King's Langley church, Hertfordshire

All Saints, Kings Langley.

I’d travelled quite a way, so was glad that someone was in the dreary looking bunker attached to the church who could let me in. Most of the building is dull late Perpendicular, squat west tower and aisled nave with low clerestory, nothing to write home about. There is a splendid Jacobean pulpit and tester, but It is only in the n.e. chapel that the main reason for visiting becomes obvious, as it’s here that the heraldically rich tomb of Edmund of Langley eventually came to rest. Originally in the priory church close to the royal palace that gave this prince his name, the long chest tomb was removed here after the Dissolution of the monasteries. Edmund was the fifth son of King Edward III, and was the first Duke of York, head of that branch of the family that reigned on and off during the Wars of the Roses. As well as his own arms, differenced by a unique label, the tomb bore the arms of England, France Ancient, Leon and Castille and the Empire, as well as the arms of his brothers. There are also some tiles from the priory, and the battered effigies  of Sir Ralph Verney and his wife, whose tomb was only erected in the friary in 1528, having to be moved soon after. Some rather jazzy tiles around the altar are probably by the C19th firm of Godwin of Lugwardine The church is great for those interested in heraldry, and the pulpit is a splendid example, but this is one that only experts should go out of their way to view.

Stanstead St. Margarets church, Hertfordshire

Stanstead St.Margarets church, Herts.

 This is a pleasant little church, in between the New River and the River Lea Navigation, in an area being swamped by tacky little estates.  Behind the proud east window, the building reveals its early Norman bones in a little blocked round headed window in the nave, with simple square patterns down the sides. The church expanded in 1316 as a chantry foundation for a master and four chaplains, and contracted after the Reformation. Becoming collegiate led to a northern aisle and chapel which has left its arcade buried in the wall; the windows to the north and west are all modern, but those to the south date from the C14th growth, as does the chancel with its splendid outsized Decorated east window, a curvilinear design rare in Hertforshire.  The inside is simple, with no chancel arch, and retains a Georgian west gallery and low box pews.  There’s a little bellcot on the roof from the same period, but that’s about it for here, apart from the atmosphere which is just so right that you’d make a fortune if you could bottle it. Such a shame about the destruction of its surroundings, but the railway station made that fairly inevitable I suppose. Open Saturdays, in the summer at least.

Hertingfordbury church, Hertfordshire

                                           St. Mary's church, Hertingfordbury, Hertfordshire.

The extensive graveyard lies beside the lodge at the gate of Hertingfordbury Park, though the church has long been the place of sepulchre for the owners of Panshanger park to the north west. The area before the church has unfortunately been cleared of memorials, many of which have been lined up along the churchyard wall. One Georgian gravestone has the rare feature of a relief carved portrait of the deceased upon it, a fashion more often seen in Scotland than here.

 Close to the south porch stand three high backed stone seats, an inspection reveals them to be the battered remains of the C15th sedilia, thrown out of the church when it was rebuilt in the 1890s. A big neo-classical memorial to Rebecca Poor of 1829 towers over a multitude of Georgian and Victorian tombstones, with several later graves bearing Art Nouveau designs. Lady Sarah Cowper’s slick slate sarcophagus of 1719 lies to the east of the chancel, and the big angel turning its winged back on the church from the tree line is to Lady Katrina Cowper, who died in 1913 after overseeing the rebuilding of the church. 

The graveyard has been extended far beyond these trees, and at the far corner a massive memorial to Standard Oil heiress Pauline Whitney Paget faces the boundary hedge. This Art Deco temple shelters a statue of a woman and two children, with “Pro patria” written above as if this was a war memorial. The forecourt has incised designs filled with leadwork, showing silhouetted soldiers smoking cigarettes, with the epitaphs written on low side walls, the whole more suited to a municipal cemetery than the corner of a country churchyard.

The church itself suffered from two restorations, and although parts of the tower may still be C15th, the spike was replaced with a modern spire. Now only the eastern triple of lancets and a solitary head on the piscina remain from the C13th, most of the fittings being replaced with expensive Edwardian equivalents, with font, reredos and sedilia in shiny alabaster and rococo bench ends from Oberammergau.

The new north east chapel was built to take the many Cowper memorials, with over ornate heraldic ironwork screens on two sides. Two older tombs were removed from the chancel and now stand under the tower, both better than the later Cowper cuckoos. That to Lady Calvert carries her 1622 effigy dressed in starched ruff and soft lace, with the embroidery on her sleeves matched by her pillow, whilst opposite the two figures of Sir William and Lady Harrington lie cocooned in shrouds on a chest tomb under an early C17th arch, with a young daughter praying at their feet. Lady Calvert’s in in the style of Nicholas Stone, whilst the Harringtons show the hand of Epiphanius Evesham in the characterisation of their faces.

The Cowper chapel has a recumbent Earl of 1905 in white alabaster in the centre, looked down upon by an oversize winged Fame, part of a 1764 memorial to a William Cowper that has cherubs holding up a relief portrait and the clouds of glory above. Both memorials are expensive failures, but amongst the epitaphs poorly sited on a window reveal a smaller memorial by Roubiliac to Spencer Cowper of 1727 is beautifully carved, with the judge seated between Wisdom and Justice like some latter day Paris. Nothing else here comes close, not even one by Laurence Whistler, and the Cowpers are no more  http://www.ipernity.com/doc/stiffleaf/album/422279/@/page:25:70.

