Church Fittings

 I couldn't resist. I just had to pop into Little Easton Church while we were in the area.

Exactly what do I like about these old buildings? Well, sometimes they are attractive buildings in their own right. Most date from a time before the trade of architect was invented, but those who built them put all their taste and skill into every aspect of construction. Then others, because of their situation and atmosphere, exude a deep sense of peace - even to an old heathen like me. But most of all they stand as monuments to the passing centuries and the people who have gathered here.

I could easily tell you that this church is twelfth century, but that doesn't tell you half the story; that's just the opening sentence in a long and mysterious tale that is peopled by a huge cast of curious characters.

At some stage, very soon after the nave of the church was built, it was decided that the walls should be decorated with icons. This is reckoned to be a representation of a prophet. Peering intently at it raises more questions than it answers. I'd like to know the person who painted it and from where he received his instruction and inspiration. We do know a little about the men who were in charge here in the early days.

A record of their names has been preserved and a board has recently been made for us to peruse. It seems that a lot of them were called "John", but one was known by the name of "John At Hell"(!) Now, what sort of name is that? What kind of rector might he have been? They also seem to have got through some dozen rectors in just over 50 years. Was that when the Black Death was visiting this tranquil backwater?

Perhaps the Rev At Hell would be able to help me out with my next conundrum. In the chancel there is an old tomb and on top of it reclines a knight in armour. You'll find something like it in many churches, but this one is different. All the others are life-size or thereabouts, but this chap is only about two feet (60cm) long. Now I've heard of the Elfin Knight, but that's ridiculous. 

After the church had stood for a couple of hundred years more wall paintings were needed, and this one is huge. You'll often read that these served as a Bible for those who were unable to read, which was pretty much everybody. But church services were very different in those days. There was no sermon - and no seating. There was a good deal of walking around to various icons painted on the walls. The priest intoned prayers in Latin and the layman can have had little understanding of what was going on.

It became the clergy's job to say prayers for the dead - or at least the wealthy among them - and some time in the fifteenth century the South Chapel was built for the purpose. It's to the left of the first picture I showed you of the church. The stained glass dates from 1621 when it was made for the Maynards' private chapel and wasn't moved here till 1857.

Sir Henry Maynard and his wife, Lady Susan Pearson both died in 1610 and had this enormous alabaster memorial erected so that we should not forget them. Their children are shown kneeling in prayer. Some are set further back from the others, representing those who pre-deceased their parents. Sir Henry's wealth could do nothing to protect them from that tragedy.

Sir Henry, despite his armour, was a politician rather than a fighting man and rose to become Deputy Lieutenant of Essex. He was born in Devon and presumably moved here when he married Lady Susan who had been born in Little Easton.

Frances Cavendish, who became another Lady Maynard on her marriage, has a memorial tucked into the corner of the chapel - and has the indignity of sharing the space with some plastic stacking chairs. She died at the age of just twenty as she gave birth to her third child. Her husband paid for this memorial.

And a huge memorial to him stands close by. And so these reminders of the great and wealthy of the parish pile up across the centuries.

1660 saw the artist of the village once more required to mount his step ladder and commit paint to plaster, much in the fashion of his medieval ancestors. This time it was King Charles I who needed his coat of arms to seen in every church in the land. The passing years have given a patina of shabby grandeur to the once brilliant hues.

The Victorian age was a great time of church restoration - sometimes saving buildings from decay and sometimes tearing down what was good and replacing it with the ugly and inappropriate. The colour of the glass, with lots of strong reds and blues, is typical of that age, as is the sentimental subject matter of Faith, Hope and Charity.

Charles Chambers of Balsham in Cambridgeshire made the wooden cover to this old font in the early years of the twentieth century and there's an unobtrusive notice recording this contribution to the fabric of the church.

As we saw in the previous post, many famous people visited the little village in the early years of the twentieth century. One such was the actress Ellen Terry who loved to visit the church. This odd little plaque was erected by her friends on her death in 1928.

And here's our friend Frances Evelyn Maynard, or Daisy Countess of Warwick, who died in 1938, just before the outbreak of the second world war and the coming of British and American forces to the peaceful scene.

And they are remembered too, through two colourful modern windows in the North chapel.

We've come a long way from the days of Rev John At Hell, but to bring our story round to an appropriate conclusion we need to go out into the churchyard and seek out a gravestone from the year 2000.

Another Rev John, this time John Michael Filby aka "The Rocking Reverend Jack Filby....Promoted to Glory 4th October 2000....Wearing his cross, his cowboy hat and boots....he played his guitar...🎸...Now sings my soul"

Take care.

