Buckden

St Mary, open, and Buckden Palace, in the words of Pevsner make for "an unforgettable picture". Whilst I'm not a fan of interiors that have been stripped of plaster this still manages to be a magnificent building which has something for everyone. This, truly, is a church that is greater than the sum of its parts; nonetheless Simon Jenkins mysteriously only gives it one star - bonkers.

The church with its stone steeple and the dark brick of the Bishop of Lincoln’s palace form an unforgettable picture. The church is only a few feet away from the Great Tower of t.he palace, just like Lambeth parish church and Lambeth Palace.

ST MARY. The W tower is Perp. It has set-back buttresses, pairs of two-light bell-openings, and a recessed spire with three tiers of lucarnes. The tower buttresses are built into the church. So the tower came before the nave. As for this and most of the rest, it can be dated by the arms of Bishop Alnwick (1436-9) on a corbel of the nave roof and by known benefactions of his predecessor Bishop Gray (1431-6). Moreover, an inscription in the E window referred to John Deeping, Prebendary of Buckden in those years. Externally the embattled aisles and clerestory belong to them, and the large transomed windows on the S and E sides, the ornate two-storeyed S porch with a quatrefoil base frieze, a niche over the entrance, and battlements and pinnacles. Below the battlements a frieze of genre-scenes of animals and on the battlements wavy tracery. Inside the porch is a tierceron-star vault with five bosses, the middle one showing the Assumption, i.e. the Virgin surrounded by rays. The nave is divided from the aisles by five-bay arcades, their piers of standard moulded section. The chancel arch matches the arcades. The chancel roof has angels at the feet of the intermediate principals and stone corbel-angels. The nave roof, restored in 1649, is supported on the same type of corbels. The aisle roofs are Perp and similar too. However, a few features are earlier, i.e. the S doorway with two orders of shafts (the slenderer ones keeled), carrying stiff-leaf capitals, and fine arch mouldings, the priest’s doorway in the chancel, the SEDILIA and the very wide PISCINA, and the small chancel N doorway. All this is E.E. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with pointed quatrefoils containing shields. - PULPIT. With good Jacobean tiers of the usual broad blank arches and lozenges in them. - READERS’ DESKS. With eight later C16 Flemish reliefs of scenes from the Passion. - STAINED GLASS. In the heads of the S aisle W and E windows original figures. - PLATE. Tall Cup of 1607-8; large Cup and Paten on foot of 1679-80; Paten on foot of 1745-6. - MONUMENTS. In the chancel Bishop Barlow d. 1691. Big, black marble inscription plate with a stone surround with garlands. - Bishop Green d. 1779. With a very fine roundel at the foot, showing a female figure reading. - Bishop Pelham d. 1827. By E. H. Baibr. White marble, large kneeling woman with a bible on the ground. Rather cold. - Robert Stuart Hurst Whitworth d. 1831. Large white Gothic triptych without; figures. Signed T.Rickman, architect * - In the churchyard large obelisk on square base to William Whitworth, C18.

* Whitworth is called in the inscription 'of St John’s College, Cambridge’, and that, as Mr McHIardy points out, may explain the presence of Rickman.

BUCKDEN. What a place to come upon in a green countryside with all the motor cars passing by on the great North Road, not knowing and little guessing! Its cottages and fine houses have grown more charming down the years, its ancient inns still stand (the Lion is 15th century and has marvellous beams), there is a lovely white manor house at which we must look and look again (as passers-by have done for 400 years), and by the tower of the church stands the tower of the Bishop’s Palace. It is a wonderful group of masonry with the fishponds still about where many Friday’s dinners have been caught.

In this palace seven bishops of Lincoln died; their diocese stretched from the Humber to the Thames, and Buckden was central for them. One of the bishops dying here was the famous Bishop Grosseteste, the 13th century prelate who defied the Pope in crusading against Church abuses, and refused to accept the Pope’s nephew as a canon. We can trace the foundations of the Great Chamber built 600 years ago and of the Great Hall restored in the 15th century. The Great Tower, one of the glories of Buckden for 400 years, has battlemented turrets, a striking chimney-stack, and delightful windows. It is a memorable picture with the spire of the church behind it. The inner gatehouse of the palace is a gem of 15th century building with embattled parapets, a fine gable, charming Tudor windows, and patterned bricks. Its arch looks on the remains of an ancient bridge and leads us to the Great Tower with four turrets. A pathetic interest it must have for us as long as it stands, for here Catherine of Aragon spent some of the sad days of her exile before going to Kimbolton to die.

The church by the tower is one of the best in the county, with great charm and dignity. Here Laurence Sterne was ordained in 1736, and often he must have looked up at the remarkable company of men and beasts and angels in the roof. He would come under the two chestnuts shading the path, and must have often paused in the porch to admire the work of its 15th century builders. It has a room over it and a vaulted roof enriched with carving, one boss showing the Madonna, while other sculptures show a monk, a bear, and a lion, dogs chasing a rabbit, and a fox chasing geese. The inner doorway is the oldest part of the church and a beautiful introduction to the splendour beyond.

Very impressive is the nave with its noble arcades of five arches and a handsome arch to the 15th century tower, in which is one of the three spiral stairways this church has. There is a lofty clerestory, and the wide chancel arch frames a spacious chancel still with all the grace its 13th century builders gave it.

There are three doors which have been on their hinges since the 15th century, a font 500 years old, a 17th century pulpit with arcaded panels, and windows with fragments of glass as old as Caxton’s printed books. One window has a Madonna kneeling between seraphs; and another has something left of a Madonna and Christ among angels.

The north aisle has a lovely marble figure of a kneeling woman, a memorial to George Pelham, son of the first Earl of Chichester. He was Bishop of Lincoln for seven years of last century and often stayed at the palace. Other bishops sleep in this fine church. One was Robert Sanderson, who has a gravestone in the chancel. He loved Buckden, where his happiest days were spent in the palace he restored; but he found time for other things, writing the second preface to the Prayer Book, and preaching such fine sermons that Charles Stuart used to say, “I carry my ears to hear other preachers, but I carry my conscience to hear Dr Sanderson.”

William Barlow has been sleeping here since a year or two before Shakespeare died. In his young days he was chaplain to Elizabeth and was with the Earl of Essex in his last moments on the scaffold. It is curious that another Bishop of Lincoln shares his name and his grave. Thomas Barlow came to sleep by his namesake in 1691. A very learned man he was, but he loved ease, and created a scandal by spending his time at the palace and caring so little about his duties at Lincoln that he is said never to have set foot in the cathedral in his 16 years as bishop.

Most of all it is the carvings that make this church a place of rare delight. The 15th century roof of the south aisle is adorned with mitred figures, and the stone corbels have queer grotesques and two very merry gentlemen. Faces look down at us from the nave arcades, and wherever we turn are angels keeping watch. Among a musical company we noticed one with a hurdy-gurdy and another with a dulcimer. .

