Farcet. CHURCH : ST MARY
A bitterly, bitterly cold Saturday morning in early February 2009. Two days before, the Peterborough area had been covered in the heaviest snowfall in many years. Forget the lovely blue sky. This was perishing! The snow was still very much in evidence on the ground that Saturday morning, and in would linger around for another week, causing irritation to all concerned in the process.
This was my fourth church of the day, in what was to turn out to be an eight church crawl. I had previously just visited St Peter at Yaxley, where a foot long icicle hanging from the spout of a frozen looking gargoyle on the tower there was evidence that Winter had truly set in!
This was my second visit to St Mary at Farcet and I wasn't terribly struck by the place on my first visit. That means no disrespect atl to the doubtless small and hard working band who keep this church running. Evidence was there though that all is not as it should be. Broken glass and beer bottles in the church grounds and I wouldn't have been at all surprised to have found worse than that in the area if I had looked hard enough. No evidence of vandalism here, unlike at neighbouring Yaxley, where a friendly local tod me that someone had attempted to kick in te main door in the recent past.
This is a very attractive looking church though, made more so on the day, by the deep snow and beautiful blue sky!
There was no mention of a church at Farcet at the time of the Domesday Survey in 1086. However, there was a basic building in the village in the 12th Century, to which the Western tower was added in the latter years of that century. The chancel was re-built in the 13th Century whilst the porch dates from the 14th Century. This church, according to a little internet reaearch, had two periods of Victorian restoration. The first was in 1852, when the North aisle was also added. The second was in the mid 1890's, when the tower was restored.
St Mary's is an attractive church in a nice setting. Some evidence of subsidance over the years with buttresses supporting the church and gravestones resting at every conceivable angle. A few very nice looking Georgian gravestones to be found here, but sadly most of these were very worn. Enough evidence to suggest that there was some superior quality carvings here in their day!
The church was locked, and in fact the porch was padlocked. Always sad to see a house of God padlocked, but such are the times that we live in and Farcet is by no means alone in doing this. There is one church in the catchment area of this site, not a huge distance away from Farcet, that even padlocks the gates so that no one can gain entry to the church grounds.
Enjoyed my time here. Headed back to the bus stop, and on to Stanground, church number five of my day out in the snow.
