SPRING 2007 HUNTS CHURCHCRAWL

Last Thursday started fine, dry and bright, a big improvement on most of the days last week here in Peterborough. So let's go crawling I thought. A route had hatched in my mind so ( one advantage of being self employed) a morning's stress therapy was called for. First stop St Andrew's in Whittlesey, a Cambridgeshire church to start with, locked up and no keyholder mentioned, so I had to make do with a stroll around the exterior.

  The churchyard has been cleared with all the gravestone being arranged in neat semi circles at the South and North West of the church. The church is a mix of decorated and perpendicular. The tower is fine, with clasping buttresses and a crenellated top. The porch with it’s three crocketted pinnacles and matching niches is also worthy of study.

  So on to number two, back into what in my boyhood used to be Huntingdonshire, St Thomas’s at Pondersbridge, a Victorian number in yellow brick, dated 1869 according to the BoE. Dull would be another description, but that might offend someone so I won’t apply that description. The church stands in the middle of the fens, it is flat for miles and there are not that many houses about, it has an unloved feeling and I’m sure you guessed, it was locked with no keyholder listed.

  So let’s press quickly on to the next village down the road, Ramsey St Mary with it’s eponymous church. Well it’s another Victorian number, again in a fetching yellow brick finish, they must have got a job lot from the nearby London Brick works in Whittlesey. Dated to 1858 in the BoE, this is a more substancial church than the previous one, a NW tower and aisles making for a more pleasing picture, but yet again no chance of a view inside. Three misses in a row, however I suspected that this would be the low point and it would improve quickly. The most remarkable feature at St Mary’s was the graveyard. I was deep in fen country here and there has been considerable settlement (shrinkage of the soil) all around. The church seemed to stand on a mound but the gravestones lurched around in a most disconcerted style. With large concrete plinths lying at many degrees from the horizontal it looked as if it could make a scene from Return of the Zombies on a dark misty night!

So it’s a short journey to the fenland town of Ramsey, once home to one of those spectacular fenland abbey’s like Ely, Peterborough and Crowland. Regrettably only a few fragments of the original building remain, mostly incorporated into a later mansion, now the main senior school for the town. Most of the abbey stone is now in Cambridge, the fine Barnack stone being carted off to form Caius, King’s and Trinity Colleges.

However the Hospitium for the abbey became the town church and a fine building it is. The west tower is an add–on, probably salvaged from the abbey ruins in 1672. The east wall features some fine lancet windows and a neat almond shaped window. The aisles boast a fine selection of capitals from 12thC. Plenty of stained glass, some by Morris & co. I am attaching a picture from Ramsey of St Felix, not because of any other reason than that he died on 8th March 647, so tomorrow is the 1360th anniversary of his death!

After a pleasant wander around the church it’s off to Bury Holy Cross, just a mile or so down the road. Sadly I hit another locked church with no keyholders, there are the details of the churchwardens so I’ll revisit later this Spring. Bury is notable for its fine 13thC west tower with those long lancet windows.

Then on to Warboys St Mary Magdalene, a large village church, regrettably disfigured by a chancel rebuilt in our old friend the yellow brick in 1832. Warboys features a lovely broach spire with three tiers of lucarnes. One of the features inside is a 12thC door knocker in the shape of a lions head. I also liked the modern stained glass with it’s RAF connections.

Next it’s a small village on rising ground to the south east, getting away from the fens for a few miles, Wistow to view their church, St John Baptist. The church was locked, but there was details of the keyholder/churchwarden who greeted me with a ‘what do you want it for!’ when I requested the key. But she did soften quickly when I mentioned that I wanted to see the window. ‘Last year we had visitors from Australia coming to view the window’ she remarked proudly. It was the entry in the BoE that had drawn me here with it’s intriguing mention of a complete stained glass window, a rare thing in this most puritanical area of the country. Thankfully the window was easily within good viewing distance and features the resurrection, well worth the journey. Otherwise only having a two bay arcade the church seemed squashed up, almost truncated in appearance.

Final call of the day was to Upwood St Peter, back in the fens. This church was also open and one of the churchwardens was busy attempting to to extract some jammed up paper from an 1980’s looking photocopier in the vestry. He enlisted my help, my trusty Maglite coming in most handy to examine the inner working of this complicate beast.

St Peter’s features a Norman arcade and a late 13thC tower, plus a very squashed Norman arch to the Chancel. It is a really quite likeable church, not flashy or wealthy but obviously much loved and a good end to an enjoyable day out. It is always kept open during the day I was told.

Hope you enjoyed reading my rambling

Chris