Yet something finer still of the woodcarver’s art Buckden has to show, for its chancel has a little gallery of eight carved oak panels by 16th century men. They are masterpieces. One is a pathetic Gethsemane, with Christ at prayer and the disciples sleeping; one shows Pilate washing his hands of Him; another shows the road to Calvary, and another the Scourging. Of the other four one is the Crown of Thorns, and a small one shows Roman soldiers scoffing; two exquisite pieces show Ecce Homo and the Crucifixion. They are a precious artistic possession.

In this corner of our countryside, with its pathetic memory of Catherine of Aragon, is a grave under a chestnut tree which brings to mind another of our queens of sorrow, the most pathetic of them all, for in the tomb shaded by this tree lie two kinsmen of Lady Jane Grey, who are said to have died here suddenly within half an hour of each other; having come here from Cambridge to avoid sweating sickness, they fell a victim to it and died and were buried in one grave.

It is thrilling to think that in this ruined tower lived a Queen who knew Columbus, and here fought for her life and her rights.

Catherine of Aragon Defies Them All

BESIEGED by bishops and nobles, like a fugitive debtor in his garret, Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and for 25 years the faithful wife of Henry the Eighth, lived a captive in this palace of the Bishops of Lincoln.

Although the validity of her marriage had been affirmed by the Pope, Henry had now divorced her and had married Anne Boleyn, an act whose legality Catherine challenged to her dying day.

The house at Buckden was damp and unhealthy and she asserted that Henry and the revengeful Anne had planned this unhealthy retreat in the hope of hastening her death. Her servants were taken from her, and she was kept in poverty and misery; but as she did not die the Duke of Suffolk was sent down with armed forces to remove her to a still deadlier atmosphere, a still more dangerous prison at Somersham, amid the fens of the Isle of Ely.

Here Catherine stood at bay, literally besieged, for six days. She shut herself in her bedroom and would only communicate with her enemies through a hole in the wall. Horses and armed men were ready before the house: “If you wish to take me,” cried the unhappy woman, “you must break down my door.” Such was the sympathy of the neighbourhood with Catherine that although a few had gone armed and mounted to the assistance of Suffolk, they dared not practise the violence necessary to capture the resolute unhappy Queen.

A few months later the Archbishop of York, with the Bishops of Durham and Chester, went with a menacing cavalcade to Buckden, attempting to compel the Queen to take the oath acknowledging Anne as Queen and herself dethroned. The Queen was on fire with indignation. “Hold thy peace, bishop,” she cried; “speak to me no more. These are the wiles of the devil. I am Queen, and Queen I will die; by right the King can have no other wife, and let this be your answer.” This is history, but Catherine wrote an account of the interview for the Spanish ambassador telling him that the bishops had threatened her with the gibbet. “Which of you is going to be the hangman?” she had demanded, adding, “I must ask you to hang me in public, not secretly.”

Slowly dying, but indomitable, Catherine lived entirely in one chamber, a room which had a window looking into the adjoining chapel, through which she might hear divine service. All her meals were cooked in the room, for she believed that the King and Anne had ordered that poison should be introduced into the food made ready for her by the servant appointed by the King.

The misery of her condition at Buckden at last drove Catherine away, and she moved on to Kimbolton to end her sad days.

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Offord Cluny

Why All Saints, locked no keyholder, should be impenetrable is, well. impenetrable to me. It's in the middle of the village and has neighbours so there seems no obvious reason to keep it in lock down.Oh well the next nine were all open.

The village is so called because the famous Cluny Abbey in Burgundy was lord of the manor from the C11 to the early C15.

ALL SAINTS. Primitive C13 S arcade with octagonal piers and single-chamfered arches. N arcade of three bays with round piers, octagonal abaci, and double-hollow-chamfered arches with broaches. That must be late C13. The chancel arch matches. Otherwise a Perp church, built of cobbles, with a W tower, a clerestory and a nave roof with six carved figures. The minimum brick chancel is of 1726. - PULPIT. Elizabethan with two tiers of the familiar broad blank arches. - COMMUNION RAIL. 1752. - LECTERN. With minor Jacobean panels. - (STAINED GLASS. E window, 1850, and typical of that date. GMCH) - PLATE. Cup of 1756-7.

OFFORD CLUNY. A village of charming things, it has a mill and a weir, a peep of lovely river scenery from a bridge, a manor house of mellow 18th century bricks, and a house on the wayside with gabled dormers above its Jacobean timbers. Its attractive porch was built in 1668.

The church walls are watched over by grotesques, one a very terrifying fellow crouching above a buttress. The tower has stood since the 15th century, but the nave, arcades, and chancel arch are 13th century. To craftsmen of Stuart times Offord Cluny owes its panelled pulpit, a reading desk with a fluted frieze, the altar table, and an oak chest with two locks. The medieval font has had a strange adventure, for it was found in pieces under the churchyard trees and has been put together to preserve it, in the hope of restoring it to its proper place.

Up in the roof are figures that have long been looking down on the worshippers below. All have their hair bound in front with a diadem and cross. One has a censer, another is in armour, a third is a seraph with feathers and wings, and there is a figure with a book and a hammer, one with a sword and shield, and one at prayer. They have been here since the days of Queen Elizabeth.

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Offord Darcy

St Peter, locked, keyholder listed, is a CCT church and sadly the keyholder was out when I called. I say sadly because the interior sounds fascinating and sounds like it warrants a revisit.

 ST PETER. The N arcade is Norman, with square piers with angle shafts. E of the arcade was a recess in the N aisle which was later converted into an opening. The chancel is C13, with a S and a smaller N lancet and a pointed-trefoiled PISCINA. The E window is Perp. Then follows the late C13 S arcade with quatrefoil piers with fillets and double-chamfered arches. Handsome ANGLE PISCINA with a vault and a boss. Externally the church is of cobbles. The W tower seems c.1300. It has clasping buttresses and a recessed stone spire, and the bell-openings and lucarnes look early. - SCREEN. Dec - which is rare; with ogee arches and foiled circles. - STAINED GLASS. Bits in a chancel S window. - PLATE. Cup inscribed 1569 ; later Cover Paten. - MONUMENTS. Brasses to Sir Laurence Pabenham d. 1400 and two wives. Demi-figures, c.22 in. long. According to Mill Stephenson c.1430 (S aisle). - Brass to Dr William Taylard, priest, d. 1532. Kneeling figure, 23 in. long (nave floor). - Civilian and Wife, sunk stone effigies, her draperies very confused. The suggested date is late C14 (N  aisle). - R. Nailour d. 1616 and family. Kneeling parents above, children below. Alabaster (S aisle).

OFFORD DARCY. It has two old neighbours, the manor house and the church. Richard Nailour had been in his new house just three years when they carried him to the church next door in the year Shakespeare died. He kneels with his two wives, two sons, and six daughters, all in ruffs and all delightful. By the pulpit lies William Taylard, with his brass portrait showing him in the doctor’s cap he wore in the days of Henry the Eighth. A 14th century brass has two wives and half a husband, the man so sadly cut in two being Sir Laurence Pabenham. .