Young St James (And Old St Andrew)

I said last time that I'd show you Waresley's  Church of St James the Great. But there's somewhere else we should visit first.

Down at the end of Vicarage Road, just past the vicarage but before it peters out into a footpath leading between modern farm buildings, there's an almost hidden gate. It's lurking on the left of the above photo, under the deep shade of the trees.

Step through that gate and you'll find yourself in a narrow avenue of trees, at the end of which stands a tall cross.

The lines of trees mark the walls of the old church of St Andrew and the cross is where the altar once stood, while hidden in the undergrowth are graves of some of the former villagers.

Little is known about the original church except that, after years of neglect, it was blown down in a gale in 1724. It was rebuilt four years later in imitation of the chapel at Cambridge's Pembroke College.

That church lasted till 1855 when Octavius Duncombe decided to build a new church in a more central position. The old churchyard continued to be used for a while, though there's nothing to suggest it's been used for many a year. It must be a spooky old place on a foggy night!

Back at the other end of Vicarage Road we find the new church - St James the Great. Before we find our way inside there's something else to see - look over to the extreme left of the photo above....

....and you'll see another village pump installed by Mr Duncombe for the benefit of the people at this end of the village. There's an inscription to the right of the pump...

WHOSOEVER DRINKETH OF THIS WATER

SHALL THIRST AGAIN:

BVT WHOSOEVER DRINKETH OF THE WATER

THAT I HAVE GIVEN HIM

SHALL NEVER THIRST

We go in through some modern glass doors, installed to commemorate the millennium. I rather like the wooden door handles which form a floating cross when both doors are closed. 

If you're Octavius Duncombe and you want a new church right at the centre of your domain, you don't skimp on the project but you employ one of the leading church architects of the day. William Butterfield was one of nine children whose family ran a chemist's shop. He started out as an apprentice builder, but then studied architecture and soon ran his own business, becoming one of the most sought-after designers of ecclesiastical buildings.

My brother liked this window, as well he might: it's attributed to Edward Burne-Jones, one of the leading designers of the day. The stained glass here is said to be contemporary with the rest of the building, which means it's a very early work by Burne-Jones, before he and William Morris began making stained glass windows. However it is known that Burne-Jones sketched many designs for windows at that time and I'm guessing that this window is based on one of those early efforts.

Unusually, we do know who designed the font - as well as the pews and all the other fittings - none other than William Butterfield himself. He wanted the church to be "complete in itself and not at the mercy of posterity to be pierced and patched and adorned hereafter".

Some adornment is of course inevitable, and it seems to me that the architect left a few areas of blank wall to house monuments to the departed. This is the memorial to Lady E Caroline Duncombe, Octavius's wife.

The chancel is the most elaborately decorated part of the church. "Structural polychromy" is the architectural term and it was pioneered by Butterfield for his interpretation of the Gothic Revival. What it means in plain English is the use of many colours in the construction of the building, rather than painting it afterwards. Here the architect has used ceramic tiles to beautify the chancel.

It's worth having a closer look at the Mothers' Union banner which stands in the corner. Just about every MU branch has one displayed in their local church and, despite their frequency, I think this is the first one I've ever featured on the blog. I'm not alone; it's rare to find mention of them anywhere - a much neglected aspect of folk art.

The impressive east window is attributed to Gibbs. Again it was put in when the church was first built and was probably chosen by Butterfield.

From everything we hear it seems that William Butterfield wanted to have complete control over what the finished church should look like. Also you will have gathered that Octavius Duncombe was a man who expected to get his own way. So one can only imagine the conversations that might have taken place between the two men when, just as the church was nearing completion, Octavius decided that the church should have a mausoleum for his family attached to it. You'll have to decide for yourself who won the argument.

Here it is and experts agree that though it was not part of the original plan it must have been designed by Butterfield. But if Duncombe had expected something along the lines of other mausoleums in the area he must have been disappointed with this mean little effort. Inside there's no room for any monuments, just a slab covering the entrance to the family vault. And you remember that the architect had said that he wanted no piercings and patchings? He was true to his word for he built no door leading from the church to the new extension.

Or maybe I'm imagining all this and both men were happy with the outcome.

Take care.

A Lifetime's Work

History's random and ragged path has left us a heritage that's full of surprises. Sometimes things turn up in places where you might not expect them, and at other times things survive through chance happenings which we can no longer fully explain. We've just been on a garden visit (don't panic - you'll see those pictures next time) and on the way home we'll take a short diversion, passing wheatfields and outdoor piggeries, to a onetime market town that is nowadays just a big village.

