Stanton Harcourt church, Oxfordshire: they possibly can can-can

 

Stanton Harcourt church, Oxfordshire, has a great deal to recommend it, not least, especially in these strange times when access to churches is often much harder than usual, being open. When I arrived a couple of weeks ago there was not only a large sign on the door saying OPEN, but both the door of the porch and the north door it shelters were welcomingly swung back as far as their hinges would allow. Through the open doors I could hear inviting and vaguely heavenly shimmering sounds coming from within, tinkling tintinnabulations a bit like that produced by wind chimes in a mild breeze. 

But I decided to make a Pevsnerian perambulation around the outside before entering. This is something all aficionados of churches should do: take in the relationship between the church and its natural and man-made landscapes, assess and enjoy the varied building materials, arrive at tentative dates for the building of the various parts (mostly by looking at the windows), and look for evidence of rebuilding in the form of blocked windows and the like. However, I have to admit that I rarely look outside first. When I arrive at a church the most pressing question is: is it open? The only way of finding out is by trying the door. If it is open, I lack the willpower to delay the gratification of looking inside, so in I go without an initial exterior recce. (Plus there's the possibility, slim but real, that someone will come along and lock up.)

The many round-headed windows (and doors) reveal that the church is partly Norman, in particular the nave and the lower stage of the central tower, while the tall, thin pointed lancet windows in the transepts and chancel indicate a substantial rebuilding a century or so later in the Early English period, the 13th century. 

The south chapel (on the left in the photo above) is a 15th century addition in the Perpendicular style, the most obvious feature of which is mullions in the windows rising straight up to meet the arch. Some of the other windows and the top stage of the tower are from the same period. 

A walk around the outside also reveals that there's another 15th century tower immediately next to the church; I'll come back to that briefly later.

As interesting and attractive as the exterior is, the church's main attractions are inside. As I stepped through the door, the mingling ringing ambient notes I'd heard from outside became louder, but they still didn't crystallise in my ear into a recognisable form, and their source was still not apparent. It turned out that this was because the music was coming from the south transept, which isn't visible from most of the nave; the transept sheltered a group of lady handbell ringers (would the collective noun be a clangour of handbell ringers?) who were practising their art there. 

At some time in the middle of the 13th century the Norman crossing arches were replaced in the latest style, probably partly because they obscured the view to the chancel. It must have been quite a job propping up the existing tower while they rebuilt the supporting arches, but clearly they must have thought the effort and expense was worthwhile.

Underneath the eastern arch of the crossing is the rood screen. 14th and, even more so, 15th century screens aren't at all rare, but there is only a small handful of 13th century ones remaining in parish churches. So to find one in Stanton Harcourt is exciting. It's very similar to the few others that survive: Gilston, Herts, Thurcaston, Leics, Kirkstead, Lincs, and Sparsholt, Berks. (Geddington, Northants, has a 13th century parclose screen.) Stanton Harcourt's example is unrestored and complete down to the existence of the original bolt and hasp on the doors. 

One curious feature is the profusion of variedly-shaped holes cut into the dado. These are usually explained as being elevation squints, that is, they were intended to give a view of the Elevation of the Host; for this to be true (and I don't claim that it's not) people would have had to be kneeling with their noses right against the screen at this juncture of the Mass. We might think that it would have been easier and less destructive to kneel somewhere else, or to kneel on something high so as to be able to see through the 'windows' of the screen. The holes have been pretty crudely cut; most of them, like much medieval graffiti, have obviously been 'designed' using a compass, but one is a simplified version of a Perpendicular panel traceried window, such as is found in the west window of the church.*

Architecturally the highlight of the church is the chancel. It's almost as big as the nave, and, thanks to the profusion of windows with mostly clear glass, is irradiated, picked clean by light. There were originally no fewer than five triplets of lancet windows; one was destroyed to make the Harcourt chapel inc.1470, and one has had one of its windows blocked to accommodate a monument, but that still leaves eleven individual elegantly shafted windows. A piscina with a credence shelf is incorporated into the overall design.