The church has been here about 700 years, much re-fashioned in the 14th century and with a chancel arch new in the 15th. The oldest part of it is the north arcade, in which three simple Norman arches still stand firm and strong. One of its chief possessions is part of a very fine screen with 600-year-old tracery; it is superbly carved. It is not truly a chancel screen; it is all that remains of a screen separating the lady chapel in the south aisle from the nave, and was put across the chancel arch to preserve it. It did not actually fit and therefore side pieces have been added for attachment to the chancel arch piers. Very curious are some of the heads of men and beasts on the walls, grave or gay as the sculptor’s fancy led him. In the north aisle are crudely carved figures of a married couple in two stone panels; they are 600 years old.

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Diddington

St Lawrence, open, would be run of the mill if it were not for its location and the brasses and windows in the south chapel which are extraordinarily good. I really liked this church after all.

ST LAWRENCE. A brick W tower and a brick s porch, both Henry VIII and rare in the county. E.E. chancel, cut short and finished off in yellow brick later. It has S and N lancets and a two-light low-side window which is Dec. The three-bay N arcade is also E.E. Round piers and double-chamfered arches. On the S side only a two-bay chapel. This is Perp and probably of c.1505 (see below). Octagonal pier, the responds corbels in the form of a knot (cf. Little Paxton). - SCREEN. Original dado with tracery. More tracery used in the lectern. - BENCHES. Many, with traceried ends, better than most in the county. - STAINED GLASS. The S chapel SW window looks more complete than it is. It dates from the C15 and contains two female saints and made-up parts from a Resurrection etc., also a kneeling donatrix. All recently restored. - In the neighbouring window Netherlandish C16 and C17 roundels etc. - MONUMENTS. In the S chapel tomb-chest with shields and fleurons and against the back wall kneeling brass figures of William Taylard d. 1505 and wife (11 in.). The brass must once have been very handsome. There was a Trinity above, and there still are framing strips l. and r. each with three figures. - Alice Taylard d. 1513. Kneeling figure, 12 in. long.

DIDDINGTON. Its glory is in its windows, but nearly all it has is beautiful. A hamlet by a shady lane off the Great North Road, it had a heronry when we called and a glorious choir of singing birds in the trees of the churchyard.

For over 600 years the church has stood among this loveliness, with hideous gargoyles looking down from its 16th century tower. It has a plain font of the 13th century, a poor-box cut from solid oak 300 years ago, and 18th century pews carved with birds, animals, and flowers. There are eagles, beasts fighting winged monsters, and we noticed some lively squirrels. There are two 16th century brasses, one of Alice Taylard, a widow with her three sons and a Madonna keeping them company, and one of William Taylard and his wife kneeling at prayer. They are on an altar tomb, and with them are brass inscriptions engraved with figures of Christ and the two Marys, the two Johns, and St Catherine with her wheel. On one of the walls is a tribute to Thomas Gillman, a servant drowned in the Ouse while trying to save his master 200 years ago.

But it is for its windows that we come to Diddington; they have a lovely old medley of colour. They have glass ranging over four centuries, from the 14th to the 17th, making a gay splendour in the south chapel. They show scenes from the Prodigal Son, St Margaret in a blue gown ready for a dragon, St James in a beaver hat, and a Resurrection scene. There are two men in tall hats and jackboots, some peaceful cherubs and some fighting animals, one animal dressed in a man’s clothes. The oldest piece of all is a rare gem showing a dark face among ruby glass and a lovely woman’s head with netted hair.

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Southoe

St Leonard. open, is a curiously attractive building, a blend of stone and brick which works surprisingly well. Also good Norman features

ST LEONARD. A Norman S doorway with about as many motifs as could be accommodated. One order of shafts with trellis decoration. In the l. lozenges one pellet each, in the r. a cross of pellets. One capital with a kind of stylized upright shrubs, the other with the same trellis with pellets. Abacus with a lozenge-chain, roll moulding covered with saltire crosses or lozenges, extrados with saltire crosses, hood-mould with billet, tympanum with chequer and inside with zigzag for good measure. The chancel arch is Norman too. Responds with  angle-shafts, small, coarse scroll capitals. Pointed arch with a step and two slight chamfers, perhaps a little later. Of the late C13 the chancel, which has not only lancets but also Y-tracery. Of the same time the S arcade: three bays, round piers, double-chamfered arches. The N arcade is Perp, of standard elements - the E side externally is a little more ornate than the rest. Late Perp the brick clerestory and the brick NW tower. The church otherwise is of cobbles. - MONUMENT. (Coffin lid with a foliated cross, but the cross-head replaced by the bust of a man. GMcH).

SOUTHOE. It rests in peace by the Great North Road and it has something of veritable beauty from Norman England. It is the doorway into its church. Let into the arch above the door is a stone like a chess-board, the tympanum, and over it in the round of the arch are mouldings of crossed bands and diaper ornament. The shafts and capitals of the doorway are extremely rich, carved in squares and diamonds by a 12th century craftsman.

For centuries there lay in the churchyard the battered stone figure of a priest who has now been brought under the shelter of the roof. The churchyard wall has 13th and 14th century stones, and among them we noticed a carved Norman capital. On a chancel buttress is an old scratch dial. The tower is Elizabethan and looks down on the turret of the pre-Reformation sanctus bell.

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Great Paxton

I very nearly made a terrible mistake with Holy Trinity, locked, keyholder listed, by almost deciding to not seek out the keyholder. The church sits in a pleasant location at the bottom of a lane and in, in truth, a dull churchyard. The exterior is more Cambridgeshire in style than Huntingdon and run of the mill at that. Luckily, however, I had loads of time so sought out the keyholder and thank God I did - the interior is astonishing, one of the best in the county [I'd change the lights though].

HOLY TRINITY. There are very few Anglo-Saxon buildings one can call grandiose. Stow in Lincolnshire is one, Great Paxton is without doubt another. Yet on approaching the building, no-one can form any idea what is in store. Here is a church of grey stone and brown cobbles with a Perp W tower, Perp windows and S doorway, and a Perp chancel, except for one N window with intersecting tracery, i.e. of the late C13. The clerestory is Perp too, but there a hint at the interior is given. Some windows on both sides are round-arched (in ironstone) and double-splayed. That is Saxon. But the interior is not only a surprise, it is also an architectural shock of a high order. This was a cruciform church with a true crossing, and it was an aisled church. Both in pre-Conquest times are extreme rarities. The date of the church is not known, but it is not likely to be earlier than 1000. As for the crossing, a true crossing means that it is as wide as the nave, as the chancel, and as the transepts. This was a matter of course in Romanesque architecture on the Continent at that date, but it does not even apply to Stow.* It does, however, apply to Great Paxton, as is fully displayed in the N transept arch. The responds are four big demi-shafts with thin shafts between. They carry lumpy, shapeless capitals and a plain abacus, and then the unmoulded arch is thrown across at a height unparalleled in early English architecture. The same arrangement applied to the other arches, even if the responds are not so well preserved and the arches are on the S and E side triple-chamfered of the late C13. Moreover, as a kind of framing to these groups of four shafts side by side, a thin pilaster strip ran up and no doubt continued all round the arch. This is a usual Late Anglo-Danish thing (cf. e.g. St Benet, Cambridge), and it is visible in several instances.

