Contents
COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER WINN
MAP OF ENGLAND
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PREFACE
ENGLAND’S COUNTRY CHURCHES COUNTY BY COUNTY
BEDFORDSHIRE
BERKSHIRE
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
CAMBRIDGESHIRE
CHESHIRE
CORNWALL
CUMBRIA
DERBYSHIRE
DEVON
DORSET
DURHAM
ESSEX
GLOUCESTERSHIRE
HAMPSHIRE
HEREFORDSHIRE
HERTFORDSHIRE
HUNTINGDONSHIRE
KENT
LANCASHIRE
LEICESTERSHIRE
LINCOLNSHIRE
NORFOLK
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
NORTHUMBERLAND
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
OXFORDSHIRE
RUTLAND
SHROPSHIRE
SOMERSET
STAFFORDSHIRE
SUFFOLK
SURREY
SUSSEX
WARWICKSHIRE
WILTSHIRE
WORCESTERSHIRE
YORKSHIRE
GLOSSARY
GAZETTEER
INDEX OF PEOPLE
INDEX OF PLACES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
COPYRIGHT
I Never Knew That About England
I Never Knew That About Ireland
I Never Knew That About Scotland
I Never Knew That About Wales
I Never Knew That About London
I Never Knew That About the English
I Never Knew That About the Irish
I Never Knew That About the Scottish
I Never Knew That About Britain: the Quiz Book
I Never Knew That About the Lake District
I Never Knew That About Yorkshire
I Never Knew That About the River Thames
I Never Knew That About Royal Britain
I Never Knew That About New York
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Text © Christopher Winn 2014
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This book is in memory of two people who loved their churches and who helped and inspired me so much in life.
Basil Guy, Bishop of Gloucester,
and
Diana de la Rue
And for Mai
You inspire me every day
All my thanks to Carey Smith for her invaluable advice and enthusiasm for this book and for all her encouragement and support.
A special thanks to Nicki Crossley for her help, patience, imagination and good humour, her hard work and dedication, and for bringing everything together so beautifully.
Thanks also to Steve Dobell for making sense of it all and for his suggestions and fine editing work.
Particular thanks to my agent Kevin and all his wonderful team at Tibor Jones for looking after us so well.
As the historian A.J.P. Taylor was wont to say, ‘The (country) churches of England constitute its greatest treasure’. And, indeed, England’s country churches have something for everyone. Fortress, refuge, lighthouse, landmark, mausoleum, museum, market-place, school-room, court-room, concert hall, theatre, House of God. England’s country churches are, and have been, all these things.
They are England’s most visible and tangible links to the past. They are England’s timeline, present since the dawn of England itself, witnesses to historic events and everyday happenings, births and deaths and marriages, triumphs and sorrows. Through the centuries they keep watch over the memories and monuments of England’s sons and daughters, the grand and the modest, the noble and the disreputable.
They are galleries of the very best of English craftsmanship and design, in wood and stone, in carvings, sculptures and stained glass. They reflect the tastes and skills of generations of England’s artisans and architects. They guard treasures that would grace palaces and museums.
England’s country churches are as integral to the English landscape as the rose bush or the oak tree, the chalk down or the hedgerow, and even more varied. Some churches achieve beauty from their location, some are a thing of beauty in themselves; some live in legend and literature.
There are Saxon churches, reflective of simple faith, Norman churches with rugged arches and powerful pillars, stamping their authority, Gothic churches with their soaring arches and huge windows, Puritan chapels, plain and honest, Georgian churches, spacious, galleried, filled with rich oak furnishings, Victorian churches, resplendent with imperial pomp, eccentric Arts and Craft churches – every one of them with illuminating wonders to show and remarkable tales to tell, wonders and tales that will move you to exclaim, again and again … I never knew that!
County by County
John Betjeman wrote of churches that are ‘worth bicycling twelve miles against the wind to see’. For me, all of England’s ten thousand country churches can justify that ride but I can only find room in this book for some three hundred of them. So, how to choose?
To begin with I have featured only village churches or those that stand alone in the countryside – there are some glorious churches in country towns, but these must wait for another book.
Next, I have ordered the book by county. England’s counties are almost as ancient as her churches, and since each county’s churches are distinctive and different, not just in style and building materials, but in accent and feel, using counties ensures variety.
In respect of the counties, I have elected to use, as far as possible, England’s traditional counties, as they existed at the time the churches were built (other perhaps than some of the earlier Saxon and Norman churches). However, Cumberland, Westmorland and the Furness district of Lancashire I have combined into the present-day Cumbria. I have treated the three Ridings of Yorkshire as the one county of Yorkshire. Huntingdonshire has its own chapter separate from Cambridgeshire. Rutland, of course, has been reborn. Poor Middlesex has been largely subsumed by London and has lost most of the churches that could once have been described as country churches – only Harefield could perhaps still qualify – and so, sadly, does not feature in the book.
Otherwise the choice of church has been purely random. It may be a church I know personally or happen to have read about or has been recommended. There is nothing calculated or wilful in my choice – how I wish I could have included all ten thousand.
