Sandridge church, Herts: a stone chancel screen

 

Screen from the east

Sandridge, a couple of miles north of St Albans, is one of those churches that has an outstanding headline act - in this case, a stone medieval chancel screen - but which turns out to have a fine supporting cast too.

There are plenty of stone screens in cathedrals and other major churches (such as abbeys), where they're called pulpita (singular, pulpitum), but there are only maybe a couple of dozen medieval examples in English parish churches, and Sandridge's is the only one in Hertfordshire. 

Screen from the west; watercolour, J C Buckler, 1840

Screen from the east; watercolour, J C Buckler, 1839

We know what the screen originally looked like thanks to J C Buckler, who painted numerous pictures of Hertfordshire churches in the 1830s and 40s and to which I often refer; they are now in the County Records Office in Hertford. It was constructed in the late 14th century, and the openings are Perpendicular in design, as would be expected from the date, but they are embellished with fleurons in the jambs, a feature more commonly associated with the Decorated style of earlier in the century. This embellishment is found only on the east-facing side, which is unusual as generally the side seen by the congregation rather than the clergy is the more elaborate of the two. 

Screen from the east

Screen from west

When the screen was built the original chancel arch was retained. This is of Roman brick (presumably salvaged from nearby Verulamium (Roman St Albans)), and probably dates from the late 11th or early 12th century. Whether its preservation was a result of reverence for an earlier structure or a purely practical matter we don't know.

One delightful and individual detail of the screen is that on the east there are low buttress-like projections on either side of the door, with small reclining figures on them. The one on the south is bearded, has his right hand up to the side of his face and holds a rosary his left; the figure on the north is more damaged but seems to be a woman as she has a wimple; she holds her left hand up to her chin. He is certainly looking across at her, while it's unclear if she's looking at him or not. The Statutory Listing suggests that they may represent donors; they relax there as if eternally listening to the services and each other.

Bettley/Pevsner name Thomas Wolvey (fl.1397-d.1428) as the mason possibly responsible for the screen. He worked on Henley-on-Thames church and Westminster Hall, and probably designed the clock tower which still stands in central St Albans. It's likely that he was the Master Mason of St Albans Abbey for the last three decades of his life, and worked on several churches in the area, and Newnham in the north of the county. He's buried in St Michael's, St Albans. 

Quite apart from its antiquarian interest the screen is aesthetically pleasing. The church was restored in 1886-7 by William White (1825-1900); he entirely rebuilt the tower and the rest of the west end, but also worked on the screen. Comparing the photo above with Buckler's watercolours shows that he left the screen itself untouched, but that he replaced all the masonry forming the east wall of the nave with an openwork timber screen, in order to reduce the weight the stone screen was supporting. (A similar structure can be seen outside in the half-timbered east gable of the nave.) Given that this was necessary I think that the result is very successful, with the wooden panels mirroring the stone ones below.

The three-bayed nave is late 12th century, with square scalloped capitals on octagonal piers. Some of the capitals have odd volutes at the corners, like monstrous faces. The font must be of a similar date, or perhaps a little earlier.

The tower arch belongs to a later period, the 13th century, as is evident from the two damaged stiff-leaf capitals. The tower itself is otherwise entirely by White and is concrete, not stone.

The east window, a so-so Ascension from 1887, is by Ward and Hughes.

St Christopher, an early work by Christopher Webb (1886-1966), 1916. There's an Enid Blytonesque charm to the three children presenting daisies to Christ.

St Michael slaying Satan in the form of a dragon, by John Hayward (1929-2007), 1957. This is, surely, the best window in the church. It is highly dramatic, the scene packed into a partial circle except for some details which spill into the quarries. The dragon is fearsome, but St Michael, with his magnificent wings which almost cage it, is up to the task and stabs him with his spear-staff despite being encumbered with the scales with which he weighs souls.

The most recent window, from 1992, was designed by Peter Archer and made by his own Chapel Studios. It features a quotation from Psalm 23 and a gently meandering river. It's a most attractive piece.

In 2004-5 the west end was reordered by Bruno Hooker; the most striking feature of this is the engraved glass screen which has turned the ground floor of the tower into a separate room. There are lively but hard to photograph birds and fishes.