The nave is just as amazing. The only other Anglo-Saxon aisled naves are Brixworth and Lydd, and the arcade piers of both are just untreated chunks of wall. But at Great Paxton there are proper compound piers, even if they are of a very strange kind, as if Continental compound piers had been misunderstood. The easternmost piers are quatrefoil in section, placed diagonally and with thin shafts between the foils so that they come out in the cardinal directions. The westernmost piers have spurs instead of the thin shafts. The arcade went on to three instead of the present two bays. One W respond was re-used in the new place. This and the two E responds are much more acceptably detailed than the capitals and abaci of the piers: capitals as bulgy as those of the crossing and one-step abaci. The arches are single-step too. The responds are built up of long and short stones rather like Late Anglo-Saxon quoins. The date of the chancel is confirmed by the SEDILIA. - SCREEN. Under the tower arch. Perp. It originally had the Virgin of the Assumption above the entrance, but only the rays which surrounded her survive. - BENCHES. The ends of the plain buttressed type. - SOUTH DOOR. With C13 ironwork, not of the elaborate scroll type as in Bedfordshire. - STAINED GLASS. Old fragments in one chancel N window. - PLATE. Cup of 1813-14.

* Nor to Norton-on-Tees, which has crossing arrangements similar to Stow, but is smaller (transept arches c. 14 ft. wide at Stow, c. 11 ft at Norton, c 15 ft at Great Paxton).

GREAT PAXTON. It has one of the oldest shrines in the county, a church with remarkable Saxon work in its walls, to which we come through an orchard.

Quaintly charming outside, indoors it is full of surprise, for the great nave walls the Saxons raised have arches resting on beautiful piers of clustered columns, all simple but impressive with their strength and age. On the pier nearest the porch the mouldings end in a lion’s head and a flower. The east end of the arcades rest on imposts with square Saxon mouldings, while the large stones below descend to the floor in the long-and-short style.

The windows of the lofty clerestory have been letting in the light since the days of Edward the Confessor; their high position indicates that the original Saxon aisles were of a considerable size. The Saxon nave was longer than the present church, and must have resembled a cathedral in size. Its most striking feature remaining is in the three arches of the crossing. The break in the string-courses shows where the western arch stood. The south arch opening into the transept has been transformed into a pointed arch, the Saxon supports being lowered, though the capitals have been reset. The Saxon responds remain at their full height, however, in the arch of the north transept, which has the original round arch above them. Each has four attached shafts separated by small rolls. Similar responds support the chancel arch, which was transformed into the pointed style in the 13th century. The transepts must have been 23 yards from north to south and it is believed that a central tower stood over the crossing in Norman times. Great Paxton church was one of the most ambitious buildings of the llth century.

It was much rebuilt in all our great building centuries, and the chancel is 13th, the tower and porch 14th, and the aisles 15th century. The south door has still its ancient ironwork. The font is 400 years old, and of the 16th century there is an oak screen in the tower, some pews in the nave, and glass in the windows. In the churchyard is a fragment of a 15th century cross, and in the tower is a bell which rang out when Henry came home from Agincourt.

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Toseland

At first sight I was unimpressed with St Michael, locked no keyholder, writing it off as a Victorian replica until I came to the south door which is obviously original and rather wonderful. However Pevsner makes it clear that my first impression was correct even if Arthur Blomfield recycled original masonry.

ST MICHAEL. By Arthur Blomfield, 1873. Neo-Norman, of nave and chancel with W bellcote. But the masonry is mostly original Norman work, and there are a Norman S window and a Norman S doorway, evidently late. Two orders of shafts, single- and double-scallop capitals, undecorated tympanum but a band of rosettes round it, zigzag arch, the zigzag also placed at r. angles to the wall. The chancel arch is Norman too, but here the capitals have volutes and also - foreshadowing waterleaf - inturned volutes. In one abacus a little decoration. Single-step arches. - Outside the S wall lies a large Sarsen stone.

TOSELAND. Its greatness is almost forgotten, but it has the remains of a moated camp near a Roman road, and the churchyard has a Moot Stone where the Toseland Hundred met. Today there is a Tudor hall and a thatched barn, and the chief possession of the village is its legacy from the Normans - a noble doorway for the church, with an arch enriched with circles, beads, and zigzags. The south wall of the nave is nearly as they left it, and the chancel arch is theirs, one of its capitals with their scroll ornament. The church has a 17th century oak table with legs like barley sugar sticks, and an Elizabethan chalice.

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Yelling

Holy Cross, locked no keyholder,  is a pleasant enough building [I see from my pictures] in the heart of the village but has left absolutely no lasting impression or, indeed, memories. Perhaps if it had been open it may have been more memorable - who knows?

HOLY CROSS. Of brown cobbles. The three-bay N arcade is of c.1190, i.e. the piers are round, but the abaci square and the capitals still of the multi-scalloped kind, but the arches, though unmoulded, are pointed. The S arcade of four bays with standard elements (but broaches at the start of the arches) looks c.1300. So do the S aisle windows (Y-tracery, still geometrical tracery with a quatrefoil and a trefoil in a circle) and S doorway (two continuous chamfers). A plain, low tomb recess in the aisle wall inside. Again, the chancel is of c.1300 or has work of that date. The SEDILIA fit it, but the chancel arch looks a little later. Late C14 W tower, but still with Dec bell-openings. The tower had a spire up to the C19. Most of the rest is Perp.

YELLING. It is quiet in spite of its name (which was originally Ghellinge), with a thatched barn and a church that have been friends for centuries. The Normans gave the church its north arcade, with two big piers like the Pillars of Hercules, their capitals finely carved. There is a very old font. The south aisle (which has an old sundial) and the arcade are two centuries later, and the stone coffin built into the south wall, with a cross on the lid, is probably that of the benefactor who added them. Two heads with mouths wide open in the chancel are perhaps old gargoyles misplaced inside the church at some restoration, and are not the medieval mason’s little joke on the name of the village. It is recorded that a Sheriff of the county living at Yelling fell fighting against the Conqueror at Hastings.

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Hail Weston

St Nicholas, open, is only notable for its timber tower which, as Pevsner notes, is a familiar south Essex style but unique in Huntingdonshire otherwise it's a very run of the mill building.

ST NICHOLAS. A sweet building with its cobbled walls, its one big old tiled roof over nave and chancel, and its totally shingled W tower, whose pyramid roof starts lower than the ridge of the tile-roof. Architecturally the tower is of great interest. It represents a type familiar in Essex but unique in Huntingdonshire. It is entirely timber-framed, with heavy posts along the S and N walls, four tie-beams, two across the space, two against the E and W walls, and scissor-bracing as well as wind-braces against the walls. The impression is confusing but powerful. Is the tower of c.1500, or earlier? Dating in Essex has recently gone earlier - thanks to radio carbon. The building itself is E.E. - see the chancel N lancet with continuous outer mouldings and the small DOUBLE PISCINA. The nave N doorway has a finely moulded arch. - BENCHES. With summarily shaped poppyheads. - (SCREEN. Original dado. GMCH).