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royston cave

current C18th entrance

In 1742, Royston workmen digging a posthole for a bench in the Buttermarket hit an unexpected snag when their spades struck stone. Enlarging the hole they discovered a millstone which they removed, only to find that it covered the shaft of a deep cave. The town is built on a layer of chalk, exploited in the past for clunch for building a soft stone easily carved but poor for external work, but it was obviously not a quarry for cut stone, and the rumour of buried treasure cleared the bottle shaped cavern of masses of rubbish, including any archaeological remains. When the bottom was reached, almost eight metres down, the lower walls were found to be carved with religious reliefs and graffiti, but no treasure other than the odd bone, a broken cup and an unmarked fragment of brass, none of which were kept. In 1790 a local builder dug an easier entrance, and opened the cave to the public, since then the curious and the credulous have never ceased their interest, and the internet has only made things worse. 

  looking up to the original entrance on the left

The usual suspects have all appeared, from little green men to stone age earth mother worshippers; well out in front at present seem to be Freemasons and Templars, all with the general presupposition that the carvings have a purpose. From their imagery, they date from about 1400-1550, with the saints Catherine, Christopher and Lawrence definately shown along with several calvaries with John and Mary beneath Christ on the cross. There is a figure with a sword, seemingly marked with a small cross, who could be St.George, but with no dragon to clinch the matter. There is what looks to be an Easter sepulchre scene, with what may be an angel seated on the end of the tomb. There are rows of figures, differing in number from 15 to 9, which have been claimed as the twelve disciples. All of these are normal images that would have been known to everyone in the period in question.

the supposed sheela-na-gig

angel at the tomb, st.christopher, and 15 figures

        Another figure has been seen as a Sheela-na-gig, but does not point to her genitals in the way that these mid C12th warnings against sin do; some such carvings are later than the C12th, but what would be the use of such a warning where hardly anyone would see it? I'm not even going to discuss such self evident tosh as carvings claimed to be of specific kings or queens, or people being burnt at the stake, or people wearing space helmets or having floating crowns and heretics' hats; some people will believe anything. The simplest most practical solutions are generally right, life isn't that complicated and people are lazy.
It must not be forgotten where these carvings are; at the bottom of a dimly lit damp hole in the ground that often flooded. Any official chapel or shrine would have had to have better access, easily dug. Several other holes have been found cut as cellars, and this may have been used in the C13th to store dairy produce for the Buttermarket above. It's not a neolithic flint mine as there are no flints; more could be picked up in the road outside. Footholds were found cut into the side of the original entrance shaft which came into the neck of the bottle shaped cave. A line runs around the cave about half way up, with a row of cupboard sized holes cut about two foot above; this line probably marks the original depth of the cellar, with handy cupboards within its walls. When the cave was cut to its current depth, it may have been because they wanted it to be difficult to get out of; you don't need a hole this deep for a chapel, but you would for prisoners. In fact it's too deep for a practical wooden ladder, and until the current shaft was dug entry was by rope. It has been suggested that a framework of posts rose from the floor to hold another floor up halfway up, but the easiest way to build this would have been to cut joist holes in the walls, and there are none. The Templars were gone by the 1400s; whatever people say nowadays about secret societies the Templars were more like a Christian Al -qaeda, and were effectively disbanded in 1312; but boys like dressing up and claiming that they know special secrets, so modern Freemasons and Templars claim a link, even over a 400 year gap, that has no reality whatsoever. Why anyone thinks that a load of aged ex-knights would want to worship in a damp hole under a busy market place is beyond me. The Templars were bigotted violent men, but not necessarily idiots too. 

st.catherine

These carvings are no great work of art, many are only token figures or overlap each other. Some are little more than scratchings, and many look like prisoners' carvings in the Tower of London. It seems most likely that this is what they are; they only go up as high as you can reach, and are mostly to be found on the area of the north side of the cave where natural light from the lighting shaft made such carving possible. Anyone other than a prisoner doing such a thing would have used a candle, in which case the entire bottom of the cave and even higher would have been decorated.
   

christ showing wounds ?

So whilst these images are interesting, and some difficult to pin down, having been damaged or never completed, there's nothing magical about this place. Religious imagery was the only type known in the niddle ages, and even farmhouses were painted with such images. What is missing is as interesting as what is carved; why no angels or heraldry, which are everywhere else in abundance ? There are no early C16th images such as the five wounds, or objects from the passion. 
All in all, I think that the date must be in the C15th, and I'd have thought that these were carvings done by prisoners, whether heretics or plain thieves, were it not for the discovery of microscopic fragments of pigment by English Heritage backing up earlier claims that the figures were originally painted. This being the case, it now looks more likely that this must be a pit cut originally for powdered chalk for plastering, perhaps for the mid C12th  monastery, being reused in the C15th by an anchorite, later forgotten, maybe with a period of storage in between. 
It's a lot of "maybe" this and "possibly" that, but this is a case where speculation is almost all that we have, and where keeping it within the bounds of the evidence is one of our most difficult tasks.

More photos can be found at  http://www.ipernity.com/home/stiffleaf