Elstow Abbey – John Bunyan’s church
St Mary the Virgin
Much of this stately 15th-century Perpendicular church was rebuilt in 1898 but it still retains an abundance of interesting features old and new, such as the SAXON SUNDIAL on the outside south wall of the tower. Such sundials are extremely rare and this one is in exceptionally good condition.
Inside, the church is full of monuments, the oldest being two beautiful canopied tomb chests that sit beneath 16th-century arches on either side of the chancel. One is to SIR WILLIAM GASCOIGNE, Comptroller of the Household of Cardinal Wolsey. He died in 1540 and his brass portrait is set between those of his two wives. The other is to SIR JARRATE HARVYE (d.1638), THE FIRST MAN TO ENTER CADIZ in the siege of 1596. He was married to Dorothy Gascoigne and the two of them lie here together.
Everywhere there are monuments to Cardington’s most famous family, the WHITBREADS, who settled in Cardington in the 1650s in a house called The Barns, and many of whom lie beneath the church in the family vault. The finest of the Whitbread memorials is a splendid marble sculpture in the north transept, completed by John Bacon in 1799 in memory of SAMUEL WHITBREAD I, founder of WHITBREAD’S BREWERY.
Standing on a plinth beneath the monument is a BLACK BASALT FONT MADE BY JOSIAH WEDGWOOD in 1783, ONE OF ONLY FIVE SUCH FONTS IN EXISTENCE AND ONE OF ONLY TWO TO BE FOUND IN AN ENGLISH CHURCH, the other being in St Mary’s, Essendon in Hertfordshire.
In the south aisle there is a memorial to the 48 men who lost their lives in the WORLD’S FIRST MAJOR AIR DISASTER, when the R101 airship crashed in France, on 5 October 1930, while on its way to the Imperial Conference in India, with the Air Minister, Lord Thomson, on board. The R101 was constructed in one of the enormous Cardington Sheds that can be seen across the fields on the edge of the village, the largest building in the world when it was put up by Shorts Brothers in the First World War, and it was from here that the airship departed at the start of its fateful voyage.
Above the memorial in the church, hanging in a glass cabinet on the wall, is the torn and scorched ROYAL AIR FORCE ENSIGN that flew proudly from the stern of the airship. It was salvaged from the wreckage and brought back to Cardington. The funeral of the men who died was held in St Mary’s, and they are all buried together in the graveyard across the road from the church, beneath a fine monument designed by Sir Albert Richardson.
SAMUEL WHITBREAD (1720–96) was born in Cardington into a Bedfordshire farming family. He invested a modest inheritance from his father in a small brewery at a time when beer was being promoted as a healthy alternative to the demon gin, which was wreaking havoc among the poor. The business flourished and in 1750 Whitbread opened BRITAIN’S FIRST LARGE-SCALE PURPOSE-BUILT BREWERY, in Chiswell Street in London. It soon became THE BIGGEST BREWERY IN THE COUNTRY.
Whitbread was one of the first people in Britain to make a fortune through trade, much looked down upon by 18th-century society, but he was also one of the first great philanthropists who believed in using the fruits of his success for the benefit of everyone. He was always concerned with the welfare of his workforce and his great contribution to the Industrial Revolution, of which he was a pioneer, was the template he created for honest business practice and good relations between owners and workers. In 1768 Whitbread was elected as MP for Bedford, a post he held for over 20 years. He is particularly remembered as THE FIRST MAN TO SPEAK OUT IN PARLIAMENT AGAINST SLAVERY.
The company Whitbread founded in 1742 is today a multi-national concern that owns a number of well-known names in the hospitality business including Costa Coffee, Premier Inns and Beefeater. The Whitbread family still live in Bedfordshire, 5 miles from Cardington, at Southill Park.
St John the Baptist
This is Bedfordshire’s far east, a landscape of big skies, open fields and distant views. The tower of St John’s peeps above a bower of trees standing on a gentle hill at the end of a lonely lane. From the outside this unassuming, 13th-century brownstone church creates a picture of England at its most tranquil and serene. Step inside, however, and you are suddenly in continental Europe.
Before you is a feast of heavy, dark, elaborately carved woodwork, THE MOST WONDROUS AND UNEXPECTED COLLECTION OF ECCLESIASTICAL FURNISHINGS TO BE FOUND IN ANY COUNTRY CHURCH IN ENGLAND. It was all was accumulated by HENRY COCKAYNE CUST, lord of the manor and rector here from 1806 to 1861, at a time when the monasteries and churches of northern Europe were selling off their treasures in the aftermath of the Napoleonic occupations.
The choir stalls that fill the chancel date from 1689 and come from the Abbey of Oignies, near Charleroi in what is now Belgium. They boast exquisite misericords, and the backs of the stalls are carved with the garlanded busts of popes and saints – an extraordinary display of Roman Catholic papal imagery to find in an Anglican country church. There are more of these stalls, with misericords, facing each other in the nave.
The Communion rail, decorated with carvings of harvesting cherubs, was bought from a church at Malines in Belgium, and the impressive screen under the west tower came from Louvain.
A quite lovely small window in the north aisle contains GLASS DATING FROM 1250, showing four saints of Saxon England, Edmund, Ethelbald, Oswald and Dunstan. This came from a demolished church in Yorkshire.