HAIL WESTON. It gives us a delightful peep of Old England from the porch of its church, and it appears as a piece of Old England in Michael Drayton’s poetic tour of the kingdom. Here he found two wells of which he was told that they were once two fair nymphs beloved by sylvan gods:

When this whole country’s face was foresty, and we
Lived loosely in the wilds which now thus peopled be,
Oft interchanged we sigh, oft amourous looks we sent,
Oft whispering our dear loves, our thoughts oft did we vent
Among the secret shades, oft in the groves did play,
And in our sports our joys and sorrows did bewray.

Alas the tears of one god fell and made the well salt, so that the god gave it the power of healing dim sight, and the other well was given the power of healing leprosy.

Long before Drayton listened to this story and wrote his Polyolbion these queer creatures were sitting on the buttresses looking across the churchyard. It is one of the rare villages with a timber tower, many of its great posts as strong today as they were 400 years ago. It has a spire of oak shingles.

The fine roof of the nave is 400 years old and has carved roses looking very small so high up. A group of 16th century benches have carved ends and poppyheads, the screen (which has lost its superstructure and has suffered much mutilation) is 15th century, the altar table was carved during the Civil War, and the double piscina and the font have been in the church since the Conqueror’s day.

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Great Staughton

St Andrew, open, is a large, well furnished, attractive building and the setting is a delight.

ST ANDREW. The W tower is Perp and more ambitious than most, with its quatrefoil base frieze and its quatrefoil top frieze and its pinnacles. Set-back buttresses. Pairs of transomed two-light bell-openings. Earlier is the chancel, say early C14. One window has cusped Y-tracery, and the low-side window of two lights even a reticulation unit. Definitely Dec is the S aisle. Again reticulated tracery. The S doorway is something special, with its dainty foliage capitals and the many mouldings of the arch. The tower must be later than the S aisle. This is obvious by the aisle W window. Inside, the arcades (of five bays) are both older than anything outside. First come three bays on the S side (round piers and abaci), then the rest of the S arcade and the whole N arcade. Round piers and the abaci chamfered squares set diagonally. All arcade arches are double-chamfered. But the chancel arch and the tower arch are Perp. The N chapel dates from c.1455 and has a tomb recess with a panelled vault. - SCREEN. Under the tower arch. It consists of two parts, the lower panels from a C17 pulpit (with one inlaid panel), but the upper, once a bench-back, with an inscription to Olyver Leder and his wife and the date 1539. - COMMUNION RAIL. Late c 17, of strong, twisted balusters. - (STAINED GLASS. C16 and C17 heraldic glass from Gaynes Hall in the N aisle E window. GMCH) - BELL. One bell is by William Dawe; c 1400. - PAINTINGS. Two icons brought from Chanak (?) in Anatolia in 1923. One the Virgin, the other a saintly King. - PLATE. Cup, Paten on foot, and Almsdish, all 1751-2. - MONUMENTS. Upper part of a C13 monument to an abbot. Alwalton (rather than Purbeck) marble. The head in a pointed-cinquefoiled surround. The monument used to be in the garden of Gaynes Hall, and its provenance is unknown. It should be compared with the abbots’ monuments of Peterborough Cathedral. - Large stone monument to Sir James Dyer d. 1582, in judge’s robes, and his wife, and Sir Richard d. 1605 and wife. Two kneeling couples, husband facing wife across a prayer-desk (but Sir Richard has put his helmet on it). Three columns and pendant arches. Big strapwork on the top, and obelisks. - George Wauton d. 1606. Recumbent effigy, the slab on which he lies supported by two free-standing atlantes with short skirts. - Sir Baldwin Conyers d. 1731. A conservative composition for its date. An urn on a small sarcophagus in a shell-headed niche. Roman Doric columns and a pediment broken back in the centre. Two cherubs on it and two cherubs’ heads at the foot.

GREAT STAUGHTON. The little Kym stream flows by its old houses. Place House stands behind a grand old wall, with its tiled barns and 16th century timbers. Gaynes Hall is 17th century, with many beautiful doors and the remains of a medieval stone figure of an abbot in its garden; Staughton House, once the rectory manor and home of the Baldwins, is in its park of 500 acres. The great house Staughton Manor is no more; its double moat now encircles a farmhouse. It was the home of the Wautons, one of whom signed the death warrant of Charles Stuart and escaped vengeance by flying to Holland where he became a gardener. In the village is a 17th century cross with a sundial.

The massive church tower is 400 years old and has quaint faces keeping watch. Up in its belfry a man and a boy were once killed by lightning. A tablet in the tower records the event.

All our chief building centuries have given something to this splendid clerestorial church. The chancel is 13th century, the aisles and parapets and porch 14th, and the clerestory and chancel arch 15th. Men, women, angels, and grotesques hold up the roof of the nave, and looking down on the chancel is an angel with a chalice. A panelled recess in a chapel is enriched with 16th century carving. The 14th century font has traces of painting; it has been rescued from under the floor of the south aisle.

The oak screen, shutting off the belfry from the nave, is made up from panels of the old pulpit and the back of an old bench-end, the twisted balusters of the altar rails are 17th century, and the door, made by a 16th century carpenter, is still on its old hinges. It is studded with nails and hangs in a doorway twice as old as the door. Two other 400-year-old doors are still in their places.

There is an interesting group of monuments. That of Sir George Wauton, on which he lies in armour, looking very quaint on a high shelf supported by two men in short skirts, was paid for by Sir Oliver Cromwell, the great Oliver’s uncle. Oliver’s sister Margaret had married into the family. Two knights of Elizabeth’s day kneel with their wives at prayer desks on a huge tomb flanked by Corinthian columns: James and Richard Dyer. James was Lord Chief Justice, and lived at Place House; he is in Judge's robes and on his prayer desk is a helmet, a rather curious thing. The funeral helmet of Sir James Beverley, and a pair of iron gauntlets, are on his 17th century altar tomb; he lived at Gaynes Hall.

There is a monument with a trophy of arms to an 18th century Governor of Jamaica who sleeps here with his son, and one more pleasing with a cherub watching over Christopher and Mary Conyers, a brother and a sister who died in infancy 200 years ago, children of Sir John Conyers who lived at Staughton House after the Baldwins.

There is a fine ring of six bells in the tower. One of them is medieval and at least 100 years older than the tower itself, and above the chancel arch a sanctus bell still hangs in its cot, one of the few left in the country. The silver communion plate was given to the church by Christopher Walters in 1750 in memory of his wife.

A small brass has a tribute to Richard Walter who sailed round the world with Lord Anson and saw life on every continent. He died in 1785, and here he sleeps, his long voyage over. Born early in the 18th century, the son of a London merchant, he graduated at Cambridge. In 1740 he resigned a fellowship to become chaplain of the Centurion, the flagship of the little fleet with which Lord Anson set out to do battle with Spain, and in the end to sail round the world and bring home the laurels of victory, £500,000 in treasure, and rich additions to knowledge.

