Category Archives: Churches and Chapels

St Mary the Virgin- Saffron Walden, Thomas Audley, Margaret of Anjou and the New Model Army

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Having written about Thomas Audley, who hailed from Earl’s Colne and became Colchester’s recorder before going on to become Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor (remarkably dying in his own bed in 1544), I was keen to see his tomb. I was quietly surprised to find him tucked in a side chapel surrounded by filing cabinets!

Thomas had written clear instructions in his will about what he wanted – little in the way of pomp and ceremony. While he might not have wanted an expensive or public funeral the chest tomb he commissioned, complete with the family crest, was not cheap. It’s made from Belgian slate.

Thomas’s tomb was placed in the side chapel that was newly completed. However, there’s been a church in Saffron Walden since Saxon times and the building on the site has gone through several reincarnations until becoming, in the fifteenth century, the largest parish church in Essex – the nave is some 50 ft high. Inevitably the saffron crocus which gives the town its name features in the decorations.

Unfortunately the church’s medieval glass did not survive the Reformation or the attentions of the Roundheads – although there is no documentary evidence of soldiers under the command of Thomas Fairfax damaging the church in 1647 (and he was known to take a dim view of such behaviour). The only medieval stained glass to survive is thought to be a likeness of Margaret of Anjou – Henry VI’s unfortunate and oft reviled consort.

Which brings me to the Parliamentarians and the English Civil War. In May 1647 there were a week of debates held in the church about the future of England’s political and religious life. Men whose view did not coincide with the dominant Presbyterian view were regarded as increasingly dangerous. There were calls for religious independents and Levellers who wanted to extend voting rights to be rooted out of the army and punished. There were even calls for the New Model Army to be disbanded.

In 1646 the army was at Nottingham under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax. He moved his men to Saffron Walden when the Levellers began to petition soldiers. There was an increasingly vocal demand for extended suffrage. The use of a system of printed petitions that were widely distributed was something else to add to Parliament’s list of concerns – before long men like Lilburne were demanding that there should be more frequent elections to avoid Parliament becoming tyrannical in much the same way as the monarchy before it.

In March, the following year Parliament decided to disband the army in England and to send another to Ireland to suppress the rebellion there. Even worse, arrears in pay were not to be fully honoured – after the years of war there wasn’t much spare cash in the coffers. Unsurprisingly the soldiers drafted a petition demanding their money in full as well as indemnity against anything they might have done during the war. They also wanted pensions for widows, orphans and those disabled by their soldiering. Soldiers who were prepared to go to Ireland only wanted to do so under the command of their own commanders. Parliament decided that men like Colonels Pride and Lilburne were traitors to the State for encouraging the petition – who’d have thought that what today seems largely reasonable would have been greeted with such alarm?

Most ordinary soldiers did not want to go to Ireland. And when a deputation from Parliament arrived tor recruit for the campaign rather than signing on for the new campaign as had been expected, representatives from each of the eight regiments in Saffron Walden formed a council of action and drafted a document which they presented to Fairfax and to Parliament reiterating their grievances.

Meetings followed in the town’s church on 6 and 7 May during which Parliamentary and army representatives tried to arrive at a compromise as well as to recruit for the Irish campaign.

On 18 May, Parliament decided to disband the army with the exception of men prepared to go to Ireland or for garrison duties. Fairfax was told to organise this and moved to Bury St Edmunds. The agitators, as they were known, refused to comply even when Fairfax order them to stop holding meetings. Instead a new petition was presented to him and the regiments, increasingly militant, refused to disband.

The Saffron Waldren debates reflected the widening void between those in power and the soldiers of the New Model Army. This difference would come to a head in November 1647 with the more famous Putney Debates. Ultimately, Fairfax would refuse, in 1649, to go to Ireland. The experiences of Saffron Walden had turned him into something of a political mediator as well as maintaining military unity. It was Fairfax who first chaired the Putney Debates but illness forced him to step down and it was Cromwell who suppressed the army’s radicals.