There are also a number of fine brasses to the Cockayne family, including one to SIR JOHN COCKAYNE, Baron of the Exchequer, who bought the manor of Hatley in 1417, enlarged the church and built the hall next door. The Cockaynes held the manor until 1745, when it passed by marriage to the Custs, and they adopted the name Cockayne Cust. LADY DIANA COOPER, the actress and socialite who was regarded as the most beautiful woman of her day, spent a part of her childhood at Cockayne Hatley Hall, the home of her natural father Henry Cust, and wrote of it in her autobiography as ‘a house in Bedfordshire that must always be remembered as a place where the clouds cast no shadows, where grass was greener, taller, strawberries bigger and more plentiful and above all where gardens and woods, the house and family, the servants and villagers, would never change’.
As a poet, Henley is best known for his poem ‘Invictus’, which includes the famous lines, quoted by Nelson Mandela while a prisoner on Robben Island,
‘… Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed
… I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.’
Cockayne Hatley holds one more surprise. Standing under a tree in the windswept churchyard is the austere grey tombstone of the Victorian poet WILLIAM HENLEY (1849–1903) and his family, friends of Henry Cust. As a boy Henley caught tuberculosis and had to have one of his legs amputated. While he was recovering in hospital in Edinburgh he got to know a sickly young writer called Robert Louis Stevenson, who later in life would model one of his most famous characters, the peg-leg villain from Treasure Island, LONG JOHN SILVER, on his boyhood friend William Henley.
On the reverse side of the tombstone it says:
‘Nothing is here for tears
Nothing to wail or beat the breast
Nothing but what is well and fair …’
These words refer to Margaret, Henley’s much-loved daughter, who died at the age of five. Known to everyone as the ‘golden child’, with her flaxen hair, bright eyes and merry laugh she captivated all who met her, including Henley’s good friend J.M. Barrie. Margaret noticed how her father referred to Barrie as ‘my friend’, and whenever he visited she would fling herself into his arms crying ‘Fwendy! Fwendy!’ And so Barrie came by the name WENDY.
Abbey Church of St Mary St Helena
ELSTOW ABBEY, once THE THIRD LARGEST ABBEY IN ENGLAND, was founded in the 11th century by William the Conqueror’s niece Judith. In 1539, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, most of the gigantic abbey church was demolished leaving just the nave to serve as the parish church of today.
The east end of the church is supported on massive round Norman piers, while at the west end there are two Early English bays, added in the 13th century. On the floor of the south aisle there is a brass portrait of an ABBESS OF ELSTOW, ELIZABETH HERVEY (D.1527), ONE OF ONLY TWO BRASSES IN ENGLAND OF AN ABBESS WITH HER CROSIER. Down some steps and through a door in the south-west corner of the church is a beautiful 13th-century room, now used as a vestry, which has a vaulted ceiling of stone ribs resting on a slim central pillar of Purbeck marble.
But Elstow Abbey’s greatest treasure is JOHN BUNYAN (1628–88), author of the first English bestseller, The Pilgrim’s Progress. He was born, the son of a tinker, in a little cottage outside the village and was baptised in the font that stands in the north aisle of the church, on 13 November 1628. The font is still used today. Bunyan’s two daughters were also baptised in this font, Mary, who was born blind, in 1650, and Elizabeth in 1654. The small chapel at the end of the south aisle is called the Bunyan Chapel and preserves the rails and altar table before which Bunyan knelt and received Communion. Victorian windows in the north and south aisles portray scenes from The Pilgrim’s Progress, and also the fight between good and evil from another of Bunyan’s books, The Holy War.
Outside the church there is a small door in the west wall which is thought to have been the inspiration for the ‘Wicket Gate’ through which Christian, the main character in The Pilgrim’s Progress, flees in search of deliverance.
To the north-west of the main church is the 13th-century DETACHED BELL TOWER, one of only two in Bedfordshire (the other is at Marston Mortaine). As a young man, Bunyan came here to ring the bells, gazing nervously upwards in case they fell down on his head as punishment for his sins.
To the south-west of the church are the remains of a house built in 1616 by Thomas Hillerson out of the abbey ruins. Hillerson lies in the church, and his house, which was still standing in Bunyan’s day, became the House of the Interpreter, where Christian found a good man who could explain the mysteries of life to him.
Across the road, on the village green, is the 15th-century timber-framed MOOT HALL where Bunyan went to school. It was built by the nuns from the abbey as a stall for the Elstow Market Fair and is now a museum in Bunyan’s memory.
Everywhere in Elstow there are memories of England’s ‘Immortal Tinker’.
Bletsoe – St Mary the Virgin. A mainly 13th and 14th-century church of Norman origins, much restored in the 19th century, St Mary’s, Bletsoe would have been familiar to some of the pivotal characters in the dramatic story of the great Tudor royal dynasty, for here worshipped LADY MARGARET BEAUCHAMP, grandmother to Henry VII. She lived in BLETSOE CASTLE, which still exists next door to the church at the core of a 17th-century manor house. In 1443 she gave birth there to a daughter, Margaret, who would grow up to marry Edmund Tudor, son of Henry V’s widow Catherine de Valois, and half-brother to Henry VI. Margaret and Edmund had a son, Henry, who defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and ascended the throne as Henry VII. Perhaps we owe our Tudor monarchs to the prayers that Lady Margaret Beauchamp put up in Bletsoe’s country church.