In the south west corner of the chancel the remains of a lowside window or niche, destroyed during the building of the Harcourt chapel, were discovered in 1970. A mini capital with stiffleaf and meek little head survives.

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To my mind the church's other star attraction, along with the screen, is the shrine in the chancel. There are very few medieval shrines surviving in English parish churches, most of them having been destroyed in the Reformation (the shrine to St Wite survives in Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset, and there are a few in cathedrals, some reconstructed). Stanton Harcourt's example is therefore a great rarity. It wasn't originally in the church, but Bicester Priory; it was made to venerate St Edburg, and was moved to Stanton Harcourt in c.1537, where it was perhaps used as an Easter sepulchre.

The upper, more elaborate part dates from the early 14th century. It's of Purbeck marble and is sumptuously decorated, increasingly complex the higher you look, with an astonishing amount of detail crammed into a relatively tiny space, as if the teeming life of a continent has been shrunk to the size of a table mat. Yet it doesn't seem, at least to me, to be overcrowded or too busy. All the elements are perfectly judged and balanced, even the little standing figures in their nodding ogee niches near the top who fit so snugly that their toes project over the edge.

The limestone base on which it stands was probably made for the shrine to stand on when it was brought to the church. It's much less exuberant than the canopy, making a good contrast between the aesthetics and sensibilities of the early 14th and 16th centuries. It features, at the top, the symbols of the Passion of Christ (including the Crown of Thorns and the stigmata), and two angels with arms akimbo as if in high dudgeon.

In the three lancets on the south of the chancel are the remains of some geometric grisaille (that is, mainly monochrome patterns of foliage) glass, with, in the centre light, a figure of St James the Great (so called to distinguish him from St James the Less), all dating from the mid 13th century. James is named on a scroll, ('Jacobus' is Latin for 'James'), which is just as well as he doesn't seem to be carrying his usual attribute, a scallop shell.

In the easternmost south windows of the Harcourt chapel are, at the top, some fragments of late medieval glass, and, below, two most attractive 13th century remnants of (presumably) the original stained glass from the chancel. They show a bishop, and a king. I think the first one is particularly striking: the figure is shown mostly symmetrically from the front, as tends to be the case in pictures from this period, but the diagonally placed crozier gives some dynamism and drama to the composition. In between them is some heraldry, dating from the 15th century.

The website of the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (by far the most comprehensive record of medieval stained glass) doesn't include these three panels. I don't know why.

I had to risk getting clonked by swinging handbells to reach this absolutely splendid baroque monument in the south transept; I know that some turn their noses up at this sort of thing, but I think it's wonderful (the BoE calls it 'a rustic tour de force'). It commemorates Sir Philip Harcourt, who died in 1688, and his first wife Ann. Like the shrine in the chancel, it's almost overloaded with decorative detail but still coheres. The faces of Philip and Ann are sensitively portrayed; his flowing locks (they would have been a wig) are enviable, but her hairstyle makes it look as if she's got apple peelings slung from her head. The putto on the top on the left looks gormless, while the one on the right looks a bit down in the dumps; together they are fictively unveiling the busts. Sadly, the name of the sculptor is unknown; how can the name of someone so talented have been forgotten?

The Harcourt chapel, on the south of the chancel, was built c.1470. It was locked when I visited, as I understand it usually is. However, it is possible to get a tolerably good view through the gates. Here are some brief notes on what's visible.

Early 18th century wrought iron gate

Sir Robert Harcourt, d.1470/1, and his wife Margaret

Perhaps Robert Harcourt, d. before 1509, with the remains of his banner above that probably flew at the Battle of Bosworth, 1485 (see here).