Walter was a puny, sickly little man, but he had a hero’s courage, and for 27 months he endured battle, storm, and tempest in which five ships were lost and men died as in a plague. The little chaplain was more than spiritual comforter in those days; he helped to work the ship, and shared the hard lot of the fighters and the sailors. After more than two years his frail physique could endure no more, and on arriving at Macao Anson sent him home. He was appointed chaplain of Portsmouth Dockyard and held the post until his death, forty years later. Anson returned at the end of about four years and Richard Walter, taking over the great seaman’s journals, wrote the splendid story of his voyage, picturing life in every continent - the well-known Voyage Round the World.

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Kimbolton

St Andrew, open, is a vast and rather resplendent building which offers something for everyone: a stunning location, an interesting exterior and an interior full of interest.

ST ANDREW. The W tower is a fine piece, early C14 throughout, including its broach spire - see the details of the three tiers of lucarnes. The W portal has thin shafts with deep mouldings between them, and each group of mouldings has ballflower. The W window and the bell-openings have Y-tracery. At the top of the tower itself is a frieze of small heads. Perp S aisle and handsome S porch with, at the entrance, openwork tracery spandrels and on the side walls wide blank arches enclosing the (now blocked) small windows. The N aisle is Perp too, but the clerestory is still Dec and has handsome figured stone corbels as the roof supports inside. The chancel S wall is of brick, probably of 1748, but inside in the N wall is a blocked late C13 window with formerly intersecting tracery. The chancel arch matches such a date. The N and S chapels, however, are Perp, and both have their original roofs with carved figures. The nave roof is original too. The oldest feature of the church is the arcades. Four bays. The S arcade has round piers and arches of one chamfer and one slight chamfer, i.e. early C13. The N arcade with alternatingly round and octagonal supports has a little nailhead in the capitals and a big nailhead hood-mould. The arches are of one chamfer, one slight chamfer, and a third chamfer. So that may be later C13. However, the NW respond is earlier than either arcade. With its single fleur-de-lis like leaf motifs it looks c.1200. The tower arch has three continuous chamfers, which suggests c.1300, and that agrees with the external evidence. - FONT. From Little Stukeley. Very large and very uncouth. Consequently called Saxon, though more probably C12. No decoration at all. - SCREENS. The screen to the S chapel is uncommonly good. It has broad ogee-headed divisions with tracery above. Four of the panels of the dado have PAINTINGS of c. 1500. Note the mannered elegance of St Edmund. - The screen to the N chapel is a little simpler. - SOUTH DOOR. With C14 tracery. - SCULPTURE. Small group of the Virgin and Child with the Baptist. White marble, by P. Romanelli, 1859. It is a copy after Raphael’s Belle Jardiniere in the Louvre. - ST AI NED GLASS. In the S chapel one small complete figure; in the N chapel E window a few bits; C15. - PLATE. Large Cup, late C16, with engraved scenes of Daniel in the lions’ den and Habakkuk guided in the air by an angel; Cup of 1655 ; Almsdish of c.1660 with repoussé flowers and leaves; Paten C17; Silver-gilt Flagon 1750. - MONUMENTS. First Earl of Manchester d. 1642. Standing wall-monument with the impressive conceit of a marble table with an arched front but angle columns, a black top slab, and on it a white marble cushion with an inscription. Against the back wall, and as though quite a separate monument, the commemorative inscription flanked by two black columns. A third column stands on a bracket above and is crowned by a helmet with crest.* - To the l. and r. of this identical cartouches to his two wives: c.1658. The fleshy, gristly details are characteristic of the date. - Many tablets, the best to George Montagu d. 1780, signed J. Wilton, very sparse and elegant, with an urn on top. Put up by Frederick Montagu. - Consuelo Duchess of Manchester; 1912. White marble relief in the schiacciato technique, very Paris-Salon in style. She is seen surrounded by clouds and reaches up to two angels.

* Over the monument is a CEILURE, apparently ex situ (GMCH).

KIMBOLTON. Who could come and not be stirred by what has happened here? Here sleeps Sir Walter Raleigh’s judge, the man who doomed the founder of the British Empire, and here died the first unhappy queen of our royal Bluebeard, Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the Ferdinand and Isabella who sent Columbus to find America, a proud, defiant queen of whom no ill can be said.

We come to it by lovely country by the river Kym, delighted by the red roofs of the street that leads from the green, by the castle gate, to the noble church which has stood 600 years. It has a 13th century arcade with handsome pillars, a clerestory and a tower with a lofty spire all 14th century, and a 15th century porch.

We see the graceful spire long before we reach it. It has charming windows and a row of tiny faces peeping from the cornice. The beautiful doorway to the tower is set under four pairs of shafts and an arch with rich ornament. There are two doors which have been opening and shutting since Henry the Eighth was having his imperious way, and one as old as Agincourt. The door has still its ancient nails and tracery, though it bears the marks of bullets that riddled it in the Civil War, Cromwell’s bullets in Cromwell’s country.

Hanging from the chancel walls are the gloves and funeral helmets of the Montagus. One of them bought Kimbolton Castle in the year the Mayflower sailed, and his descendants have owned it since. He was Henry, Earl of Manchester, remembered in history as the man who sent Sir Walter Raleigh to the block. Here he sleeps.

Here sleep also, in elaborate monuments with cherubs holding shields, two of the five wives of the second earl; he was Edward, one of Cromwell’s generals at Edgehill and Marston Moor, who lived to welcome Charles the Second back. There is a monument with two angels to the 8th Duchess of Manchester, who was laid here in our time, and the chapel has a splendid window glowing with saints and martyrs in memory of William Montagu who died in 1890. Another window has Christ blessing the children.

A few fragments of old glass remain that have lost none of their beauty in 500 years; we noticed a star, a sun, and a rose, and a figure in a green robe under a robe lined with ermine. The roofs have some of the finest carving for miles around. On the wall bosses are archangels and apostles, angels and grotesques, and two 15th century screens have elaborate tracery and paintings of St Anne teaching the Madonna to read, Michael standing on a dragon, Edward the Martyr in gorgeous robes, and St Edmund looking rather odd in armour, holding an arrow which has pierced him. The roofs of the south chapel have fine bosses with roses, chalices, flowers, foliage, angels with musical instruments. One of the bosses has two hearts bound together, and there are such things as a mermaid, a group of eight bells, and a man riding a donkey. One of the rarest carvings of all is an angel on a beam, a gracious figure with folded wings and a jolly little  man above it.

There is an almsdish made when Huntingdon’s greatest son was dying, and a cup showing Daniel in the lion’s den, a rare bit of  Elizabethan craftsmanship. The font has been doing service for over a thousand years; it is Saxon.

Kimbolton Castle stands in 500 acres. It was made new 400 years ago and extended in the 18th century, but much of the inner wall, facing a spacious courtyard, belongs to the 16th century. The beautiful rain-water heads are 17th century. The north gate among the trees, and the gatehouse looking down High Street, were the work of Robert Adam of the 18th century. There is in the courtyard a very handsome stone staircase with balustrades of wrought-iron work.

