The Proud And The Diffident

The walk in the countryside between Anstey and Meesden which yielded the photos of Fields And Farms in the last post also included visits to two churches, one for each village, and two very different buildings they were.

St George's at Anstey stands commandingly and impressively above the winding village street. It's a big, complex church which deserves more space and photos than I can include here. But before we get to the church itself.....

The churchyard is entered by an ancient "lychgate". It may look quaint and picturesque, but the purpose of such covered gateways is somewhat macabre. In the days when most people died at home, their bodies would be wrapped in a shroud and then left in the lychgate to await burial. At sometime in history a portion of this particular gate was converted into a lock-up for miscreants.

A closer look reveals that the carpenter who made the structure did not stint with the amount of timber used for the job!

Once inside one is immediately aware of the visual and practical problems created by the cruciform plan around a central tower; the relatively low, rounded Norman arches, which support the great weight of the tower, effectively separate the chancel from the nave. This was of little importance in medieval times, when those two parts of the church were kept separate, often with a solid screen between the two. Many churches that were built on this plan were redesigned with a new tower at the west end, but not here.

If you want to see the chancel properly you need to pass beneath the central tower. The choir stalls are particularly interesting.

Back sometime in the 1300s a carpenter took his planes and chisels and fashioned these seats from the raw oak. They've been doing their job quietly for around seven-hundred years now - though not so quietly a few days ago when one of the tip-up seats slipped through my fingers and fell into place with an ear-splitting thump! Fortunately no damage was done to either the seat or my fingers.

The strangely carved ledges beneath the seats are known as misericords and provided a handy little ledge to rest on while standing through long services. But it's down at the other end of the church where there are even stranger carvings to be seen....

The font is adorned with mermen holding their tails - and each merman having two tails! Now, if you've been reading this blog for a while you might be thinking that you've seen this before. Back in July, 2016, I showed you a very similar one at the little St Peter's Church in Cambridge. There are just two fonts like this in the whole of the country (quite possibly the whole world) and you've now seen both.

But at the other extremity of my roughly elliptical walk there was a very different church awaiting me....

If you go to Meesden looking for St Mary's church you probably won't find it. You have to take one of the minor roads out of the village, look for a little painted sign, negotiate a five-bar gate, then tramp off down a stony track. You still can't see the church, but just as you're thinking you might be on someone's private drive.....

….you discover the church, hiding away among the trees. You wouldn't expect to see much here, in fact in such an out-of-the-way place you'd probably expect it to be locked.

Round on the south side of the church you'll find the entrance - and what an entrance it is! This glorious little porch dates from just before the Reformation, which put an end to such architectural frivolities. All the authorities on the subject date the porch as being entirely from the sixteenth century, but luckily I'd read a post on David Gouldstone's blog "Icknield Indagations" in which he points out that an old picture in the church shows it without the fancy upper portion. What's more if you look closely the bricks at the top are larger (and newer) than the rest of the porch. So it appears that the ornate top is a Victorian addition, though one good enough to have fooled all the experts except that clever Mr Gouldstone. Thanks, David.

Inside there's more to see, though some things were destroyed and replaced by the Victorian renovators.

They didn't get rid of the memorial to Robert Younge, who stares down rather disapprovingly as he has since his death in 1626. It's been repainted but the bright colours are authentic enough. In our modern age it's tempting to associate bright colours with cheap plastics, though in the past bright paints and dyes were only available to the very wealthy and were therefore seen as very desirable.

There's a rather rustic little organ....

......and I liked the neatly converted-to-electric lamps. But there's something older and more interesting on the floor of the chancel....

This small, rectangular area is decorated with mosaic tiles, each one precisely shaped to fit the pattern. They are a bit worn as they have every right to be having survived around seven hundred years. As you look closer you find that some are stamped with patterns and with coats of arms.

Who would have thought there'd be something so rare, beautiful and valuable hiding away down one of Hertfordshire's innumerable back roads? 

Take care.