Little Eversden church, Cambs: where the greengages grow

 

A couple of days ago I happened to have half an hour to kill in Little Eversden, a few miles south west of Cambridge. Naturally my first thought was to indagate the church, without having much expectation of its being open during the current lockdown. 

Happily, it was open, and welcoming. In truth it's not a church that will detain the explorer very long, but as I'm fond of saying it's a rare church that offers nothing to its visitors, and at the moment it's a distinct pleasure to find one open at all.

Entry is by the very charming early 15th century but restored north porch with delicate filigree wooden tracery; the tower is of similar date.

The body of the church however is a century or so older, from the 14th century Decorated period. This is most clearly seen in the east window with its reticulated, net-like tracery; the soufflets* are original, while the mullions are modern replacements.

The tranquil interior has a very sturdy 17th century queen strut nave roof.

The stairs leading up to the long-gone rood loft start at about chest height; presumably there were once  wooden steps to assist entry.

There are no stained glass windows at all - rather a rarity - which means that the church is flushed with light. The only tiny exception is at the top of one of the south nave windows, these very fragmentary remains. I think I can make out two figures at the bottom, the one on the right headless, but maybe my imagination is playing tricks.

The thing that really makes the church stand out are the chancel stalls. They're by G F Bodley (1827-1907) and were originally made, in 1858, for the old chapel in Queens' College.** (His major building in the county is All Saints' church, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, famous for its Pre-Raphaelite decoration and fittings.) In 1924 the chapel was converted into a lecture room, and they were brought to Little Eversden.***

I wouldn't say that they're especially beautiful; in fact they're rather dark and ponderous, even overpowering, but they do add greatly to the interest of the church. I like the numerous little roundels in the spandrels, each with its own individual painted design.

The pulpit is also by Bodley, though it was constructed by bits and pieces of his woodwork rather than originally designed as such.

Another object that makes the church perhaps unique is a painting hanging in the nave. It's by Anthony Green RA (b.1939), who lives in the county. (There's plenty of information about him on the web; Professor Wikipedia is a good place to start.) The only information I can find about this specific painting, however, is in Bradley/Pevsner, which tells me that it dates from 1965 and features multiple images of the artist and his wife, together with a young child who died. In the centre Christ - with the same features as Green - is being deposed from the cross, perhaps by angels, while behind him St Veronica - with the same features as his wife - has his face imprinted on her veil. The baby appears twice, once on the left in Green's arms, and once at the bottom in his wife's. At the bottom the adults are dressed in their underwear, making them look very vulnerable. At the very bottom Green appears to be tumbling out of the picture. The background is a deep black. The grief is overwhelming.

On the north side of the chancel is an aumbry (Bodley's panelling has had to be altered to fit, as it has to fit the piscina and windows). Here once were kept the chalice and other sacred vessels for the celebration of mass, but I was amused to find the aumbry currently occupied by what might be thought of as a modern equivalent - if not quite holy, certainly wholly necessary - a bottle of hand-sanitiser.

The 1930 edition of the Little Guide: Cambridgeshire tells us that 'Greengages are largely grown in this parish.' Whether this is still true or not I'm afraid I don't know. But Little Eversden certainly feels like the sort of place where plump, sweet, juicy fruits ought to be grown.

* I've just noticed that the OED doesn't include the word 'soufflet', though it does the similar 'mouchette'.

** There are photographs of them in situ here.

*** At that time there was also a scheme to bring some of the chapel's stained glass to the church, but a faculty was refused. Various other pieces of furniture went to Sandon, Oakington, and St Mark's, Barton Road, Cambridge.

Barley church, Herts by William Butterfield 1871-2

There's been a church in Barley since at least the 12th century. In about 1870 it was decided either that most of it was too dilapidated to be worth saving, or that the village deserved a brand new church. The prominent architect William Butterfield (1814-1900) was commissioned and in 1871-2 he demolished everything except the 12th century west tower and 14th century south aisle, and started afresh.

The result is a big church for a village (even today there are fewer than seven hundred inhabitants), which must have been mightily expensive. The result is not the exuberantly Butterfieldian extravaganza we might hope for - apart from some details it could have been designed by any competent Victorian architect - but it's altogether quietly dignified, with a High Victorian chancel of note. I'm not going to claim it as an unacknowledged masterpiece, but it doesn't deserve the sniffy comments found in some older guidebooks. For example, in Hertfordshire: A Pictorial Guide (no date, but late 1970s) Eric G Meadows says that it's been 'unimpressively rebuilt', while R M Healey in the generally excellent and catholic in its taste Shell Guide: Hertfordshire (1982) lambasts its 'utterly lack-lustre style'. 

The lower two stages of the tower are Norman, which is best seen externally on the north side where there's a large round-headed window (there's an equivalent one on the south too); the other windows were replaced later in the Middle Ages (and probably renewed by Butterfield). The top stage is 15th century and there was once a (probably 17th century) cupola, but, needless to say, the current spirelet is Butterfield's version of a Hertfordshire spike, as seen on numerous churches in the county. This is much the most prominent feature visible from the outside that marks the church as a little out of the ordinary. It starts out as if it intends to be an unusually low-pitched lead-covered spirelet, but halfway up it becomes an open timber bellcote with pairs of traceried openings, and is topped by a much more steeply-pitched shingled octagon. Bettley/Pevsner calls it 'odd'; Healey calls it 'awkwardly contrived'; I call it 'charmingly idiosyncratic'.*

The Norman origins of the tower are best seen from inside; the tower arch is tall and plain, and high above it a tiny window communicates with the ringing chamber. The handsome wrought iron gates with their Gothic tracery may date from Butterfield's rebuilding.