Much impressive craftsmanship has survived the ages here, but it is not in these things that its interest for us lies. One of the saddest rooms in England is its green drawing-room, with portraits by Holbein of Henry the Eighth and his poor Catherine, who loved him more than he deserved. Here is the travelling trunk she brought with her on her last journeys, first from Ampthill to Buckden, where for a week she was at bay with her enemies, and then from Buckden to this castle. She was Queen of England yet she was not queen. She spent some of her last days in this castle. Here for two years she was a prisoner, suffering indignities which shocked all Europe then and shock us even now; and in this castle she died, out of her lord’s way at last, well knowing nothing would please him better.

News for Henry the Eighth

OUR royal Bluebeard was a merry man in January, 1536, for messengers came galloping to Greenwich to tell him that death had at last taken Catherine of Aragon who had for 27 years been his wife. He had now been three years married to Anne Boleyn and was tired of her and wooing Jane Seymour. “God be praised,” he exclaimed on learning that Catherine was no more.

The unhappy Catherine spent the last four years of her life here, friendless, deserted, ill, heartbroken, but not broken in spirit. Here she haughtily refused, though threatened with death, to defer to the decree making her Dowager Princess of Wales and her daughter Mary illegitimate. Threats and cajolery alike failed to shake her. Six times a mother, she had saved only one child, and Mary was kept from her to the end. Her servants were taken from her; she believed that she was being slowly poisoned; she knew that Henry and Anne hoped that Kimbolton would hasten her end.

To the last she persisted that she was Henry’s lawful wife and Queen of England, yet she did not hate her tyrant, neither did she fear him. She learned that poor priests, with Fisher and Sir Thomas More, were dragged to the block for denying the supremacy of the King, but she never faltered.

Shakespeare follows history closely in describing the closing scenes. Her touching speech bespeaking consideration for her servants, and commending Mary and begging him to give her virtuous breeding and a little love for her mother’s sake, was really her will, presented in the form of a petition to Henry, whom she blesses in her final word. And then the end:

Mine eyes grow dim. Farewell,
My lord. Griffith, farewell. Nay, Patience,
You must not leave me yet; I must to bed;
Call in more women. When I am dead, good wench,
Let me be used with honour; strew me over
With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
I was a chaste wife to my grave; embalm me,
Then lay me forth; although unqueened, yet like
A queen and daughter to a king, inter me.

Catherine desired to be buried in a convent, but she was laid in Peterborough Cathedral. Henry did not pay the bequests which she, dying, had asked him to bestow upon her dependants.

The Judge Who Sent Raleigh to the Block

HENRY MONTAGU played many distinguished parts during his 40 years of public life, but the one scene which lives in the imagination is that tragic one in which as Lord Chief Justice he presided at the second trial of Raleigh. Broken and despairing, the great man, who had been reprieved on the block 15 years earlier, ostensibly guilty of new offences, was charged again with the old. The result was inevitable, and Montagu had to pronounce the melancholy words of doom. He showed nothing of rancorous hatred and discharged his fearful oflice with dignity and humanity.

He was a kindly and witty man, pliant and plausible, liking the popular cause yet supporting James’s assertion of the divine right of kings, and ingeniously defending the legality and propriety of Ship Money for the advantage of Charles, who reposed complete faith in him. His contemporaries considered him an entirely honest man, yet he paid £20,000 as a bribe to Buckingham for the post of Lord High Treasurer. We must judge a man by the moral code of his age, and Montagu was little worse than the best of his fellows.

Born at Boughton, Northampton, about 1563, he entered Parliament in 1601, and after 13 years as Recorder of London was made Chief Justice. He was associated with Bacon in the suppression of Customs abuses, had a foremost share in the investigation of Bacon’s misdoings. To sit in judgment on two such men as Raleigh and Bacon is a misfortune which has fallen to few judges in our history. Speaker of the House of Lords, Lord President of the Council, in sympathy with those who combated forced loans, yet active in enforcing them, Montagu needed all the subtlety of his mind to reconcile his conflicting functions. He was spared the testing time of the Civil War, for he died in 1642, after acting as one of the guardians of the realm during the absence of Charles in Scotland.

Having acquired a moderate fortune, he bought Kimbolton Castle. His son Edward, the Cromwellian Lord Manchester, was at first a potent force in the battles of the Commonwealth winning a great victory over Prince Rupert at Marston Moor.

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Tilbrook

All Saints, locked no keyholder which was disappointing but not unexpected given its location, sits in attractive location and is a fine example of the local vernacular.

ALL SAINTS. A good Dec church. The most telling exception is the N aisle. The arcade is hard to understand. It was first a matter of three bays added to a Norman nave. The Norman piers are round, the abaci square but chamfered, the arches pointed with just a slight chamfer. That makes the work c.1190. The W bay was later cut into by the tower, but the W respond was found in c. 1190. Then, in the late C13, the arcade was extended E with circular piers whose abaci are alternatingly octagonal and round, double-chamfered arches, and a little nailhead enrichment. The W wall of the chancel (whose arch is Dec) cuts into this lengthening, so that the easternmost of the late C13 piers now acts as a respond for the one-bay N chapel, which is also Dec. But extemally the N doorway seems early C13, and the N aisle W lancet and the NW window of two separate lancets with a tiny blank quatrefoil over belong to the late C13 build. However, externally it is the W tower that dominates. It is Dec and has two-light bell openings with transom and a recessed broach spire with low broaches and two tiers of lucarnes. The nave S windows are Dec but Victorian. The chancel and N vestry appear Perp, but the eaves-frieze includes all ballflowering so that is Dec too, and Dec is indeed the ANGLE PISCINA in the chancel. Late Perp the clerestory, Late Perp a head-corbel and the brackets l. and r. of the chancel E window, and Late Perp the N aisle roof with angels against the intermediate principals. - (FONT. In the churchyard the bowl of a Perp font with quatrefoils. GMCH) - SCREEN. Perp, of three-light divisions and without doubt the best in the county. It still has its ribbed coving with three patterns of ribbing and much original colour. On the dado painted Saints no longer clearly recognizable. - STALLS. Two have old poppyheads. - SCULPTURE. In the S porch a Cross of the C1I2, probably not from Tilbrook. On one narrow side a bishop standing on a colonnette rendered in relief. On one broad side fluting but with two big flowers. - Above the S porch entrance a man with a pig; C12? - STAINED GLASS. Fragments in a chancel S window. - In the E window two early C16 roundels. - BRASSES. Under the organ brasses of a Civilian and wife,  c.1400. The sizes of the figures seem unrecorded.

 

TILBROOK. It has a manor house to put into a picture, with a soft red glow on its barns and timbers, all 16th or 17th centuries. There is a windmill on a hill, a fragment of the ancient cross, and in the 14th century church is the oldest brass in the county.

A splendid ash stands sentinel by the gate of the church, with its majestic tower and a stone spire from which gargoyles have been looking down 600 years. One is a man who seems to be crawling round the corner of the wall; another is like a man gripping a flowing beard. The south porch was built at the same time as the tower.

The oldest part of the church is the nave arcade, 12th century at the west end and 13th in the last two bays. The clerestory and the chancel arch are Tudor, but there are two piscinas which were here before the Tudors came, one with a column capped by a queer head. They were probably made by the masons who put the man driving a beast over the porch, and the St Christopher in one of the aisles. There is another Christopher in a fragment of glass 500 years old. The ancient brass has been here since 1400 and has on it the oldest engraved portraits of a man and his wife in Huntingdonshire. Both are dressed in long gowns, and each has a dog. We do not know their names.

