Monday 17 April 2017

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.

Saxon crosses

SW aisle Morris & Co 1901 (10)

Headstone (2)

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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