Tuesday 8 November 2016

Stanground

I completely misread St John the Baptist thinking it was largely Victorian and whilst I loved the setting and its pretty churchyard my lack of understanding of the Huntingdon vernacular meant I failed to appreciate that this is "almost entirely of the latest C13 to early C14". I also, although I accidentally photographed it, missed the Saxon cross. I think I would have appreciated it more had it not been locked no keyholder because the interior sounds fabulous but this is a pretty run down area of Peterborough so that's never going to happen.

ST JOHN BAPTIST. A church almost entirely of the latest C13 to early C14. The W tower starts with such a motif as circular trefoiled windows and ends with a ball-flower frieze. Broach spire with high broaches and two tiers of lucarnes. The chancel has high windows with Y-tracery. The five-light E window with intersecting tracery is over-restored. Below the SW window is a curious low-side window of three uncusped lights. Very pretty DOUBLE PISCINA. SEDILIA under one long segmental arch. The arch is hollow-chamfered. The chancel arch has two hollow chamfers, the tower arch even three. The aisle windows are characteristic of c.1300 too, i.e. they have intersecting tracery and three lancet lights under one arch. In the N vestry is even a slightly earlier-looking window, i.e. bar tracery with a foiled circle. Only the arcades of four bays are later. The thin octagonal piers with the curious capitals with polygonal projections carrying the outer chamfer will be early C14 (cf. Fletton and Orton Longueville). The three leaf capitals on the N side with their nobbly leaves are typical of such a date.* But the recess in the S aisle is once again late C13. -  SEAT. In the chancel on the N side a stone seat with low arms (cf. Houghton). - BENCHES. The ends with poppyheads, including human heads. - CROSS. In the churchyard an Anglo-Saxon cross, much defaced. The wheel-head is incomplete. But the two ‘handles’ (cf. Fletton) are preserved. Of carving one can recognize small round arcading and a simple geometrical pattern: a circle and a larger saltire cross across it. - PLATE. Fragment of a C13 Coffin Chalice; Cup of 1703-4. - MONUMENT. John Forster d. 1752. Tablet with a lively bust on top.

St John the Baptist (1)

St John the Baptist (3)

STANGROUND. The cathedral town is swallowing it up; it is one of the villages that are losing a character deeply rooted in the past. The quiet village tucked away on the edge of two counties has a long life running back to the mists of time; the suburb of Peterborough loses its grip with ancient things, and slowly its face changes. It has Canute’s Dyke on its map, and an earthwork of the Civil War; the old Norman cross (which in the course of its career has been used to bridge a ditch) keeps watch in its churchyard on the little wooden crosses that come and go in poppy time, and the old bell still rings in these changing days as it rang out in the quieter days of medieval England. But it is only the little church that stands for what has been: all else goes.

We could not help feeling with the vicar here that this church of great simplicity is a good example of the saying of Sir Walter Scott, that our English churches are the most suitable buildings in the world for the purpose of prayer. It is a peaceful place, carrying on something of the old atmosphere that is passing round about. Its walls are 14th century, and it has a traceried piscina set in a lovely arch 600 years ago, a 14th century font, a 17th century chest, and some crude pews carved with quaint heads and three fishes 500 years ago. It has in one of its windows (above some modern glass of John the Baptist, the Madonna, and St Etheldreda) a fragment of 14th century glass with a shield.

The old timbers in the belfry have been replaced, but the four old bells were rehung. We find them mentioned as peculiarly sweet bells in a book of a hundred years ago, and a silver-toned bell has been added to them for King George’s Silver Jubilee. The oldest bell, hung in Armada year, has on it Fear God and obey the Princess; the youngest bell has on it Love the Brotherhood, Fear God, Honour the King. The five bells are nobly kept. We have come upon no bell-ropes so tidily hung. Instead of iron spikes for hanging them there is a brass square for each rope on the wall, and on this is printed the date of the bell. Out of the square comes a spike with a shield on the end; the Armada bell has a galleon, the jubilee bell has the head of King George and Queen Mary, and another bell has the trademark of the industry from which most of the people earn their bread - bricks. The communion set of this old church is of pewter, and so beautiful that it has been lent to the museum at Peterborough. The registers of the parish go back to the very early date of 1538, the year in which parish registers were instituted by law. One note of much interest we found in the registers of the daughter church at Farcet, a record of the fact that this little parish sent what it could one day in 1666 to help a church in distress after a fire; it was the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

So old is the regular life of this village that is passing out of rural England; older than civilisation itself is it as a centre of life, for here in a small gravel pit was found an urn that is now in Peterborough Museum, and it is known that the man who used the gravel pit, the oldest human being known of in these parts, would live about five centuries before Moses.

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