St Luke’s Church, Sheen and its gargoyles

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Sheen is on the boundary between Staffordshire and Derbyshire within the Peak District. In 1327, when Edward II had been deposed and Isabella of France and her lover – Roger Mortimer- were acting as regents for Edward III, 8 people were assessed for tax in the village which continued to expand across the centuries.

In 1666, 33 people paid hearth tax. This was a tax granted by Parliament to Charles II in 1662 to fund his household. Householders were required to pay 1 shilling per year for each hearth, stove or fireplace in their property – so basically it was a wealth tax. The more fireplaces you had, the bigger your home was and thus the more you were required to pay.

The population reached 458 by 1871 but began to decline after that. It was during the 1850s that the church was rebuilt and a new house provided for the vicar as well as a school and a reading room.

The manor of Sheen originally belonged to Wulfric Spot, an Anglo Saxon noble who lived during the reign of Æthelred the Unready. He was a patron of Burton Abbey dedicated to St Modwen. In about 1003 he granted land at Sheen to the abbey but by 1086 the manor lay in the hands of William the Conqueror. However, the conqueror and the papacy confirmed Burton Abbey’s ownership of the chapel at Sheen and granted them the tithes accruing from it. At that time the chapel was described as being dependent upon the church at Ilam.

In 1529, with the Reformation Parliament settling in to make the break with Rome so that Henry VIII could divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, the abbey leased the chapel along with its glebe (the plot of land belonging to the church), the tithes and offerings to the curate of Sheen -Henry Longworth and his brother Thomas for their lives. In 1536, Henry was granted a 30 year lease on the church and the responsibility for providing a priest. Evidently the monks at Burton were anxious to ensure that their property remained, if possible, out of the hands of the Crown. it seems that Henry left money for the building of the church tower when he died in 1541.

However, the Crown was not to be thwarted. In 1546 Henry VIII granted Burton Abbey’s possessions – together with the chapel at Sheen to Sir William Paget who began his political career as the MP for Lichfield in 1529. By the time of the grant he was one of Henry’s privy councillors. In his turn Paget leased the chapel to Ralph Crane of Middleton – and the chapel ceased to be part of Ilam’s parish. Crane’s family inherited the right to appoint the curate but in 1743, as part of Queen Anne’s Bounty, the curacy became a perpetual curacy.

Queen Anne’s Bounty was a fund established in 1704 to improve the incomes of poor clerics in the Church of England – it effectively returned church taxes to Sheen so that the curate’s salary could be improved. The idea was that the Bounty would make donations made by local landowners

The current church at Sheen dates from 1852 when it was rebuilt by A.J.B. Hope in the style of the original 14th century church. The tower was buttressed and raised. Instead of a spire it was covered with a copper cap. Locally it is believed that the four gargoyles at the bottom of the tower (who appear to retain their interest in water if the watering cans and buckets are anything to go by!) were destined to sit atop another storey but that the architect feared the foundations weren’t strong enough – it’s certainly the reason why the projected spire was abandoned. Porteous’ book, entitled Peakland, written in 1954 and the Historic England website state that they belong to the earlier medieval church that stood upon the same site.

A P Baggs, M F Cleverdon, D A Johnson, N J Tringham, ‘Sheen’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 7, Leek and the Moorlands, ed. C R J Currie, M W Greenslade (London, 1996), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol7/pp239-250 [accessed 23 May 2026].

The monastery at Dunstable and its lands in the Peak District

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Ballidon Chapel of ease.

I’ve written about the Augustinians of Dunstable before but I’m trying to decide whether I want to keep Medieval Dunstable (edited by Yates, Jean ) or not. It was one of five houses founded by King Henry I. By the time he died there were nearly two hundred Augustinian monastic houses in England which just goes to show how keen his nobility were to get into his good books. Apparently The Augustinians were not an enclosed order. The canons were all ordained priests who chose to live as a monastic community; they served the neighbourhoods where they lived as priests and offered hospitality. And that’s one of the reasons why Dunstable ended up with lands in Derbyshire. Situated on Watling Street, it was one of the busiest medieval roads in the kingdom but unlike the hotel chain which advertises a good night’s sleep the canons were unable to charge for the food and lodgings they offered. Instead, they were given gifts by grateful travellers.