Felmersham – St Mary’s. Best approached via the old stone bridge across the Ouse, St Mary’s Church stands proudly on a bluff above the river, a supreme example of Early English Gothic architecture and one of the most beautiful buildings in Bedfordshire. Built in just 20 years between 1220 and 1240, it has an imposing Early English tower, with a Perpendicular upper stage, and a simple interior of marching pointed arches, those of the crossing being impressively tall and set upon ornate, multi-shafted pillars. The superb 15th-century rood screen still glows brightly with its original colouring. But the glory of Felmersham is its dramatic and decorative west front, a gallery of Gothic arches and blind arcading in three tiers. Any cathedral would be proud of such craftsmanship.
Northill – St Mary’s. High up on the tower of this church is a one-handed clock made by England’s first and greatest clockmaker, THOMAS TOMPION (1639–1713), who was born in a tiny thatched cottage, still standing, in the next-door village of Ickwell Green. Tompion, whose clocks and watches are among the most valuable timepieces in the world, was christened in St Mary’s in 1639.
St Mary’s, Aldworth – where giants sleep
St Mary’s
‘They shall grow not old,
as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
We will remember them’
LAURENCE BINYON, ‘For the Fallen’
The ashes of LAURENCE BINYON (1869–1943) are scattered in the churchyard here and he is commemorated, along with his wife Cicely, by a slate gravestone under a hedge. He was born in Lancaster and for most of his life worked for the British Museum, as an expert on Oriental art. His book Painting in the Far East, published in 1908, was the first book ever to be written on the subject. ‘For the Fallen’ was composed in 1914, while Binyon was walking on the cliffs of North Cornwall, in response to the appalling number of casualties suffered by the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, and his poem is recited every year at Remembrance Day services. Binyon was too old to enlist himself, but in 1915 he went to France as a volunteer hospital orderly.
Also in the churchyard is a railed enclosure containing the tombs of a number of ALFRED LORD TENNYSON’S IN-LAWS, THE SELLWOODS, who lived at nearby Pibworth Manor. Tennyson and Emily Sellwood were married not far away at Shiplake in June 1850, and they often stayed in Aldworth and worshipped at St Mary’s. Tennyson obviously liked the village, for he gave the name Aldworth to the house he built for himself on Blackdown, near Haslemere in Surrey.
The attractive little church sits, quite alone, on an undulating hilltop at a fork in the road. A little further on is the village well, 365 feet (111 m) deep and said to be THE DEEPEST WELL IN ENGLAND. The yew tree on the south side of the church is anything between 600 and 1,000 years old. The oldest part of the church itself is the late Norman tower, which is 12th-century and sports a quaint, red-tiled Bavarian-style roof. Most of the rest of the building is 13th and 14th-century. All quite straightforward so far.
But wait until you go inside. Here is a sight so spectacular and so astonishing that Queen Elizabeth I herself commanded the Earl of Leicester to ride with her the 15 miles to Aldworth from Ewelme, where she was staying, so she could see what everyone was talking about.
What they were talking about was the ALDWORTH GIANTS, a remarkable collection of nine huge stone effigies, all of the DE LA BECHE family, and all dating from between 1300 and 1350. They are unsurpassed in England and constitute THE GREATEST NUMBER OF MEDIEVAL MONUMENTS TO ONE FAMILY IN ANY ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH. Queen Elizabeth was fortunate to see the giants intact, for they were later defaced by Oliver Cromwell’s iconoclasts.
Even so, what is left is magnificent. The de la Beche family came over with William the Conqueror and built themselves a castle at Aldworth, where Beche Farm now stands. They rose to prominence during the reigns of Edward II and Edward III, and the effigies here represent five generations of the family of that period. Six of the effigies lie under ornate Decorated canopies along the north and south walls, while two more are located under the arches of the arcade.
The biggest and most striking is that of SIR PHILIP DE LA BECHE (d.1336) on the north side. He was valet to Edward II and appears to have been over seven feet tall. The dwarf at his feet was his page, who accompanied his master everywhere to emphasise Sir Philip’s height and importance. Sir Philip is seen reclining, a most unusual pose for a medieval effigy.
The earliest monument is that of Sir Philip’s grandfather, SIR ROBERT DE LA BECHE, who was knighted by Edward I in 1278 and died around 1298. The latest one is that of SIR NICHOLAS DE LA BECHE (d.1345), who rests under the arcade and was the third son of Sir Philip. He was Constable of the Tower of London and tutor to the Black Prince, eldest son of Edward III.
The villagers of Aldworth nicknamed three of the giants John Long, John Strong and John Never Afraid. Another, John Ever Afraid, was buried inside a niche cut into the church wall because he was afraid that the Devil would come and claim him if he was left exposed. Alas, his hiding proved futile and he has vanished, no doubt seized by the dark forces.
All in all, Aldworth is an exhilarating place to visit. Fit, one might almost say, for a Queen.