St Peter's and St Paul's church at East Harling is clearly a first-rate parish church which stands in a large churchyard which these days is managed for nature. Hang on a minute....lets have a closer look at that tower....

Architecturally it's called a flèche, a small spire made of timber and lead, but you don't see many as ornate as this, with miniature flying buttresses. Anyone living here would feel they were home as soon as they saw such a singular feature appearing above the treetops.

Like most English villages there's been a church here since at least Saxon times, but most of what we see here today dates from the second half of the fifteenth century and was financed by one woman (albeit with some financial assistance from at least two of her three husbands).

That lady was Anne Harling who was born here in 1426. Like many wealthy families they took their surname from the village on which their lands were based. She was the only child and heiress of Sir Robert Harling and his wife, Lady Jane Gonville. When Anne was just nine years old her father died in France.

Unlike so many important men who are depicted in full armour on their tombs, Sir Robert was actually killed in battle. Anne thus inherited some 23 manors throughout East Anglia. She was so wealthy that there was some dispute about who would become her guardian. Strangely enough it was someone you might have heard of - Sir John Fastolf, on whom Shakespeare based (very loosely) the character of Sir John Falstaff. Fastolf carried out the major part of his responsibility by marrying Anne to a wealthy man when she was just twelve.

Once she became an adult she began improving the church, rebuilding the aisles, erecting the fancy spirelet and battlements which we saw on the tower, and beautifying the interior. The wooden screen, which you can see in the above photo, was designed to enclose that corner of the building to serve as a chantry chapel for the tomb of her parents.

As you can see it's quite an elaborate structure which has survived the centuries well. It's worth closer inspection...

It must have been quite something when freshly painted. It also now encloses some later tombs, most notably that of Sir Thomas and Lady Alice Lovell....

This is a sixteenth-century memorial, very much in the pompous style of that era. They certainly didn't want the people of East Harling to ever forget them!

A handsome couple were they not?

Anne Harling, who did so much for this church, lies in the tomb shown above, with her first husband. There's much to see here, but I'll just show you a few more before we get on to the most important feature.

I really liked the lion armrest on these seats. They also have "misericords" or "mercy seats"; we've seen these elsewhere and, you may remember, besides folding down to serve as normal seats they also provide a perch for those who were supposed to stand through long sermons. They are recorded by British Listed Buildings as being from the fifteenth century, but they must surely have been extensively repaired more recently; the carving is altogether much too crisp and the lion far too realistic to date from earlier times.

There's a splendid hammerbeam roof in the nave which receives little attention in any of the literature; probably because it's so gloomy up there that it's very difficult to see. It's only when I brightened up that part of the photo on the computer that the details swam into view!

What we mostly came to see is that large East Window. You'll notice that there's a woman doing some cleaning and a red plastic bucket on the altar. They were getting ready for a "church tea-party" at the weekend. If we want to fully appreciate the window we'll need to look through a telephoto lens....

Annunciation

These windows were also paid for by Anne Harling, which means that they are from the fifteenth century and have survived the attentions of those vandalistic puritans, who destroyed so much elsewhere.

Nativity

We know how these windows were saved, but we don't know exactly when or why. At some time they were removed to the hall, presumably when it became clear that they'd be destroyed if left where they were, but was the intention to beautify the hall or to return them once safe to do so?

Adoration of the Shepherds (detail)

When they were returned they were put back in the wrong place. They were originally intended for the side chapels, where it would be much easier to see the individual panels than high up in the East window, where they are now.

Crucifixion

The windows were moved once again during WWII to prevent possible bomb damage.

Assumption

There are many more scenes from the life of Christ than I've shown you here. You can find them all on the exhaustive Norfolk Churches website, one of several places I regularly consult before visiting any churches in that county.

Robert Wingfield: 

second husband of Anne Harling

Ann's first two husbands are also represented in recognition of the donations which they made to her grand project. It's also known that there was once a panel to Anne herself, pictured kneeling at her prayer desk. But it was presumably badly damaged at some time and is no longer in existence.

fragments

Who knows, maybe parts of Anne's window are incorporated into this panel of rescued fragments. I must admit I rather like the mysterious abstract quality of these jumbled pieces.

Back out into the sunshine once again with a view across the churchyard wall to the Grade II listed Eastfield House, which dates from the 1840s - yours for £1,619,000 according to the latest valuation.

Take care.