Much of the monastic land was in the Dunstable environs as were the churches to which the canons held the advowson – or the right to appoint the priest. They also held land and churches in Buckinghamshire and, this is where I become interested, Derbyshire. Bradbourne Manor which was part of the Honour of Tutbury lay in the hands of the Cauceis family. Sir Godfrey de Cauceis granted the chapels at Ballidon, Brassington, Tissington and Atlow to the canons as well as the tithes at Aldwark and Lee Hall. (Yates, Jean, (Ed.), ‘Churches and Lands: Buckinghamshire, Derbyshire, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire & Oxfordshire’, in Medieval Dunstable, p.231.)

Unfortunately Godfrey died the following year and although the gift was confirmed, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Coventry kept episcopal and parish rights for himself. With so many fingers in the pie it is perhaps not surprising that the prior at Dunstable took matters further. In 1215 the case went to Rome and three judges were appointed to take a closer look at the Peak District churches. The rector at Bradbourne, Robert, was the son of the previous incumbent and yes, Henry the vicar at Ballidon was also the progeny of the previous cleric. Both men were described as being incontinent – which has nothing to do with the modern meaning and more to do with the keeping of mistresses. I suppose that it’s only fair that William who was the chaplain at Tissington kept moth mistresses and hunting dogs. As a result of these discoveries, which all three men denied, the canons at Dunstable were allowed to appoint new vicars.

And just when it seems you’ve got a handle on these things in 1230, Pope Gregory extracted a tenth tax on the income from Dunstable’s Peak District churches. In 1242 the canons required a new charter for the church at Bradbourne because the old one was nibbled by mice. In the decades that followed the canons made an annual visit to the Peak District to inspect the books – and possibly to enjoy the countryside. Not that it was always plain sailing. Sheep, as any hill farmer will tell you, are quite keen on finding innovative ways to die and there were several years when disease took its toll but in general the wool trade was a profitable one at this time.

And it turns out that the canons held church rights along Watling Street while at Pattishall, the lord of the manor came to an agreement with the prior for him to stay three times a year depending on the number of horses he had with him (Yates, p.240.). The Augustinians already owned land in Northamptonshire – think of it as joining the dots. And there was the Augustinian Priory at Repton, virtually on the doorstep.

Dunstable’s ownership of various Peak District lands and churches came to an end in 1540 with its dissolution. However, Medieval Dunstable is going back to its place on the bookshelf – the section about Derbyshire is small but extremely useful and I have been reminded that I need to retake photos of the various churches that Dunstable held but possibly not on a day when the rain is coming in horizontally.

Nottinghamshire before 1066 and a Friday afternoon meander across my bookshelf.

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By Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12966437

I’d forgotten how wonderful the Ordinance Survey historical maps and guides can be. The Ancient Britain incarnation of the map reminded me about the Anglo-Saxon Church at Carlton in Lindrick. It also reassured me that I hadn’t missed anything of national significance, listing as it does only Cresswell Crags (prehistoric) and the Anglo-Saxon Cross in Stapleford Churchyard as items of interest.

There’s not a lot above ground from Ancient Nottinghamshire’s past – many settlements have been constantly inhabited, but at Carlton in Lindrick, near Worksop, within there is a church that dates from about 860AD. Not much of the original church remains. It was certainly extended during the tenth century and the west tower is, apparently, a good example of a Saxon west tower. Someone listed it as one of the top three west church tower (the Saxons did other varieties of tower) – though true to form I can’t find the source of my quote…an unfortunate habit that’s tripped me up for several decades now, you’d think I’d have learned.

Inevitably I did some more digging about and there are 400 or so churches in Britain which have some Anglo-Saxon fabric or which sixty or so come in the form of late Saxon church towers. This is a little complicated by the fact that when it came to church building after the Conquest, it may have been the Normans who gave the orders but it was the Saxons who did the building. And let’s not forget all those later additions stuck on various churches by patrons determined to ensure a) their place in Heaven, b) that everyone should know how wealthy they were and c) because keeping up with the Joneses isn’t a new phenomena.