Archbishop Edward Vernon Harcourt, d.1847, and a bust to George Granville Harcourt, d.1861

Looking east from the transept

The nave roof dates from about the early 15th century. One notable feature is that the undersides of the principal rafters and their associated struts are cusped, giving them a decorative wavy edge. What I like most about the roof, however, are the corbels holding it up, which must date from the same time. I particularly like corbels (and other often overlooked carvings) as they're usually of a different order to most of the other objects in a church: folk art rather than high art. The masons who carved them were presumably left to follow their own whims, and the results were (we can assume) generally as disregarded then as they are now. (It's fairly rare for the BoE, or the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, or the Statutory Listing, or the Victoria County History, to mention them, though, to be fair, in Stanton Harcourt's case the Listing does cite '12th and 13th century head corbels'. Dating corbels is often problematic, and who am I to disagree with the professionals, but I really can't accept their dating here. 12th century Norman carvings have an easy to spot style, which is not matched by the church's corbels (though perhaps the third and fifth of the photos below could, in another context, be mistaken for Norman work). There's no reason to think that any work took place in the nave in the 13th century. Surely the corbels, as I've already suggested, were made to support the new roof in about 1400.)

A glum-looking couple, possibly a king and queen. The mason's warning to those contemplating matrimony?

Foliate head

Primitive-looking man/animal hybrid

Another unhappy customer

Perhaps he's upset by the wood treatment that's been spilt on him

Another semi-human creature

Is he perhaps thoughtful rather than glum?

A strange conjoined twin goat-like creature

From this angle he looks snooty rather than glum

He seems to be looking into the abyss of despair

None of these are masterpieces, but that's rather the point: they're simple, rustic, captivating. If we want to get inside the medieval mind, they are at least as significant as the shrine of St Edburg.

As I noted on my exterior indagation, next door to the church, separated from the churchyard by a castellated wall, is another Perpendicular tower and more medieval buildings, belonging to the Manor House.** The pyramid roof is that of the Great Kitchen, 'one of the most complete medieval domestic kitchens in England, and certainly the most spectacular' (BoE); it was built in the early 15th century and rebuilt later in the same century. (There's an excellent picture of the interior of the roof on the back cover of the BoE.) The tower dates from c.1460-70; it's known as 'Pope's Tower' as Alexander Pope finished his translation of the Iliad here in 1717-18. It seems strange to me that he should be memorialised in this way. Why isn't the place where he wrote, say, The Rape of the Lock known as Pope's Study, or the place where he had a sudden idea for a witty couplet for The Dunciad be called Pope's Privy?

While I was inside the church I was of course concentrating on the features described above, the screen, the shrine, the stained glass and so on, so it took me several minutes to pay attention to the music being played by the lady handbell ringers. (They were, incidentally, very friendly and welcoming, and if they were put off by my unwonted interruption of their rehearsal they gave no sign of it.) But eventually it became clear to me that they were essaying a slightly slow, even stately version of Offenbach's Can-can, a decidedly secular piece to be reverberating around a church. After I left, I like to think that they picked up their skirts and kicked up their legs, showing off their frilly underwear as they whooped in wild abandon.

* Aymer Vallance (in English Church Screens, 1936, p.40) contends that the squints were cut for and quite probably by children, and 'possibly without leave' as he nicely puts it. (He also points out that in 1310, when the Knights Templar were under investigation (they were suppressed in 1312), one of the charges made against them was that some of them failed to raise their eyes to the Elevated Host.)

** The Manor House is privately owned and not open to the public. It seems that the grounds are very occasionally open, but the most recent reference on the interweb to this happening dates from 2013.

Next to the shrine is a monument probably commemorating Maud de Grey, who died in 1394, shortly after marrying Sir Thomas Harcourt. 

Hargrave church, Suffolk - open. Five other Suffolk churches - locked.