St Mark & St Luke
Here is BERKSHIRE’S MOST COMPLETE AND LEAST SPOILED NORMAN CHURCH. It lies in a field beside the River Kennet, in the grounds of a great house, and is shaded by a magnificent cedar tree. The building is a simple two-cell structure, entirely Norman except for the Tudor south porch, which was added in the 16th century to protect the splendid Norman doorway, with its two orders of traditional chevron carving. The wooden door itself is also 16th century.
Inside, one’s eye is immediately drawn to the marvellous CHANCEL ARCH, garnished with flowers, zigzags, various animals and beak-heads. It covers the whole width of the church and sags delightfully in the middle as if about to buckle under the weight of ages. There are truncated pillars on either side of the chancel, which suggest that it was intended to have a stone vault, but this was never built, perhaps because the money ran out.
Some of the deeply splayed Norman windows have Victorian stained glass, installed by the REVEREND JOHN JAMES, who was rector here in the 1850s. The window in the south wall of the chancel commemorates his daughter BARBARA WILBERFORCE JAMES who, as the inscription tells us, was the grand-daughter of William Wilberforce the abolitionist.
The jewel in the crown of this delectable church is the early Norman font decorated with an arcade of 11 arches containing 13 figures of saints, bishops, lawyers and other learned men. One shows the Kiss of Judas, another a cloven-footed Devil tempting said Judas. Although the carvings are worn and crude, this is one of the BEST NORMAN FONTS IN ENGLAND.
St Bartholomew’s
Down a leafy lane in water meadows by the Thames, with just a group of farm buildings for company, St Bartholomew’s occupies a blessed spot. It is a bit untidy looking, with an 18th-century grey stone and red-brick tower, and a 13th-century nave and chancel with uneven roof lines. The chancel arch inside is high and Gothic, resting on clustered pillars. The pews face each other, college style, and the pulpit has some interesting carvings.
There is a small 15th-century brass to JOHN CLERK, possibly the MP for Reading, and his wife, and several tablet memorials of interest on the wall. One of them, to SIR FRANCIS SYKES (d.1804), is a sculpture in high relief of a weeping woman leaning against an urn. It is the work of JOHN FLAXMAN and echoes his famous Wedgwood designs. Sykes is actually buried outside, in an elaborate 14th-century canopied chest tomb borrowed from inside the church and built into the south external wall of the chancel.
Near the porch is a moving sculpture of two boys in swimming costume, commemorating HAROLD AND ERNEST DEVERELL, brothers who lived in the adjoining farmhouse and drowned while swimming in the Thames in 1886.
SIR FRANCIS SYKES (1732–1804) was a merchant with the East India Company who made a fortune in Bengal and became Governor of the Bengali state of Kasimbazar. MP for Wallingford, he was responsible in his final years for building BASILDON PARK, a huge Palladian mansion by John Carr, which sits not far from the church and is now run by the National Trust. Basildon Park gave its name to the well-known brand of writing paper BASILDON BOND, after the directors of Millington and Sons, the company that developed the product, stayed there in 1911.
Also lying somewhere in the churchyard is JETHRO TULL, inventor of the seed drill. He is remembered by a gravestone which states that he died in 1740 rather than 1741, but this is explained by the fact that he died during the last days of the Julian calendar and his gravestone was carved after the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1752.
Appleford – St Peter & St Paul. Buried somewhere in the churchyard of this 12th-century riverside church is JOHN FAULKNER, THE WORLD’S OLDEST JOCKEY. He rode his first winner at the age of eight in the year that Queen Victoria came to the throne (1837) and rode his last race when he was 74. He lived in Appleford, fathered 32 children, and died in 1933, aged 104.
Boxford – St Andrew’s. Boxford is a delightful village of red brick and thatch, with an old mill house by a bubbling stream. The attractive grey-walled church is mostly 15th-century, handsomely rebuilt by the Victorians. The chancel is Saxon, and during renovations in 2010, workmen removing the concrete rendering from the outside of the chancel wall uncovered a small oak-framed window with a wooden shutter, which turned out to date from before the Norman Conquest. Over 1,000 years old, it is THE ONLY WORKING SAXON WINDOW IN BRITAIN.
JETHRO TULL (1674–1741) was born in Basildon, at his mother’s family home, and baptised in St Bartholomew’s. He originally studied for the law but because of financial difficulties was forced to help out on his father’s farm at Howberry near Wallingford. In those day crops were sown by hand, which was slow and inefficient, and Tull hated the grinding manual labour, so he set about devising a machine that would do the work for him.
In 1701, using pieces of an old pipe organ, he came up with THE WORLD’S FIRST SEED DRILL, a rotating cylinder with grooves cut into it that allowed seed to fall from a hopper into a funnel. This directed the seed into a furrow cut by a plough at the front of the machine, which was then covered over with soil by a harrow fixed to the back. The contraption was pulled along by a horse and could sow up to three rows at once.
In 1709 Tull moved to Prosperous Farm near Hungerford and continued to perfect the design. He also produced a horse-drawn hoe for clearing weeds and loosening the roots of crops, which enabled them to absorb water more efficiently. In 1731 he published his theories on farming and plant nutrition in a book called The New Horse Hoeing Husbandry. His inventions revolutionised farming and anticipated the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
Some 200 years later the name Jethro Tull was made famous again by a rock band. They were given the name Jethro Tull by their agent, who happened to see a copy of Tull’s book on the shelf in the office of a record company where he was pitching the new band.