Anyway back to Carlton in Lindrick’s tower – which may have served as a look out tower and place of refuge as well as part of the church. It’s the only tower of its kind in Nottinghamshire although places like Littleborough also contain fragments of their Saxon past. Both places contain distinctive Saxon herring-bone brickwork.

Part of the reason behind Carlton’s prestigious appearance may lay in a clue provided by the Domesday Book. Before 1066, six thegns each had a hall at Carlton, or at least nearby. A thegn was somewhere between a freeman and a member of the nobility. The thegns worked together to build their church but there were also two mills at Carlton. But who the six thegns were and what happened to them is another matter entirely.

I’m still wading around Saxon cross shafts in Nottinghamshire and the tympanum at Southwell. Not to mention trying to remember which churches I’ve visited in the county with the distinctive narrow faces with rounded, or even triangular, tops. So far I’ve got Southwell on my list and Carlton – which isn’t entirely helpful. A quick google revealed All Saints Church at Babworth which I know I’ve never been to. All of which means, I think, a delve into Arthur Mee’s King’s England for Nottinghamshire which is fortuitous in its own way – he’s a Nottinghamshire lad, who I am very much looking forward to writing about.

Chesterfield in glass

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In 1984 St Mary and All Saint’s Church, Chesterfield celebrated being 750 years old with a new window depicting the history of Chesterfield from the eleventh century onwards. It begins by depicting the Battle of Chesterfield in 1266 between Henry of Almain, the nephew of King Henry III, and Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby all the way through to mines at Clay Cross, the Midland Railway Station and one of George Stephenson’s locomotives. He made his home at Tapton House.

Incidentally, St Mary’s and All Saints is the largest church in Derbyshire, famous for its twisted spire – the result of inexperienced workmen using green wood in the aftermath of the Black Death of 1348. The spire’s wooden skeleton sits on top of the church’s tower – weight is the only thing that holds it in place (or it least it was when I went up there many many years ago). George Stephenson is buried at Holy Trinity Church, Newbold Road (pictured with the locomotive) and is said to haunt Tapton House. I don’t know about that but there is a fine statue of him holding a model of The Rocket outside Chesterfield’s railway station.

Abergavenny – St Mary’s Priory Church

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St Mary’s was founded in 1087 for a prior and twelve monks. There’s not much left of the Norman building but it is now apparently one of the largest parish churches in Wales. Most folk go to the church to look at the huge wooden carving of Jesse – who should lay at the base of a Jesse tree depicting the lineage of Christ. He’s the only wooden figure like this left in England or Wales – whether there were many more is a matter of debate. Suffice to say that the bonfires of the reformation probably carried several works off in smoke and ash. Usually we think of Jesse windows in stained glass – What Thomas Cromwell’s thugs didn’t carry out his three times great nephew Oliver’s men completed. A new Jesse window now looks resplendent above the carving of Jesse.

The Herbert Chapel (its the St Benedict Chapel now) is packed with alabaster effigies the most important of which is William ap Thomas and his wife Gwladys – who are the ancestors of the Herbert Earls of Pembroke. However, my favourite effigy is of Sir Richard Herbert of Ewyas and I couldn’t even see the original part of the carving that I think is so wonderful. His feet are resting on a lion – the head pokes around the corner of the niche that Sir Richard fits very neatly into with an ornate canopy over his head – but under is left foot is a monk telling his beads. Just a reminder that in the pre-reformation world the wealthy paid for prayers to be said for their souls to speed them from Purgatory to Heaven. Sir Robert is the illegitimate son of the 1st Earl of Pembroke.

The 1st Earl of Pembroke who was Edward IV’s friend William Herbert isn’t in Abergavenny – he fell foul of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick having come to prominence in Wales after the Battle of Towton in 1461. It was he, who having fought by Edward’s side at Mortimer’s Cross, who was given custody of Henry Tudor and Jasper Tudor’s Earldom of Pembroke. Herbert planned to marry his ward to his own daughter Maud but before that could happen Warwick, who was keen to get his hands on some of Herbert’s estates and administrative roles, rebelled against Edward. The Battle of Edgecote Moor on 24 July 1469 was not a good day for Edward IV or the Herbert family. Having lost the battle and fled Herbert and his brother Richard were captured and executed on Warwick’s orders.

