recess. When this heart shrine was new the masons of Yaxley were carving queer animals over the porch, grotesques guarding the south chapel, and with these a creature rarely found in churches, a repellant crocodile.
Through all the centuries since the masons carved these fancies on the walls, the medieval paintings which enriched the north chapel have been slowly fading away. Traces can still be seen of Christ rising from the tomb with Mary Magdalene kneeling before Him. There is a picture of the Road to Emmaus, and another with Thomas kneeling. Above the tower arch have been painted a Roman soldier with his bow and arrow, a man with two cloaks, and a very quaint gravedigger, all 17th century; and from the 16th century is a wall painting of a Resurrection scene in the nave, in which we see three shrouded figures rising from their tombs.
The few military prisons of those days were horribly crowded with 800 men to the acre, and this prison on the Great North Road was built to cover 40 acres, planned like a Roman camp with low timbered buildings, each holding 500 men. After Nelson’s victory at Cape St Vincent there arrived here the first body of 6000 seamen from many European coasts, hardy Bretons and Provencals, dark Spaniards, Danes and Dutchmen, the Dutchmen being brought along the River Nene and its canals, which their engineering grandparents may have helped to make. Often in antique shops today we come upon model ships made of bone and many of them must have been made by the prisoners at Norman Cross, carved from the bones saved at their meals, with rigging made from hair from their own heads.
Norman Cross was a mushroom town for twenty years and when the Napoleon wars were over its possessions were scattered through the countryside, a nine-day auction disposing of the whole place, and bringing in ten thousand pounds to a Government which was very glad to have it at the end of an exhausting war.
The 13th century tower of Yaxley church is remarkable for its great windows and the flying buttresses from the pinnacles to the spire. The buttresses have open quatrefoils in them, giving us a fairylike peep of the sky through them.
The church has one of the best interiors in the county, with fine transepts about 706 years old. The font has been here all the time. The oak chancel screen is the fine work of a 15th century craftsman who probably carved the chancel stalls, and the Jacobean pulpit stands on a trumpet-shaped stem beautifully enriched with carving 500 years ago. Four bench-ends have been here 400 years. There is a 17th century chest big enough for a man to sleep in, and there are two 16th century doors and one of the 17th century. One of the older ones has fine ornamental hinges, and the other is the rood stair door with linenfold.
Here master masons were at work 600 years ago, and one left behind him a remarkable stone carving of two hands holding a heart. It is under a small arch and is believed to be in memory of William of Yaxley, an abbot of Thorney about 1293. Heart shrines are rare, and we have come upon only one with the heart still in it - at Leybourne in Kent. Here the heart has gone, but this memorial is perhaps unique for having a small oak box which once held the heart of William of Yaxley; it is now in a small recess. When this heart shrine was new the masons of Yaxley were carving queer animals over the porch, grotesques guarding the south chapel, and with these a creature rarely found in churches, a repellant crocodile.
Through all the centuries since the masons carved these fancies on the walls, the medieval paintings which enriched the north chapel have been slowly fading away. Traces can still be seen of Christ rising from the tomb with Mary Magdalene kneeling before Him. There is a picture of the Road to Emmaus, and another with Thomas kneeling. Above the tower arch have been painted a Roman soldier with his bow and arrow, a man with two cloaks, and a very quaint gravedigger, all 17th century; and from the 16th century is a wall painting of a Resurrection scene in the nave, in which we see three shrouded figures rising from their tombs.