Bucklebury – St Mary’s. Jonathan Swift preached from the Jacobean pulpit of this Norman church, where the family of a future Queen of England worships today. Perhaps as a child, to pass the time during sermons, the Duchess of Cambridge tried to flick away the fly from the window above the Squire’s box pew in the chancel – THE ONLY WINDOW IN AN ENGLISH CHURCH DECORATED WITH A FLY. Designed to illustrate the notion that ‘Time Flies’, it was painted on in the 17th century, with the wings on one side of the glass and the body and legs on the other, and looks so realistic you can almost hear it buzz. The south doorway of St Mary’s is one of the finest in Berkshire, with four arches of rich carvings surmounted by a strange cross with a man’s head at the base. On the south-east buttress of the church tower is a 16th-century carving of a man combing a wheel, or winch. This is a pun on the name of England’s first factory owner, clothier JOHN WINCHCOMBE, otherwise known as JACK O’ NEWBURY, whose descendants lived in Bucklebury House in the 16th and 17th centuries.
St Lawrence’s, West Wycombe – home of the Hellfire Club
All Saints
This is one of ENGLAND’S FINEST PERPENDICULAR CHURCHES. It stands on a hilltop at the end of a country lane and is utterly beautiful, so beautiful in fact that the architect SIR GEORGE GILBERT SCOTT, born nearby in the village of Gawcott, was inspired in his love of Gothic architecture by seeing it. A drawing he made of All Saints can be seen in the vestry, and he later restored the church for free.
All Saints was built by the monks of Notley Abbey at the end of the 15th century when Perpendicular was at its height, and their church encapsulates all that is glorious about this style, huge walls of glass that fill the church with light, graceful tracery in the windows, tall Gothic arches, elegant arcades.
The most notable feature, from the outside, is an exquisite OCTAGONAL STAIR TURRET that rises on the north side, with a delicate stone crown of pinnacles and flying buttresses. The staircase inside gives access to a vestry and, above it, a private chapel that was once linked to Hillesden House next door by a bridge.
The north porch of the church has a lovely vaulted roof and a door that is pockmarked with bullet holes. During the Civil War, Hillesden House belonged to the Denton family, staunch Royalists, and was besieged by Oliver Cromwell himself and razed to the ground. There is nothing left of the house, but the battered front door was rescued and installed in the church.
Treasures inside include a traceried, 15th-century wooden chancel screen, a frieze of angels carrying scrolls or musical instruments running around the top of the chancel walls, and some splendid monuments to the Dentons of the 16th century.
Most of the medieval glass was destroyed in the Civil War but what remains is magnificent, particularly THE EAST WINDOW OF THE SOUTH TRANSEPT, WHERE THE LIFE OF ST NICHOLAS IS DEPICTED IN BRIGHTLY COLOURED 16TH-CENTURY FLEMISH GLASS. The pictures, which cover four windows, are so extraordinarily lifelike and full of action that this could almost be a medieval comic strip. In the top left-hand panel a boy falls from a ship into the sea, and in the next panel to the right he is miraculously saved by St Nicholas. In the bottom panel of the third window another boy is strangled by the Devil, and he too is revived by the hard-working St Nicholas in the panel next door. A very happy time can be spent reading this window – perhaps the most unusual and enjoyable storybook you will find in any English church.
St Giles’
‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea
The ploughman homeward plods
his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness
and to me.’
THOMAS GRAY, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’
The church of St Giles sits in a cherished patch of green where the Chilterns begin to break against the suburbs of London. It is a most satisfying church to look at, with lots of gables and a square tower with a pyramid cap. It was in this country churchyard that THOMAS GRAY (1716–71) wrote what must be one of the best-loved poems in the English language, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, and despite the closeness to London it is still possible to experience here some of the solitude and peace that inspired his masterpiece. There are a few more trees, perhaps, and the spire that rose above the tower in Gray’s day is gone, taken down in 1924 because it was unsafe, but the churchyard is still countryfied and the famous lea is now owned by the National Trust and safe from harm.
Thomas Gray is buried with his mother Dorothy and her sister Mary in a red-brick chest tomb outside the east wall of the Hastings Chapel, which was added to the south-east corner of the church in 1558 by lord of the manor Lord Hastings. Gray’s name does not appear on the actual tomb since there was no room for an inscription, but a tablet on the wall of the chapel records his interment there.
Near the south-west door of the church is the YEW TREE UNDER WHICH THOMAS GRAY SAT WHILE WRITING HIS ELEGY. A short walk away, on the lea, is a large monument erected in Gray’s memory by a local landowner, JOHN PENN, grandson of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania.
Some of the lines and phrases that have
passed into the English language from
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate
St Giles’ Church itself has Saxon and Norman origins, and inside there are some sturdy round Norman pillars supporting the arches of the nave. The Norman chancel arch has been replaced by a slim Gothic arch and most of what we see in the main body of the church today is 13th-century work, although there is a Norman window in the north wall of the chancel and a small square window next to it, which may have been the window of a hermit’s cell. The Chantry was built in 1338 by lord of the manor Sir John de Molyns and boasts a RARE DOUBLE PISCINA.