The pride of the church is in its lovely carved oak. It is in the roof, by the altar, and in the chancel screen. Few churches have a better collection of screens. One it has sent to South Kensington, with its six traceried bays and its gate into the chancel, and unusually beautiful and ingenious work in the vaulting. Its arches have delicate tracery and impressive fan-vaulting gilded and painted, the lower panels with old paintings of saints, one of which is St Helen with a cross. The screen in one of the chapels has a 17th century door and 15th century fragments, the other is 16th century and has foliage in the spandrels. In one of the chapels are angels carved in oak before Columbus had dreamed of America, some with musical instruments, some with books and crowns. There is an old chair with a figure of a man carved on the back, a group of 15th century stalls, and a Jacobean altar table. The priest’s door hangs on ironwork which has supported it for 600 years.

Here they laid to rest an old man of 97, Barton Young, who was shepherd of this flock for half a century.

Seems a shame it's locked.

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Covington

St Margaret, open, was my church of the day despite the fact that, or more likely because, it's so simple. The setting is lovely and the details are stunning.

ST MARGARET. A grey, aisleless church of small size. The earliest part is the tympanum of the N doorway. This is Norman, with its two affronted quadrupeds: a lion and a wingless griffin( ?). More evidence of the Norman church is to be found built into the S wall of the vestry, e.g. some zigzag and the fragment of a colonnette. Then follows the priest’s doorway, which must be c.1200. Good early CI3 S doorway with one order of shafts with shaft-rings and leaf capitals. Arch with many mouldings including rolls with fillets. Good late C13 chancel S windows with simple but attractive geometrical tracery. The chancel arch corresponds to them. Above it two deep recesses in the nave E wall. A former S chapel has Dec details. The small W tower is Dec too - see the arch towards the nave* and the W lwindow. The tower originally carried a spire. - FONT. Octagonal, Norman, with scalloped base and underside. - BENCHES. Three Perp ones, of the buttressed type. - PLATE. Cup of c.1570 and matching Cover Paten.

* The VCH calls it c.1500 with re-used stones from c.1330.

COVINGTON. It is close to what is known as the Three Shire Stone at the meeting of the county with Bedfordshire and Northants, a village with a 17th century hall and a church on a hill among great elms.

It has something within easy reach of these three counties which can be matched only once or twice in this country, the doorway into its Norman church. We come up to it and find it almost as the Normans saw it, for it has looked as it does, wood and iron and stone, the plain door on these very hinges, set in these very stones, ever since the Normans lived in Covington. This north doorway is as its masons and carpenters and ironworkers must have seen it; it is believed to be unchanged since they built the church. The wind and rain of centuries has worn away the sculpture in the tympanum above the door, but the quaint carving the Norman mason left for us to see can still be recognised; it shows a bird riding a griffin and a monkey riding a lion.

Much of the church is as the Normans saw it. The 13th century chancel has a doorway through which the Norman priest would go, and there is still here the font at which he christened the children, though it has a modern cover, crowned with a model of a church. High up on the wall above the chancel arch is a window with two grinning heads keeping watch on the Norman nave. There is a chest made in 1700, a group of Tudor bench-ends, a medieval stone coffin, and a fragment of 14th century glass.

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Catworth

St Leonard, open, is pleasantly situated and is, in its way, an attractive building but in truth I found it rather run of the mill - it ticked various boxes but had no sense of excitement.

ST LEONARD. A late C14 church, except for the half-destroyed E.E. DOUBLE PISCINA in the chancel and the lavish E.E. S doorway with three orders of shafts carrying mature stiff-leaf capitals and an arch of three hollow chamfers. The W tower is slender, ashlar-faced and well detailed. A W window which is a spherical triangle with six spokes as tracery is still essentially Dec, and so are the two-light bell-openings with transom. But the top frieze, the battlements, and the recessed spire (with two tiers of lucarnes) are Perp.* The arcades of four bays inside are quite typical of the late C14, i.e. the standard Perp moulded pier-section but still rounded bases and capitals and still sunk-quadrant mouldings in the arches. The chancel arch matches. Later clerestory and nave roof (almost entirely renewed) with traceried spandrels of the braces and carved bosses. Bosses also on the S aisle roof. - PULPIT. Of wood; Perp. - SCREEN. Perp, of three-light divisions. - SCULPTURE. A stiff-leaf bracket in the N aisle. - CHANDELIER. Of brass, dated 1666 and inscribed by Brasenose College. - STAINED GLASS. Fragments in the chancel S windows. - PLATE. Cup of 1568-9; C17 Paten; Jug of 1771-2; Plate of 1778-9. - MONUMENTS. Tablets with simple urn at the top to Elizabeth Booth d. 1846 by Maile & Son and to Sir Felix Booth F.R.S. d. 1850 by S. Manning jun.

* The gargoyle on the N side is re-used and marks the outlet of a flue from a recess inside, probably for baking the communion wafers.

CATWORTH. It gave London a Lord Mayor, but it sold a precious fragment of its heritage. A pleasant village with thatched cottages 300 years old, it gathers round a handsome church which has come down from our three great building centuries.

The tower and its spire look down on venerable yews. The south doorway has capitals decorated with foliage by a sculptor who was in his grave before Chaucer was in his cradle. Its door, like the door to the turret stairway, was made about 400 years ago. The roofs of the nave and aisles are older still, and have bold foliage and faces.

There is a fine Jacobean altar table, a pulpit with traceried panels that have been admired for 500 years, and a chancel screen with arches like beautiful windows, the glorious work of the 15th century builder of the chancel. A fragment of carved stone and a coffin lid must be older than Magna Carta, and the altar cup was made before the Armada came. Among fragments of 15th century glass are flowers and foliage in red, blue, and gold. In the nave hangs a brass candelabra with a double-headed eagle given by a London man in the year of the Great Fire.

Nothing could be simpler than the font carved 600 years ago. We like to think that at it Wolstan Dixie was baptised in 1525. He ran about this village as a little fellow, and is remembered as the Dick Whittington of Huntingdon. The village had been the home of his people for generations and they had rich lands, but Wolstan was the fourth son of his father and was apprenticed to Sir Christopher Draper, a city merchant of the Ironmongers Company. The young apprentice found favour in his master’s sight, and he captured the heart of his master’s daughter whom he married. Sir Christopher was Lord Mayor in 1566, and Sir Wolstan (as he became) followed his example in 1585. Active, generous, and of high renown, he died in 1593, leaving an annuity to Christ’s Hospital, a fund to help young merchants, coals to the poor of his parish, money for prisoners and maids, and a fund to establish a lecture at a London church.

But the treasure Catworth has no more, having sold it, is a set of five cushions with quaint figures of kings and saints, exquisite examples of 14th century needlework. It was a sad day when these things were sold to South Kensington, where we must go to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see them. Perhaps the museum will return them to their old home.

Flickr.