Betjeman’s Best British Churches. Richard Surman
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– two parallel streets, one Georgian and the other medieval, with the great Vanbrugh house of the Dukes of Manchester at one end of them. The brick industry is long established in the district, and old red-brick houses make a happy contrast with silvery medieval stone and humbler plaster-walled cottages and inns.
When it is remote, Huntingdonshire is more remote and countrified than anywhere in England, and for Betjeman there was always a strong atmosphere in the county of the Civil War. The towns, one feels, stand for Parliament, the villages for the King. Oliver Cromwell was born at Huntingdon, where a chapel spire is higher than the church towers. He has a statue at St Ives and several of his chief supporters came from the county. The 17th-century High Church movement is represented by George Herbert, who rebuilt and refurnished his village church at Leighton Bromswold in 1620, and Nicholas Ferrar, who founded an Anglican religious community, of which Little Gidding church survives as a tender memorial. In the Civil War, Barnabas Oley, Vicar of Great Gransden, smuggled the Cambridge College plate through Huntingdonshire to Charles I at Nottingham.
The Soke of Peterborough – traditionally associated with the Diocese and city of Peterborough – is now a unitary authority within the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire. In the east it is fen country, becoming hilly and wooded as it stretches westward to Stamford. Here lies the park and immense Elizabethan house of Burghley. The Manor of Burghley and other lands in the Soke (together with wide jurisdictional rights over the whole area) formerly belonged to the abbots of Peterborough, and were granted by Elizabeth I to her treasurer Lord Burghley.
The industrialized city of Peterborough is not half so dull as those who pass through it in the train may think. It is a grey town – grey limestone, lightish-grey and grey-yellow brick. The west front of the Cathedral was described as ‘the grandest and finest in Europe’. Its Norman nave and roof and the splendid ‘New Building’ in Perpendicular at the east end, the tree-shaded ramifications of the close, are all hidden from the main road; so is the excellent local museum.
The churches of the Soke and their villages are almost all built in local limestone, the churches with stone spires. Vestiges of Norman work in many of the churches recall the influence of the Benedictine Abbey.
BARNACK: ST JOHN THE BAPTIST – as an ‘inspired architectural hotch-potch’, it typifies what’s so appealing about the English parish church
ALCONBURY † St Peter and St Paul
4m/6km N.W. of Huntingdon
OS TL184761 GPS 52.3703N, 0.2615W
The village is watered by Alconbury Brook running down the long village green, with the church on the northern fringe of a cluster of colourwash-and-tile cottages. The inside of the 13th-century chancel is noble and serene, enhanced by an attached and embattled arcade along each side, the 15th-century roof marrying well with the older work. There is good contrast between the plaster of the chancel and the pebbly walls of the nave, where the plaster was stripped. The tower has one of the county’s many good broach spires.
BABRAHAM † St Peter
7m/11km S.E. of Cambridge
OS TL509505 GPS 52.1324N, 0.2041E
St Peter’s occupies a secluded riverside site beside a Jacobean-style mansion of 1832. Its plain unbuttressed W. tower is claimed as pre-Conquest but is more probably 13th-century; there is a lofty Perpendicular nave and assorted woodwork. The Bennet monument in the S. aisle (second half of 17th century) is highly individual and attractive, and John Piper designed the E. window glass.
BALSHAM † Holy Trinity
6m/10km N.W. of Haverhill
OS TL587508 GPS 52.1332N, 0.3185E
Here is a fine, large, early medieval tower, and a dignified, somewhat austere, nave dating from the rectorship of John of Sleford, d. 1401; richly carved choir stalls were also commissioned by him. His brass is in the chancel, which is separated from the nave by a late medieval rood screen with loft.
BARNACK † St John the Baptist
3m/4km S.E. of Stamford
OS TF079050 GPS 52.6326N, 0.4066W
Originally a grand Saxon church, as evidenced by the spectacular stone stripwork decoration of the tower and the magnificent tower arch, the church has since acquired the characteristics of the succeeding centuries, and so is typical of that inspired architectural hotch-potch which is the English parish church. The Barnack stone quarries fed the greatest of the medieval building projects in the Nene Valley and farther afield. In the N. aisle is a beautiful late Saxon or early Norman carving of Christ in Majesty.
BOTTISHAM: HOLY TRINITY – 18th-century monument to Sir Roger and Lady Elizabeth Jenyns
BARTLOW † St Mary
5m/8km W. of Haverhill
OS TL585451 GPS 52.0823N, 0.3132E
Much restored by Rowe in 1879, there is a Norman round tower, and inside extensive 15th-century wall-paintings, the finest of which is of a dragon – ‘ferocious and antediluvially large’ was Pevsner’s impression.
BASSINGBOURN † St Peter & St Paul
3m/4km N.W. of Royston
OS TL330440 GPS 52.0790N, 0.0596W
A fine mid-14th-century Decorated chancel of individual design contains much flowing tracery and widespread use of ogees, notably on the sedilia and piscina. There is a good rood screen and a poignant monument to Henry Butler, d. 1647.
BOTTISHAM † Holy Trinity
6m/10km E. of Cambridge
OS TL545604 GPS 52.2209N, 0.2612E
Perhaps the best of the county’s churches. An unmistakeable sight from the nearby A14, it is mainly 13th- and early 14th-century with W. tower and tall galilee porch, finely moulded arcades, stone chancel screen and wooden parcloses. Here also is the indent for what must have been the very sumptuous brass of Elias de Bekyngham, said to be the only honest judge in the reign of Edward I. There are many 16th- to 18th-century monuments.
BUCKDEN † St Mary
4m/6km S.W. of Huntingdon
OS TL192676 GPS 52.2941N, 0.2526W
The church has a graceful steeple, overshadowed by the 15th-century brick tower of Buckden Palace nearby. The bulk of the nave is in a good, sober Perpendicular, and the double-storey S. porch has a workmanlike vault. Inside, the plaster has been scraped away showing the coarse rubble beneath and throwing into prominence the ashlar of a lofty arcade. Some interesting 16th-century panels with Passion scenes have been imported, and there are 15th-century roofs and painted glass.
BURWELL † St Mary
4m/6km N.W. of Newmarket
OS TL589660 GPS 52.2697N, 0.3282E
This is excellent Perpendicular. The stately nave, roofed in 1464, stands as a monument to the 15th-century imagination, all line and glass with splendid carved roofs, blank traceried panels, and slim shafts. The exterior is best seen when approached from Cambridge by the Swaffhams; all is unified 15th-century apart from the bottom of the Norman tower.
CAMBRIDGE † Holy Sepulchre
Bridge Street
OS TL448588 GPS 52.2084N, 0.1190E
One of four remaining round churches in England, it is impressive without and within. Of 12th-century origin, the church