 

Yesterday a friend and I went on a trip visiting churches in west Suffolk (and straying over the border into east Cambridgeshire). The final score was:

Churches visited: six

Churches open: one

Churches displaying passive-aggressive notices telling visitors to go away: one

The good news first. Hargrave church gets a parsimonious eight lines in Bettley/Pevsner, but it's not only open - a rarity in these plague-ridden times - but rewarding to visit. To start with, like many of my favourite churches it's hidden away down a leafy little track (you have to leave your car and walk the last bit). When you arrive the view above greets you, which is I think you'll agree most attractive. Pause first to enjoy the colours and textures on display (all the better for the bright sun, the luminous blue sky with dapplings of white cloud, and the framing of early autumn foliage). The rich red brick tower, with a stair turret, stubby pinnacles and diagonal buttresses, dates either from 1460 (Historic England), Tudor times (Bettley/Pevsner), or, more precisely, the early 16th century (Statutory listing). The latter must be correct. 

Then the rendered nave, with limestone and squared flint buttresses, and the flint chancel. The chancel is 13th century, but so restored that hardly anything original survives. The bifora (two-light window) in the nave is, like the coeval tower, made of brick. The drab slate roof is a disappointment, but you can't have everything.

The south doorway is very simple late Norman, say about 1200. If I remember correctly, the notice on the door effectively says that the church will remain open no matter what.

Walk through the door and you find yourself in an atmospheric interior, full of light (there's no stained glass). There's a friendly-feeling clutter of objects: an organ that once was perhaps the pride of a 1970s sitting room, a tubby Victorian heater in the 1868 north aisle, the old Commandment boards (previously on the wall in the chancel) now propped up by the chancel screen. There's even (maybe not quite so friendly-feeling) a cardboard box of human skulls and other bones on the window ledge under the tower (presumably recently dug up and awaiting a decision what to do with them). 

The seven-canted nave roof is a fine sight; it's now ceiled with 19th century ribbed panels. 

Bettley/Pevsner don't even mention the 15th century font, which is not, it's true, out of the ordinary, but surely it, together with its pleasing Victorian cover, deserves a look.

Not out of the ordinary, except this one of the eight panels. They're all identical, with a simple shield inside a quatrefoil, but on this side the shield has a distinct lean, as if about to topple over. Why? Was it just a mistake, or is there some arcane reason behind it?

The star attraction of the church is the 15th century chancel screen. From the nave it looks a bit shabby and much patched up, though attractive enough. You look at it before you walk through it into the chancel, and because screens are virtually always designed to be seen from the west rather than the east you hardly think it worth giving it a second glance from behind. However, if you fail to do so you're missing a treat. 

In the spandrels are low-relief carvings, all quite spirited and engaging. The first one, on the left, shows a fox anticipating a tasty meal as he's just caught a goose, and some foliage.

The next one has an eagle, and a wyvern.

Here are two flat fish, and two wyverns. All the authorities I've consulted agree that a dragon features o the screen; however, all three of the dragon-like creatures look to me like wyverns as they have serpentine bodies and only two limbs (plus their wings), whereas dragons are four-legged.

The next shows a Pelican in her Piety (a symbol of Christ), and a unicorn. (A poor quality photo - sorry. At least it gives me a good reason to go back.)

A man (presumably a Turk) wearing a turban (you have to tilt it 45 degrees to easily make him out), and more foliage.

All this amounts to a wonderful gallery of late medieval folk art. But why is it on the back of the screen? A mistake during a restoration? This explanation doesn't really convince because if you look at the cusping at the bottom of the main arches on the front of the screen, it's more elaborate on the front, and looks as if it's always been intended to be on the front. Maybe the vicar at the time, who probably paid for it (he would have been responsible for the building, contents and upkeep of the chancel), decided on a whim that he wanted something to look at while he conducted services. 

The rood beam, decorated with zigzag and billet moulding, also survives. On it once the rood would have stood - statues of the crucified Christ and attendant figures. 

