St. Mary, Braughing.
A gilded lily.
As a perfect picture for a propaganda pamphlet for troops in the trenches, this village couldn’t be beat. Published as “What we are fighting for”, half-timbered thatched houses and pargetted pubs formed a chocolate-box cause to motivate the military during the First World War, though it is difficult to see what men from Middlesborough or Manchester made of it as a reason to fight, a Home Counties heaven that must have had little relevance to many of those dying in the bloody mud of Flanders. Many of the unwilling dead whose names appear on war memorials such as that here may indeed have been fighting for some less candy-coated corner of this imperfect yet lovable land with its flawed freedoms. The gargoyles still grimace down from the church along the winding lane to where the river Quin runs through its ford at the heart of the village, and we can just be glad that peace is our patrimony rather than war.
Braughing’s pronounced “Bruffing” as a shibboleth for incomers, and finding the church can be as confusing for some. When I last visited a worried looking chauffeur was driving a bridal car up and down the main road, able to glimpse the spire across the valley from time to time but not find the way over the stream, the church being amongst a cosy informal huddle of houses at the heart of the old settlement by Church End, with roads circling round it without coming too close. The entire churchyard stands above the road, making the splendid porch seem higher yet. It has a swaggering facade, with two niches beside the large window that once lit an upper storey, the floor of which has gone. The chancel has Early English lancets, while the rest of the church was rebuilt in the early fifteenth century, with aisles and tower of local flint, only the Jacobean north chapel standing out in brick. Through the old doors the timber roofs stand out at first sight, with big curly haired musical angels looking down on us, the wood carving easiest to appreciate over the south aisle.
A gilded lily.
As a perfect picture for a propaganda pamphlet for troops in the trenches, this village couldn’t be beat. Published as “What we are fighting for”, half-timbered thatched houses and pargetted pubs formed a chocolate-box cause to motivate the military during the First World War, though it is difficult to see what men from Middlesborough or Manchester made of it as a reason to fight, a Home Counties heaven that must have had little relevance to many of those dying in the bloody mud of Flanders. Many of the unwilling dead whose names appear on war memorials such as that here may indeed have been fighting for some less candy-coated corner of this imperfect yet lovable land with its flawed freedoms. The gargoyles still grimace down from the church along the winding lane to where the river Quin runs through its ford at the heart of the village, and we can just be glad that peace is our patrimony rather than war.
Braughing’s pronounced “Bruffing” as a shibboleth for incomers, and finding the church can be as confusing for some. When I last visited a worried looking chauffeur was driving a bridal car up and down the main road, able to glimpse the spire across the valley from time to time but not find the way over the stream, the church being amongst a cosy informal huddle of houses at the heart of the old settlement by Church End, with roads circling round it without coming too close. The entire churchyard stands above the road, making the splendid porch seem higher yet. It has a swaggering facade, with two niches beside the large window that once lit an upper storey, the floor of which has gone. The chancel has Early English lancets, while the rest of the church was rebuilt in the early fifteenth century, with aisles and tower of local flint, only the Jacobean north chapel standing out in brick. Through the old doors the timber roofs stand out at first sight, with big curly haired musical angels looking down on us, the wood carving easiest to appreciate over the south aisle.
Over the east bay of the nave there is a rood canopy on which the angels wide golden wings stand out against the glorious colour of the roof, with gilded snowflake bosses and stars and suns set against an azure background and recoloured mouldings in black, white and red. The corbels supporting the roofs are worth looking at too, whether mediaeval or Victorian, with bug eyed beasts of both eras. There are two fonts, the older having been discarded then repaired and put into the north aisle where it serves as storage for the children’s corner, whilst the east end of the south aisle was made in to a memorial to a boy who died fighting in the middle east in the First World War, with a big Della Robbia rondo[11] beneath an arts and crafts stained glass window portraying a crusader, St. George, and somewhat oddly General Gordon, that late Victorian saint.
In the somewhat darker chancel stand two big monuments of very different styles, one Jacobean, the other Georgian, overpowering in such a small space, with a very good beruffed bust of an Elizabethan gentleman in armour high on the wall. The Brograve brothers lie fully armed on the Jacobean tomb, bubble blowing Time and Death with his scythe sit on the spandrels of the arch above. The large Siennese marble sarcophagus tomb on the south is to the Freeman family, designed by James “Athenian” Stuart[12], the cherubs on top being a distant echo of Michaelangelo’s Medici tomb. It was carved by Thomas Scheemakers (the son of better-known Peter) in the 1770s and shows family members in mural medallians on both sides of the archway in which the tomb is set.
This village church is a neat little gem, lies to the east of the river on Church End and is open daily.
[11] Italian style of colourfully glazed terracotta roundel.
[12] James Stuart gained fame for publishing the first measured drawings of the antiquities of Athens in 1762, although it was Nicholas Revett, architect of the church at Ayot St. Lawrence, who actually surveyed them. The two fell out before publication after their hair-raising travels, and Stuart bought Revett out.
[12] James Stuart gained fame for publishing the first measured drawings of the antiquities of Athens in 1762, although it was Nicholas Revett, architect of the church at Ayot St. Lawrence, who actually surveyed them. The two fell out before publication after their hair-raising travels, and Stuart bought Revett out.
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