The west window commemorates those who fell in the Second World War and is called the BICYCLE WINDOW, as it incorporates a fragment of glass dating from 1643 which shows a nude man blowing a trumpet while riding an early form of bicycle known as a hobby horse. It is THE EARLIEST KNOWN PICTURE OF A BICYCLE IN THE WORLD.
In the south aisle is a pair of Victorian windows of 1871, commemorating a child of the local Howard-Vyse family. It is most unusual and very lovely, showing a child slipping from the arms of his mother and being received into the arms of an angel.
A singular feature of the church is the OAK-PANELLED CLOISTER, accessed through a door in the north wall. This once provided a private entrance to the church from the manor house, which can be glimpsed not far away across a smoothly mown lawn.
At the south-east corner of the church the HASTINGS CHAPEL, with its Tudor mullioned windows, was founded to serve both as a private chapel for the inmates of the almshouse that Lord Hastings had built next door, and as a burial place for him and his family. It was originally cut off from the main church but was opened up in the 18th century with the removal of the south wall of the chancel.
Although the chapel is festooned with monuments there is strangely no memorial to Lord Hastings himself. A staunch Catholic, he was Queen Mary’s Master of the Horse, and during her coronation procession in 1553 he led the Queen’s horse by the bridle through the streets of London from the Tower to Westminster Abbey. When Mary died, Hastings was sent to Hatfield to inform Princess Elizabeth that she had become queen, and to accompany her back to London. After Elizabeth’s accession he retired to the manor house at Stoke Poges, where he died without heirs in 1573.
Back outside, on the other side of the pink brick wall lining the western edge of the churchyard, is the Stoke Park Golf Club where James Bond, played by Sean Connery, took part in a golf match against Auric Goldfinger, played by Gert Frobe, in the 1964 film Goldfinger. The statue at the entrance to the clubhouse, beheaded by the bowler hat of Goldfinger’s sidekick Odd Job, has since been replaced.
James Bond’s wife, Tracy, was buried in St Giles’ churchyard, not far from Thomas Gray. We see Bond visiting her grave in the pre-title sequence of For Your Eyes Only.
All Saints
This Saxon church was begun in the 8th or 9th century and enlarged in the 10th century by Aelfgifa, sister-in-law of King Edgar, the first crowned King of England. As such it is ONE OF ENGLAND’S OLDEST COUNTRY CHURCHES. It is also unique in that it retains not only its Saxon nave, aisles and west wall but also an apse with a crypt beneath it – THE ONLY SAXON APSE AND CRYPT SURVIVING COMPLETE IN ENGLAND.
The apse is very prominent in the church exterior. It has seven sides, each side separated by vertical pilasters and decorated with a blind arcade, while the window arches of the crypt below peep intriguingly just above ground level. The entrance to the crypt is in the south wall and the crypt itself is very well preserved, largely because it was sealed for hundreds of years before being opened up again in the 19th century. It consists of a passageway or ambulatory that runs round a small chamber accessed by three narrow archways. The whole ensemble is stone vaulted and has walls of rough flint.
Apart from the apse and crypt, the church hides its Saxon origins well, appearing to be a mainly 15th-century Perpendicular affair with battlements, tower, clerestory, Gothic windows and a particularly handsome porch all dating from that period.
Inside, the Saxon becomes more obvious – spectacularly so. The nave is typically long and narrow and tall with unsophisticated round arches, plain and simple. And the chancel arch is just breathtaking – 21 feet (6.4 m) wide, it is THE WIDEST SAXON ARCH IN EXISTENCE. Unfortunately, a 16th-century carved wooden screen fills the arch, and while a fine piece in itself, it does rather spoil the full Saxon effect.
Above the arch is a double-headed Saxon window divided by a central shaft, ONE OF ONLY FOUR SUCH SAXON WINDOWS TO BE FOUND IN THE NAVE OF AN ENGLISH CHURCH, the other three all being at Worth, in Sussex (see here).
The 15th-century roof is superb, festooned with carvings of angels, kings, saints and numerous medieval characters.
Putting on quite a show in the north aisle is possibly THE EARLIEST RENAISSANCE MONUMENT IN ENGLAND, certainly one of the very best. SIR ROBERT DORMER (d.1552) lies in a stone sarcophagus garlanded with bull’s heads beneath a vast canopy supported on Corinthian columns. The observer is transported straight to Ancient Rome. The other Dormer tombs, which anywhere else would be considered noteworthy, are made to look somewhat ordinary in comparison.
In the wall of the south aisle is a rather simpler memorial, a brass to THOMAS COATES (d.1648), who was a porter at the Dormer’s home, Ascott Hall. He is recorded as having ‘… (alas) left his key, lod, fyre, friends, and all to have a roome in Heaven …’
Clifton Reynes – St Mary the Virgin. This sweet little church, which gazes across the River Ouse at the tall spire of Olney, could almost be made of Lego building blocks. The elements of square Norman tower, 13th-century aisles, and 15th-century battlemented nave and clerestory, all seem to slot together like a Christmas toy. Inside are four 14th-century wooden effigies, all of members of the Reynes family, THE LARGEST NUMBER OF WOODEN EFFIGIES IN ANY PARISH CHURCH IN ENGLAND. THOMAS REYNES (d.1385) has a stone effigy, and his feet rest on a little dog with the name BO on his collar – THE ONLY PET NAMED IN STONE ON A MEDIEVAL TOMB IN ENGLAND.