So Hargrave was the only one of the six churches we visited that was open. Actually, that's not quite true; the door of one of the others was wide open, but a meeting (not a service, I don't think, as they were holding clipboards) was in progress and they turned us away. Maybe they were discussing confidential issues, and they told us which days the church was open to visitors, so fair enough. One church I've visited before and found open in the past was locked this time, presumably as an anti-Covid measure.

Most of the locked churches had a sign saying when they were open 'for private prayer'. As I said when writing about Norton church recently, I'd have thought that a simple 'open' would do without specifying what it's open for, but, again, fair enough. However, Ashley church, just over the border in Cambridgeshire, displays this sign:

The first thing to point out about it is the amusing typo (maybe they mean 're-election'? - perhaps they're expecting a visit from Donald Trump). But, much more importantly, there's the attitude displayed, the tone of voice implying the very opposite of hospitality, welcome and friendliness that we might expect to find in a church. I particularly admire the way that the word 'only' is in capitals, underlined AND in italics, to drive home the point that people who just want to look around, and indeed anyone who's not a member of the right 'club', can piss right off. (Are they implying that non-believers are more likely to have the virus than believers?) More generally, the C of E has made a complete hash of the lockdown and its aftermath: surely there can be few safer places than country churches, and surely there's rarely been a time when churches were needed so badly.

It was understandable in the early days that everyone was nervous and over-reacted; it's obviously good to be safe rather than sorry. But surely there's no good reason now why most churches - certainly country churches - should be locked most of the time (which the great majority of them still are). The chances of more than one person (or small party) visiting a church simultaneously is small, and even if they do there's plenty of room for them to keep out of each other's way. The possibility of the virus being spread in these circumstances is remote. Surely churches should be open as often as possible, to provide comfort or just interest to believers and non-believers alike. When so many other places are shut, or hard to access, churches should be places everyone can go, to pray or be quiet or just have a refreshing, inspiring look around. The C of E has washed its hands (or applied bucketloads of sanitiser) of its responsibilities to the nation in this time of crisis. They had a chance to, in a small way, make churches visible or even important to people who don't normally visit them - why not a nationwide campaign with the slogan 'We're open!'? - and they blew it.

I think everyone who knows me would agree that I'm a pretty mild-mannered sort of chap, but, as you might be able to tell, this notice really made me cross.

Norton church, Herts - a memorial to Ann Cole, who died before she was born

'Norton' - meaning 'north settlement' (that is, a place north of somewhere else) - is one of the commonest English place-names. There are at least a dozen places called simply Norton, plus many others which use the name as part of a longer one, such as Norton Disney in Lincolnshire, and, in Somerset,  Midsomer Norton (which sounds magical, as if the dahlias and sunflowers are always in bloom and there are light, balmy evenings all the year round, but in fact is dismal, being brooded over by slag heaps). 

Hertfordshire's Norton is one of the three ancient settlements subsumed by Letchworth Garden City (the others are Willian and, of course, Letchworth). It retains something of a village feel, with plenty of surviving pre-1903 (when the Garden City was founded) buildings. I particularly like Croft Lane, which combines genuine older buildings with some superb Arts and Crafts-influenced early 20th century houses.

As is the case in very many places in England and elsewhere, the church is by some distance the oldest building (though it's been much altered over the centuries). As is also the case in many places, the church has Norman origins. The chancel arch dates from c.1100; its antiquity and simplicity endow it with a certain presence. It's extremely plain: the arch isn't even chamfered, let alone moulded, and the imposts (the horizontal mouldings at the springing of the arch) are as rudimentary as can be. Curiously, they have a little channel apparently cut into them about half way along; was this perhaps to accommodate a chancel screen?

A word of praise here for the spartan but attractive light fittings, something churches so often get wrong.

A fairly unusual feature is the opening over the chancel arch. It's even plainer than the arch, having no imposts, and round-headed; could it be Norman too? Being high up it's of course hard to inspect and thus the age of its masonry is difficult to assess; from the ground it looks distinctly less ancient than the chancel arch. Neither Pevsner/Bettley, nor the statutory listing, nor the Victoria County History, nor the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments even mention its existence, which implies that they think it's obviously modern and of no interest. If it's not a window that was once above a much lower early Norman chancel roof, however, what is its purpose, and when was it inserted? 