The wooden stairs (more like a ladder) leading up to the ringing chamber aren't quite as primitive- and dangerous-looking as those in Stevenage, but I still don't fancy risking my neck on them.

The south aisle seems to have been built originally in the late 13th century (which is when the south arcade dates from), but according to the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments it was widened c.1340. It is indeed an unusually wide aisle; two of the windows were replaced in the late Middle Ages. 

Otherwise the architecture is by Butterfield, in the style of the early 14th century, in knapped flint with bands of limestone. The photograph immediately above is instructive: the contrast between the rather pleasing dappled effect of the unknapped flint (mixed with a few other small stones) in the centre and on the right, and, on the left, the dark, almost forbidding knapped flint is very noticeable. Also on the left is seen a Butterfieldian oddity, a sexfoiled window set within a very strangely shaped stone dressing, like a 1950s flying saucer in profile.

The nave has few notable architectural features; the only extravagant gesture is at the east end of the south aisle, where the top of the arch leading to the organ chamber has open Gothic tracery. The rafters are in pairs, each pair being supported by three plain corbels (except at the east, where one rafter has two corbels), an unusual arrangement. The benches, with their quatrefoiled cutout backs, were designed by Butterfield and made by Thomas Savell in the village.

The nave is kept plain partly in order to emphasise the elaborate decoration and sanctity of the chancel, where Butterfield pulls out all the stops. Tiles, painting, woodwork (including some bits from a  15th century screen), blind arcades, marble, coloured organ pipes, stained glass, candelabras (which I particularly like) - even the ceiling is embellished with tracery-like patterns. This must be one of the best, and best-preserved, High Victorian High Church chancels in the county.

The Little Guide: Hertfordshire by Herbert W Thompson (1903) states that 'During the restoration some curious jars, of ancient make, were found in the chancel walls, but were broken in the efforts to dislodge them.' These would have been acoustic jars, which were sometimes built into the walls (lying on their sides with the open end pointing into the building) with the intention of improving the acoustics. (Recent research suggests that they probably had little effect.) In a few places such jars survive, for example Lyddington, Rutland; Fairwell, Staffs; and Ashburton, Devon. Rather bizarrely, according to J Charles Cox (in English Church Fittings, Furniture and Accessories (no date, but c.1923)), it seems that horses' skulls were sometimes used for the same purpose. He evinces the three that were found in 1865 built into the masonry of the bell turret (not the chancel) of Elsdon, Northumberland.

Butterfield's font is I think much better than the one he designed for Berkhamsted, partly because of the more sympathetic stone from which it's made, although the elements of the design - eight columns with tracery above - are very similar. 

He preserved some features from the old church, notably the 1626 pulpit with its fine tester. There are also some fragments of original glass.

There are two figures in the south aisle, angels I think (the one on the left holds a book), and in the middle part of a scene, with two wimpled women at the top above two men, with a suggestion of at least one more woman below, and the inscription 'yere of or [our] Lorde god 1536'. They seem to be watching something that's now 'offstage', presumably a religious event. 1536 was the year of the beginning of Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, and of the Pilgrimage of Grace, a doomed rebellion against the King's turning the country away from Roman Catholicism, and thus, if you like, the end of the English Middle Ages. And so this scene could be the remains of the very last medieval stained glass made in the country.

The west window of the tower has this very small but imposing head of God, from the 14th century.

The east window of the north aisle contains some Edwardian glass by 'Mr Leach of Cambridge', 1911; let's be charitable and call it 'undistinguished'. (The foliage at the top and bottom of each light isn't bad, though.) However, hiding in plain sight in the quatrefoil at the top is a small 14th century Crucifixion, perhaps in situ. (Bettley/Pevsner lists it, otherwise I might have overlooked it, but the usually comprehensive Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi misses it.)

Also rather hidden away in the vestry is this small broken oval panel, 16th or 17th century and perhaps Flemish, showing a beggar with a crutch tugging the cloak of a finely-dressed gentleman mounted on a horse. The gent is threatening the beggar with a sword, which doesn't seem to accord very well with Christian charity. Maybe it was originally part of a sequence (similar to the Good Samaritan parable) in which some behave reprehensibly towards the needy before someone does the right thing. (Bettley/Pevsner misses this panel; the CVMA doesn't include it because it's not medieval.)

East window, Hardman, 1872

In the south aisle are four 14th century corbels, none of them particularly characterful except perhaps this one (which is quite similar to one in the south aisle at Weston). It depicts a creature, with a semi-human face and curly beard, apparently poised to pounce. I like to think that he's been watching, with an interested but maybe sceptical eye, the church's comings and goings, the buildings and rebuildings, for seven hundred years. What stories he could tell!

Barley church has always been open whenever I've visited, even during the current lockdown III.

* Bettley/Pevsner points out that St James, Colchester, Essex has a similar spirelet. It's by S S Teulon, 1870-1, so it's possible that Butterfield took his inspiration from it. There's another one in Chollerton, Northumberland, 1873, but Pevsner etc doesn't name the architect.

12th cen carving (apparently not originally from the church)

13th cen stiff-leaf capital

Brass, 1621

The early 16th cen (but much restored) Town House

17th cen lock-up

The church seen through the mid-20th cen pub sign