The bodies of the 1st Earl and his brother were being transported home when the Cistercians of Tintern Abbey hijacked them and buried them in their abbey…the things some monks would do to ensure extra patronage!

Getting to grips with …windows

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Discovering Stained Glass, Carola Hicks, p.6

I love stained glass – and incidentally the little diamond shaped panes are called quarries. It turns out that glass has been around since the third millennium BC – leading us to the inevitable question of What did the Romans ever do for us?

The gallery depicts modern glass which can be found in St Mary’s Church, Richmond, North Yorkshire. it won’t come as a surprise to learn that much of the medieval glass was somewhat knocked about during the English Civil War and Commonwealth period. Restoration commenced under Sir George Gilbert Scott during the Victorian period.

The ones pictures below are modern and dedicated to Ruth Gedye who was just eighteen years old when she died. The artist Alan Davis of Whitby created the image based on Ruth’s favourite hymns.

The last image in the gallery comes from a different window in the church. Alan’s work can also be found in Manchester Cathedral. Hicks notes that the abstract designs with which we are familiar these days were popularised after World War Two thanks to commissions for Coventry Cathedral and the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool. She lists some examples and although I have seen the ‘Prisoners of Conscience’ window in Salisbury I can’t remember it particularly clearly, unlike the Richard III window at Leicester.

Hicks, Carola, Discovering Stained Glass, (Princess Risborough: Shire Publications, 1968 reprinted 2006)

When is Richard Duke of York actually Ralph Neville 1st Earl of Westmorland?

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St Andrew’s Church Penrith

The so-called Neville Window can be found on the south side of the nave. And it’s fairly clear who folk have thought the medieval glass depicted, at least since the church’s rebuild during the eighteenth century. In 1716 the vicar and parishioners petitioned for a new church on the grounds they were concerned the old one was on the verge of falling down. The total cost for a new building in the style of Christopher Wren was just over £2,253. Pevenser identified the resulting church as the finest of its kind in Cumbria.

So back to the Neville window. It’s created from fragments of glass belonging to the old window. Obviously the faces were thought to be Richard Duke of York and his wife Cecily Neville but have since been identified as Cecily’s parents – Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland who was responsible for the a re building of the church in 1397 and Joan Beaufort the daughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford – the decorative surround of white roses, crowns and the bear and ragged staff are not medieval.

Dugdale’s Visitation of Cumberland made in 1665 (MS.C.39) contains drawings of the medieval church and they include depictions of the glass which was originally in the north window of the chancel. Dugdale reveals that the woman was originally kneeling and her kirtle depicted the royal arms whilst her mantle depicted the Neville arms – so a member of the royal family who married into the Neville family – and hey presto Joan Beaufort – making the man kneeing next to her Ralph Neville – not least because Dugdale depicts him with the Neville arms. Since the church was rebuilt by them it does seem a logical conclusion. A full discussion of the images and a reproduction of the Dugdale images can be found in Ashdown-Hill.

If nothing else it demonstrates that history is constantly under revision!

Is the image of the monarch King Richard II?

Ralph was also responsible for the red sandstone castle having been granted Penrith’s lordship by Richard II in 1396. It’s been suggested that one of the fragments of medieval glass in St Andrews depicts Richard II.

And obviously I couldn’t resist adding the photographs of the Scandinavian hogback tombstone…just because.

Ashdown-Hill, Cecily Neville: Mother of Richard III, (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2018)

https://archive.org/details/pedigreesrecorde00sainrich/page/66/mode/2up

St Nicholas Church, West Tanfield and the Marmion

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St Nicholas Church, West Tanfield
Marmion Tower
Lion at foot of effigy
St Nichalas’s Church, West Tanfield near Ripon

For those of you familiar with the area just beyond Ripon you’re probably thinking Marmion! A medieval gatehouse near the church is all that remains of a medieval manor house. It’s possible that there was a Norman castle first but nothing remains. Licence to crenelate (fortify) was granted in 1314. The family associated with the area were the Marmions.