After I'd finished the first version of this post I contacted James Bettley, the author of the 3rd edition of the Hertfordshire volume of The Buildings of England (colloquially known simply as 'Pevsner'), to ask him about this opening, and he was kind enough to reply. At first he could say only that, despite some research having been done, nothing was known about it. The only, very tentative, point he could make was that it would have provided a view from the rood screen into the chancel.

However, after a handful of emails back and forth he wrote to say that he'd found an illuminating photograph dating from c.1895 in the Historic England archive, reproduced above. It shows that at this date there was no opening (there's a framed royal coat of arms over the chancel arch, and beneath that a scroll painted on the plaster). The obvious conclusion to jump to from this evidence is that the opening dates from the restoration of the church in 1908-9, by Walter Millard.*

But that doesn't really make much sense. Bettley suggests, and I concur, that it's extremely unlikely that Millard would have introduced such a feature. Why would he have done? It serves no function, and would simply have added to the expense of the restoration. A much better explanation is that an opening over the chancel arch existed at some earlier date (either as an original, Norman, feature, or one added later). For some unknown reason, it was subsequently blocked, and in 1908 Millard found it and decided to open it up. 

This adds to our knowledge of the church's story, but doesn't answer our initial questions. We still don't know when or why the opening was first made. And now we also don't know when and why it was blocked, and why Millard made it look Norman - did he do so because he could tell that it was originally from that period, or, if it was post-Norman, simply because he thought a round arch would be a better stylistic fit with the existing chancel arch?

There's one more puzzle. You'd have thought that the discovery and reinstatement of an ancient window (if that's what it was) would have aroused interest in and comment from local antiquarians. However, no sign of this has turned up yet. There's no contemporary reference to Norton church on the contents page of the East Herts Archaeological Society Transactions, and the transactions of the St Albans & Hertfordshire Architectural & Archaeological Society (their website is down as I write this) don't seem to be available for that period. Perhaps something will be found. (At the moment access to the Herts County Record Office is awkward because of the virus.)

For what it's worth, my guess - and I admit this is pure speculation, albeit plausible speculation - is that the original Norman chancel was much lower than the nave, and that there was a window over the chancel arch to provide more light in the nave. Perhaps it was smaller than the opening made by Millard. In 1814 the current chancel was built on a bigger scale, which rendered the window functionless, so it was blocked. A little less than a century later it was found by Millard, who thought that, although doing so would serve no practical function, reinstating it would add antiquarian interest to the church.

The rest of the church, except the chancel and south porch, is an early 15th century rebuilding of the original Norman structure, and has in turn been much restored, particularly by Millard. The chancel and south porch were added, as stated above, in 1814, not a date at which much church building was going on in most of the country. Why the work was carried out in Norton at this particular time I don't know. I suspect that the tracery of the chancel windows was renewed in the 19th century, or by Millard, as it's much too archaeologically accurate (that is, too much like genuine 15th century windows) to have been built in Georgian times. The outer doorway of the porch, presumably of this date, combines Gothic and classical elements, and is rather handsome. 

There are some 15th century benches, much like those in, for example, Caldecote and Wallington.

The font is 13th century (RCHM), early 14th century (statutory listing), 14th century (Pevsner/Bettley), or 15th century (VCH). The bowl is plain (except for much graffiti, which I didn't look at properly), while the base (which looks too thin) is decorated with quatrefoils and simple shapes that would be found in the tracery of a late medieval (hence certainly not 13th century) window. 

The two doors which once lead to the long-vanished rood loft survive; the lower one still has what looks like its original door.