Fingest – St Bartholomew’s. Here is a marvellously unspoiled Norman church with a mighty 12th-century tower crowned by a distinctive DOUBLE SADDLEBACK ROOF, ONE OF ONLY TWO SUCH ROOFS IN ENGLAND. The lower part of the tower inside once served as the nave and is consequently wider than the present nave, which was originally the chancel, while the huge Norman arch spanning the whole width of the church was once the chancel arch.
West Wycombe – St Lawrence’s. A prominent landmark in the Chilterns, this medieval hilltop church was renovated in the 18th century by SIR FRANCIS DASHWOOD, Chancellor of the Exchequer and noted rake. The unique ‘GOLDEN BALL’ on top of the tower, reached by a precarious ladder, was large enough inside for Dashwood and eight of his friends to sit down to dinner or cards. The view from it is stupendous and includes Dashwood’s stately home across the valley, West Wycombe Park, the lovely old village of West Wycombe itself at the foot of the hill, and the long, dead-straight stretch of road into High Wycombe that Dashwood built out of material mined from the hill below the church. The worked mines were fashioned into caves where Dashwood’s notorious Hellfire Club would party, gamble and very probably indulge in orgies.
St Mary’s, Swaffham Prior – the oldest octagonal tower in Cambridgeshire
St Peter’s
Here is a UNIQUE GALLERY OF SAINTS AND BIBLICAL SCENES PORTRAYED IN 14TH-CENTURY WALL PAINTINGS. We see the Annunciation, the Baptism in the River Jordan, the Marriage at Cana where Jesus turns the water into wine, and the Last Supper. We see St Christopher, John the Baptist with the Lamb, a knight in armour attacking a waiting demon with his lance, and St Michael weighing up souls while the Virgin Mary, wearing a large crown, tips the opposing scales with her rosary. While superb, these scenes are relatively commonplace, but on the north wall there is some rather more unusual imagery.
ST ANTHONY, patron saint of animals, is seen with a pig, representing the sins of the flesh tamed by Anthony’s piety. This is THE BEST EXAMPLE OF AN IMAGE OF ST ANTHONY AND HIS PIG THAT SURVIVES IN ENGLAND.
On the same wall is a lovely picture of ST DUNSTAN, patron saint of armourers and gunsmiths, pinching the Devil’s nose with a pair of tongs. Dunstan was Archbishop of Canterbury in the 10th century, and it was he who devised the traditional coronation ceremony we use today, for the crowning of King Edgar as the first King of England at Bath Abbey in AD 978. THIS IS THE ONLY KNOWN PORTRAIT OF ST DUNSTAN IN AN ENGLISH COUNTRY CHURCH.
There is also a rare portrait of ST THOMAS OF CANTELUPE, 13th-century Bishop of Hereford, and the last Englishman to be canonised before the Reformation.
St Peter’s is a fine example of an ordinary country church bedecked with imagery with which to educate its simple village folk, and although these wall paintings are not the finest or the best preserved, they nonetheless form a wonderfully spirited and diverse gallery of characters and story-telling.
St Mary Magdalene
Ickleton is a sweet old village caught in a tangle of motorways. It has long been an important crossroads, at the point where the ancient Icknield Way crosses the River Cam. The Romans were not far away at Chesterford, while the village still follows a Saxon layout and the church is, at its core, Saxon and 12th-century Norman, enhanced by a fine 15th-century lead broach spire.
There is a plain Saxon west doorway leading to a nave that is long, tall and narrow, in the Saxon way. The arcades are of superb round Norman arches resting on plain cushion capitals above slender columns, SOME OF WHICH MAY BE ROMAN – monolithic pillars salvaged from the nearby Roman ruins by the Saxons and re-used by the Normans. There is an unusual DOUBLE CLERESTORY, with splayed Norman windows just above the apex of the arches, and 15th-century windows above that, put there when the roof was raised but out of phase with the arcade. The wonderful rood screen is 14th-century, as is the painted font cover, while several carved poppy-head bench ends survive, one of them showing St Michael weighing up souls.
Ickleton is but one of England’s many fine Norman churches, and it might have remained just that had it not been for a fire in 1979. The subsequent restoration uncovered an extensive set of EXTREMELY RARE NORMAN WALL PAINTINGS on the north and east walls of the nave, dating from about 1170, and rivalled only by those at Kempley, in Gloucestershire (see here). The paintings between the clerestory windows show the four Passion scenes: the Last Supper, the Betrayal, the Flagellation, and Christ carrying the Cross. Lower down we see the martyrdoms of the saints.
Above the chancel arch there is a Doom, a painting showing the Last Judgement. This dates from the middle of the 14th century and includes a somewhat startling picture of the Virgin Mary baring her breasts to Jesus in a show of supplication, THE ONLY PICTURE OF A BARE-BREASTED MARY IN ANY OF ENGLAND’S CHURCHES.
St Cyriac & St Julitta and St Mary’s