So starting with Robert. Our first Robert died in 1216 was married twice and had families with both his wives – and thought that it would be useful to call both of his first sons Robert. Thankfully he was part of the Staffordshire elite so lets just leave him as 3rd Baron Marmion of Tamworth.

In 1215 Robert the Younger (the son from the second marriage) Marmion of Tamworth paid the avaricious King John £350 and five palfreys to marry Amicia/Avice the daughter of Jernigan or Gernegan FitzHugh of West Tanfield – a minor heiress with lands in Yorkshire. Needless to say starting the conversation with King John results in revolting barons, confiscations and general unhappiness especially when King John gave the order to demolish Tamworth Castle. Fortunately for the Marmions the contractors didn’t move in.

Eventually the Marmions got themselves back on track with the younger Robert coughing up more cash both for his own lands and his elder half-brother’s estates as he was continuing to rebel. By 1220 Robert the Elder was in control of Tamworth. There followed a series of male Marmions until yet another Robert Marmion died leaving his sister Avis as his heir. She held the manor jointly with her husband John de Grey of Rotherfield but their son rather than being called de Grey was known as Marmion which brings us back to the rather marvellous alabaster effigy in St Nicholas’s Church.

He died in 1387 in the service of John of Gaunt in Spain so the manor passed back into the hands of the FitzHugh family via John’s nice Elizabeth. Eventually the manor passed back up the family tree and across to the Parrs by right of Elizabeth FitzHugh before returning to the Crown and for a while into the hands of William Cecil Lord Burghley. The lady by Sir John’s side is his wife Elizabeth.

The gallery images also show a wall painting of St George slaying the dragon – St George is left handed I think. And some lions for recumbent effigies to rest their feet upon. I can’t resist the animal footrests or the rarer animal cushions. I think lions are supposed to show valour and nobility. And it turns out that in medieval bestiaries lion cubs who were born dead came back to life after three days because of their mother’s breathing on them – so not a huge step to the resurrection and life after death.

Finding information about your local church.

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Several of you have mentioned to me an interest in more local history at the moment – particularly if daily walks have involved a stroll round the outside of a church. I must admit it helps if there are plenty of historic looking kings and queens decorating corbels etc. So with that in mind my post today is where to find information online about churches which suits me nicely as I am trying to put together a guide to my own parish church. Gardeners do not fear – I shall still be meandering through the history of garden plants.

First check to see if the church has its own website. If it does you may find that there is some information about the church in question freely available online. Usually I would say that checking to see whether the church has a guide is a good starting point but that will have to wait until the doors are open again. Of course, if you know a churchwarden or officer of the church they may be able to help as may local history groups who are usually keen to share their knowledge.

The Victoria County History (VCH) began in 1899 as a national project to write the history of every county in England. It is, unsurprisingly, dedicated to Queen Victoria. The idea was to create a complete history of each of county, looking at parishes and towns. Parts of various county histories are available online – my interest originated with the fact that the majority of medieval religious houses are covered by the VCH and are freely available at https://www.british-history.ac.uk which may also be a source of information about your parish church depending on its age and location. There are usually also copies of county histories in local libraries which isn’t very helpful at the moment.

Parish churches that aren’t medieval required an Act of Parliament or an Order in Council from the seventeenth century onwards. These may be searched for in the London Gazette: https://www.thegazette.co.uk – which has a very helpful search facility. In addition to that there is a search facility online for the Lambeth Palace Library https://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/content/searchcollections or you can try to find the plan of your church in their extensive collection for the Incorporated Church Building Society.

http://images.lambethpalacelibrary.org.uk/luna/servlet/view/all?sort=identifier%2Cdate%2Ctitle%2Crights

And that should be enough to get you started. I should warn you though that it won’t be long before you’re hooked!

Inevitably there are several books that you might consider – again I would usually suggest the library- at the moment many libraries are offering temporary online access to their e-materials even if you are not registered as they recognise that we may all be running out of reading matter:

Bettey, J H. (1987) Church and Parish: an introduction for local historians. Batsford.

Friar, Stephen. A Companion to the English Parish Church

Tate, W.E. The Parish Chest