The pulpit, with a tester (a canopy intended to reflect the sound of the speaker's voice down to the congregation) is 17th century (the VCH specifies Jacobean, but it doesn't look elaborate enough to be that early). The stairs are a nice job by Millard.

There are two enjoyable baroque wall monuments, one on either side of the chancel arch. I call them 'enjoyable' because I'm heartlessly looking at them purely aesthetically and historically. When I read the inscription of the one on the left such a judgement crumbles to dust. It records the deaths of the three daughters of Thomas and Katherine Cole of Radwell (why the memorial is in Norton, then, I don't know, except that Katherine was the daughter of Richard Cleaver of Nortonzbvry, as it's spelt). The first daughter, named Katherine after her mother, died in 1649, aged 27 weeks. Later the same year their second daughter, also called Katherine, was born, followed in 1652 by Ann. 

However, cruelly, Ann died in February 1653, aged five months. At first sight, the record of her birth and death seems to defy sense. She was born 12th September 1652, and died 15th February in the same year. What? She died before she was born? But it's not a mistake; it's simply that the Old Style calendar was in use, and in fact she died in what we'd call February 1653.** Less than a month later, in March 1653, the second daughter Katherine 'left this life', aged three and a half. It's unclear whether Thomas and Katherine had any more children. 

The monument on the right is, thank goodness, not traumatising. It commemorates the deaths of William Pym, aged a ripe old 71, in 1716, and his wife Elizabeth, aged 68, in 1734. The shield on the top bears three five-pointed stars, three owls and three cross crosslets. (I've read that Francis Pym, the moderate Tory politician prominent in the 70s and 80s, was descended from William and Elizabeth. Maybe Barbara Pym, one of my favourite novelists, was also related to them.)

I lived ten minutes walk from the church for thirteen years but have been inside only twice, despite often, ever hopeful, trying the door. Once was on the biennial Norton walkabout, when local residents open their gardens one Saturday to raise funds for the church. The other was earlier this week; I'd been passing a few weeks earlier and casually stopped to stroll around, and noticed that there was a sign saying that the church is 'open for private prayer'*** on Thursdays from 1.30 to 3.30. Thus, paradoxically, at a time when many places are closed much more often than they were before the Covid crisis, Norton church (and others) are open much more frequently than usual (in Norton's case two hours a week, as opposed to zero hours a week in normal circumstances). 

The church is obviously loved and cherished by its parishioners, and while it's not a major church a visit is certainly worthwhile and rewarding. I hope that the practice of opening it regularly, albeit for just a few hours, will continue even when we can finally get back to something like our old lives. 

(Updated 11th Oct 2020)

* Walter Millard (1854-1936) worked as an assistant to William Burgess and G E Street. He had his own practice in London from 1883. From about 1914 he lived in Hitchin. He also restored St Mary's, Letchworth, and designed the war memorial in Hitchin.

** The Old Style calendar assumes that the year begins on March 25th, whereas the New Style, in use today, of course makes the illogical assumption that the year begins on January 1st. The monument states that the first Katherine died 3rd March 1648, and the second Katherine on 12th March 1652; I've 'translated' these dates to 1649 and 1653 respectively in the New Style.

The New Style wasn't officially adopted in Britain until 1752, when the Gregorian calendar finally succeeded the Julian. (I say 'finally' because much of Europe had been using it since 1582; not for the last time Britain was reluctant to toe what it saw as the European (and in this case Roman Catholic) line, despite the impracticality of standing aloof.) However, the New Style was widely used for at least a century before the official changeover. Samuel Pepys, for example, writing his diary in the 1660s evidently accepted that 1st January was the beginning of the year.

*** 'Open for private prayer' is not, I'm sure, intended to imply that visitors who enter for other purposes, such as wanting to sit quietly, or to look around, are unwanted. Certainly the lady who was in attendance when I visited was very welcoming. But the wording might put some potential visitors off. Surely a simple 'open' is sufficient.

Looking west

Three tiny but tubby ponies grazing in a field opposite the church