St.Mary Magdalene, Great Offley.
Gothick exotic.
Offley has what must be the quietest High Street anywhere, but even so the church hides its bulk behind a high graveyard wall, the silhouette stretching out long, low flat roofs between the squat spire on the steeple and the four answering pyramids capping the chancel’s corners. A mediaeval middle is sandwiched between Georgian gothic ends; an unusual mixture with a Regency brick tower with gothick quatrefoil openings; the nave and aisles are flint with badly peeling plaster, and the white Portland stone chancel rebuilt around 1750 has no side windows at all and looks like a mausoleum. The porch and aisles are very battered, with stonework spalling and plastering failing, but any restoration should be done with a gentle touch: too many buildings fear to show their age.
Gothick exotic.
Offley has what must be the quietest High Street anywhere, but even so the church hides its bulk behind a high graveyard wall, the silhouette stretching out long, low flat roofs between the squat spire on the steeple and the four answering pyramids capping the chancel’s corners. A mediaeval middle is sandwiched between Georgian gothic ends; an unusual mixture with a Regency brick tower with gothick quatrefoil openings; the nave and aisles are flint with badly peeling plaster, and the white Portland stone chancel rebuilt around 1750 has no side windows at all and looks like a mausoleum. The porch and aisles are very battered, with stonework spalling and plastering failing, but any restoration should be done with a gentle touch: too many buildings fear to show their age.
The cement covered porch reuses some worn thirteenth century carved detail, but externally the body of the church looks Perpendicular. Inside the nave arcades are Early English, the mason gaining in confidence as he carved foliate capitals on octagonal piers. There are rustic monsters and angels holding up the south aisle roof, and its end wall is covered by a big monument of 1699 to the curly wigged Sir John Spencer, probably produced by John Nost. The androgynous lordling reclines in Roman armour whilst an aged Fate kneels pointing to crowning cherubs flying above. An ornate font nearby has a mixture of flowing Decorated and panelled Perpendicular traceries carved on its sides, indicative of a lengthy overlapping of styles. There is a collection of local family arms in a north aisle window with the white lion of the Salusbury family abraded into fifteenth century ruby flashed glass. To let light through, red glass was made with just a thin coloured layer over a clear pane, allowing patterns to be scratched in it as here. Below are two enamelled panels of the Flemish seventeenth century showing the feast at Cana and Saul throwing a spear at David.
The high round headed chancel arch contains niches for busts and leads to a gallery of funerary sculpture, though the eyes are first drawn to the theatrical east end. Here the altar sits behind an ironwork communion rail, an apsidal space beneath a half dome filled with a plasterwork sunburst of the Hebrew name of god. Around the single east window hanging plaster drapery is tied back with tasselled ropes from the circular tentwork above. Georgian glass by William Peckitt of York shows the big figure of Aaron dressed in his high priest’s costume in an exotic canopied setting. A trelliswork surround containing English evangelists, armorials and fiery Peckitt flowers is capped with Tudor crowns within which a tented tabernacle tops an ornate ogee headed niche set against a diaper background, with the figure of Aaron standing within Batty Langley style shafts of marbled glass, a remarkable piece mixing enamels and brightly coloured pot metals. Equally unusual is the retention of this panel throughout the Victorian period, which saw such gothick as frivolous folly, and tended to remove such Georgian works as impious. Monuments abound here, from the many black ledgers on the floor to the larger than life figures of Sir Thomas Salusbury and his second wife Sarah standing before a big beswagged oak tree on the south wall, He rebuilt the chancel as a gated family chapel, and only married his childhood sweetheart after many romantic vicissitudes. Joseph Nollekens was responsible for this sculpture in 1777, and also carved three busts of family connections in niches round the chancel. The architect Robert Taylor made the Penrice memorial of 1752, a pink breccia obelisk against which is seated a winged figure of Fame on a mass of bric-a-brac that includes everything from anchors to fasces, from swords to books in Hebrew. There’s a fourth bust to a Salusbury with big mutton chop whiskers carved by T.Smith in 1835, and British Legion flags where the Spencer tomb ought to be, moved to make space for an organ. All is lit from a central rooflight added in 1904, a clever solution that retained much of the feeling of enclosure that gives this chancel its funerary air.
Much Georgian work was replaced by Victorians as being un-Christian, often resulting in chancels being stripped of eighteenth century tombs, which would be moved to darker corners or even buried underground. The only style more despised than classical was gothick, yet here most of the theatre of death remains untouched, a tribute to the strength of one family’s control of the village which only came to an end just before the war. The wrought iron gates to the chancel have been exiled to Offley Place, replacing them and regilding the plasterwork would bring out the glory of this unusual east end.
A splendidly unbalanced atmospheric church, full of character but very difficult to view. The risk is that if it were better known, it could be over restored. Situated on King’s Walden Road, ringing 01438 871278 may help with access.
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All rights reserved for this entire site. Copyright reserved to stiffleaf for all text and images, which may not be reproduced without my permission.