This is only tangentially relevant, as he may not have ever set foot in Sandridge's church, but in researching for this post I came across Laurence Clarkson (1615-67), and I can't resist adding something about him. (He has a Wikipedia entry and one in the Dictionary of National Biography.*) He was the Baptist minister in Sandridge for about a year in 1646/7 before he was sacked for his unorthodox views. His fame (such as it is) rests on his having gone through six religions during his life (or, more accurately, six versions of Christianity). He was born into Anglicanism, then became a Presbyterian, an Independent, an Antinomian (as a Ranter), a Baptist, and finally a Muggletonian (all this against the background of the Civil War; he had joined Col. Fleetwood's regiment of the New Model Army). The shades of difference between these sects may be hard for us to grasp (or care much about) nearly four centuries later, but at the time they were argued and even fought over. He also, at various times, practiced astrology, healing and magic, rejected conventional morality, and was notorious for his libertinism.

He wrote one of the earliest English memoirs, The Lost Sheep Found, published in 1660 under the name Laurence Claxton, but unfortunately I can't recommend it as an enjoyable read: it concerns itself mostly with obscure theological disputes and self-justification (he particularly has it in for the Quakers), and the paragraphs are often many pages long. There are a few moments of unintentional comedy, as when in 1645 he was arrested and put on trial in Bury St Edmunds, during which the judge questions him with rather suspicious persistence about 'dipping' (baptising) naked women (which he denies having done). Occasionally he writes in a more anecdotal and lively style:

But now to return to my progress, I came for London again, to visit my old society; which then Mary Midleton of Chelsford, and Mrs Star was deeply in love with me, so having parted with Mrs Midleton, Mrs Star and I went up and down the countries as man and wife, spending our time in feasting and drinking, so that Taverns I called the house of God; and the Drawers [ie drawers of drink, the barmaids and barmen], Messengers; and Sack [fortified wine], Divinity; reading in Solomons writings it must be so, in that it made glad the heart of God; which before, and at that time, they improved their liberty, where Doctor Pagets maid stripped herself naked, and skipped among them, but being in a Cooks shop [well supplied with pleasures of the flesh], there was no hunger [desire/lust], so that I kept myself to Mrs Star, pleading the lawfulness of our doings as aforesaid, concluding with Solomon all was vanity. (pp28/9)

He became a Muggletonian in 1656. The sect was founded in 1651 by Lodowicke Muggleton; they were apolitical, pacifist and egalitarian, and believed, among other things, that God takes no interest in events on Earth and will not intervene until the Last Judgement. The last known meeting (they didn't hold services as such) of Muggletonians was as recently as 1940. Clarkson, however, died in Ludgate debtors' prison in 1667; he had fallen into debt because he lent £100 to some people to assist in the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666, and they absconded with it. An unfortunate end to a unusually full life.

* Anyone with a (free) UK library card will be able to access this; overseas readers will need a subscription.)

Sandridge church went through a phase of being locked, but thankfully seems to have returned to being generally open.

The Statutory Listing calls this a 'broached spire'. It is in fact a splayed foot spire.

Later medieval tiles

Chipperfield church, Herts: raising the roof

 

Chipperfield church stands next to the common in this large, attractive village. It was built right at the start of Victoria's reign by Thomas Talbot Bury (1809-77) in 1837-8. Externally it is unprepossessing, with very little to make it stand out. You could say that architecturally it is outshone by the sympathetic adjacent church rooms of 2000. Bury had trained with Pugin, but you could hardly guess that from the evidence on display here.

It's worth going inside, though, for two reasons: for the roof, and for a mini-history of the fall and rise of 20th century English stained glass.

The former is a riot of rafters and scissor braces that seems to transfigure as you walk around beneath it and which reaches its climax at the crossing, a geometrical gyration. 

There are eleven stained glass windows, two of which are blocked by the organ (which must be one of the largest in a parish church in the county). The nine visible ones range in date from 1872 to 1999. Here they are, presented chronologically rather than topographically. (The points of the compass used here assume for simplicity's sake that the altar is at the east, whereas in fact it's south west.)

The west window of the north transept depicts St John the Evangelist; its maker and designer are not recorded, and it's a good example of a standard mid-Victorian small window, competent but not particularly remarkable.

This one, on the north side of the nave, dates from 1919 and is based on Holman Hunt's ubiquitous 1853 painting The Light of the World. Its maker is listed as Binder, presumably one of several firms that churned out uninspired stained glass in the first half of the century. It's not absolutely terrible, but it is entirely conventional with the heavy canopies and even heavier sentimentality.

The east window is a Noli Me Tangere scene (ie Mary Magdalene recognising Jesus after the Resurrection), by the firm James Powell and Sons. Powell's were certainly capable of making good windows; for example, there's one in Abbots Langley from 1911, and another in Weston from 1902, but by 1930, when this one was made, all the life seems to have gone out of them. The only bit I really like is the four angels in the small lights at the top, which remind me a little of Mary Watts' ceramic angels on the pulpit of Little Gaddesden. If only, say, Christopher Whall, who made several windows for nearby Sarratt, had been employed here.

Thomas Henry Grylls (1873-1953), the son of Thomas John Grylls, the co-founder of the firm Burlison and Grylls and who had trained in the studios of the often excellent firm Clayton and Bell, was the guilty man responsible for this window on the north side of the chancel in 1946. I include it merely to illustrate the parlous state of English stained glass in mid-century. 

This 1948 window on the south side of the chancel is at least a step in the right direction. The use of colour is more adventurous, the pomposity has mostly gone, the pose of the figure on the right, David, is more animated (but terribly fey), though I'm in two minds about the use of clear glass to form the background (which I think must have been done partly as a cost-cutting exercise). Some of the incidental details - the flowers on the tussocks on which the figures stand, the falcon grasping the sun in the heraldry - are very enjoyable. I'm not sure what's going on with the two busts of bewigged Augustans at the bottom. Isn't that the butchest eagle you've ever seen accompanying St John? At the top are two musician angels; one plays the organ while kneeing, which can't be very comfortable, and the other strikes his favourite Pete Townsend poses with his lute.

The window is by Francis Skeat (1909-2000), who was born in St Albans and made a great contribution to stained glass in Hertfordshire and elsewhere. 

Back to the north side of the chancel where we find another Skeat window, from 1957, depicting St Paul. (I'm relying, as usual, on Robert Eberhard's Church Stained Glass Records; I notice that this window commemorates a 1946 death, so possibly it dates from 1948 rather than 57, and the John and David window above is from 57.)

The 1966 west window is by John Hayward (1929-2007), a distinguished and prolific artist whose work is easily recognisable. It shows the Risen Christ within a mandorla; unlike in many earlier windows there's nothing sentimental about the depiction of Jesus. His eyes are downcast yet he looks full of quiet determination and confidence. He strides towards us and raises his right arm in blessing and triumph (and reminds me of a bowler celebrating with faux modesty having taken a wicket). The leading is vigorous, and the numerous small panels have texture as well as colour. At the bottom plants spring into life as if vivified by the beams of light and power that shoot from him.

On the south side of the nave is this lancet window designed by John Lawson and made by Goddard and Gibbs Studios (of which he was chief artist) in 1995. It depicts a dove, symbolising the Holy Spirit; Lawson has made a potentially static subject into something dynamic and exhilarating. On the left the principal colour is green, while on the right there's much plain white glass, though reds and blues are dotted around; the restraint of the colour makes it all the more colourful.

Next to the Holy Spirit window is another by Lawson, from 1999, a Madonna and Child. Here the colours are even more sharply divided between left and right; when I first saw it I thought a shadow from a transept or similar was falling across it. Greeny-yellows predominates on one side and dark blues on the other, possibly suggesting day and night. Mary is statuesque yet touchingly human, like a statue on the west front of Chartres Cathedral. At the top trumpets blaze a noisy fanfare (and there's a hint of organ pipes), while at the bottom a harp strums gentle (and perhaps nocturnal) music. It's glorious. 

Chipperfield church was open when I visited.