St. Mary, East Barnet.
Long lasting achievements.
Here in the heart of Thirties suburbia lies a rural oasis of semi-detached countryside, complete with sprawling parkland around a big house looking over the brook in the valley to the old church on the hill. All around lay metropolitan Middlesex but this peninsular of Hertfordshire has a Home County past. Even being gobbled by London hasn’t erased this entirely, fortuitous circumstances having kept the entire valley from the builders and the views from the church deceptively bucolic, with Pymmes brook and Oak Hill Park in on the gentle deceit. Most convincing is the view to the lych gate and adjacent stile, with the little green at the top of the hill looking through the walkway of gnarled yews to the church which has sat here for over 900 years. This was the mother church of Barnet, superseded by its chapel-of-ease offspring at Chipping Barnet before the end of the middle ages in both size and importance, leaving the nave walls built in 1080 to suffice for the congregation until Victorian times. Thus the first view of the church is of the oldest part, with three small Norman windows and a simple doorway untouched on the north side of this parish church so humble that it had no tower until given the present industrial looking white brick neo-Norman porch tower in 1828.
Long lasting achievements.
Here in the heart of Thirties suburbia lies a rural oasis of semi-detached countryside, complete with sprawling parkland around a big house looking over the brook in the valley to the old church on the hill. All around lay metropolitan Middlesex but this peninsular of Hertfordshire has a Home County past. Even being gobbled by London hasn’t erased this entirely, fortuitous circumstances having kept the entire valley from the builders and the views from the church deceptively bucolic, with Pymmes brook and Oak Hill Park in on the gentle deceit. Most convincing is the view to the lych gate and adjacent stile, with the little green at the top of the hill looking through the walkway of gnarled yews to the church which has sat here for over 900 years. This was the mother church of Barnet, superseded by its chapel-of-ease offspring at Chipping Barnet before the end of the middle ages in both size and importance, leaving the nave walls built in 1080 to suffice for the congregation until Victorian times. Thus the first view of the church is of the oldest part, with three small Norman windows and a simple doorway untouched on the north side of this parish church so humble that it had no tower until given the present industrial looking white brick neo-Norman porch tower in 1828.
A south aisle, vestry and larger chancel were all added later in the century, but do not detract from the feeling that we are in a small rural church. Entering through the neo-Norman doorway of the tower, the original Norman entrance remains inside with graffiti of mediaeval crosses and a drawing of a Jacobean man on the west jamb. The east side bears more crosses amidst schoolboy initials, and a good clear example of a scratch dial, a primitive type of sun dial. This served to divide the day into masses, each service marked by a linear cross radiating from a gnomon, here as in most cases long gone although its hole remains clear. Inside the south wall has been replaced by two low Victorian arches, with birds hidden in the exuberant foliage of its single capital. There is a Victorian font, and good Clayton and Bell glass in the east window, clearly designed with the fresh colours that they liked before the company slid into mass production, a victim of their own success.
Despite this nineteenth century aisle and chancel there is an unrestored feeling about the church due to the retention of the plastered ceiling, the old tie beams, and especially the splendid collection of ten hatchments, both Georgian and later. These diamond shaped heraldic canvases take their name from depicting an achievement of arms as part of the funeral fashion of the day. Heraldry played a big part in mediaeval funerals, arms and armour being hung by the tomb. Later squires still liked such funerary accoutrements, and also hung these canvases on the house of the deceased for a year before they were brought to rest in the church. It is possible from the background to tell the sex and marital status of the dead and even whether there is a surviving spouse. Women’s arms are shown on a lozenge not a shield and bear no helmet or crest; married couples impaled their arms, husband on the left, wife on the right; and the area behind the survivor’s arms is painted white rather than black. Mottoes tend to not be familial but refer to hopes of heaven, many early hatchments being adorned with fluffy winged cherub’s heads, bat-winged skulls, hourglasses or sexton’s tools, sometimes extending to the frames. Many churches boast one or two hatchments, and there are 4,500 of them in Britain; but for such a tiny church to have held onto so many is fairly rare. One near the pulpit is fixed above the 1834 memorial to which it appertains; another has naval cannon, anchor and Union Flags behind the arms; and one peer has his arms set upon ceremonial robes, with his baronial coronet above the visored helm of a peer. There are no large monuments within the church, but out in the churchyard there is quite a haul. Beside the path from the lych gate is that of 1756 to John Sharpe, a grand urn on a plinth, ringed round with railings and sheltered by a stone canopy. Beside the old Norman wall of the nave is a row of five obelisks, their plinths carved with cherubs, each to a member of the same eighteenth century Huguenot family, and further round the church, past a small pyramid to a babe in arms, are a big group of Georgian chest tombs with heraldic lids, their baroque display smothered in brambles.
Beyond them are neo-Grecian tombs with ornate carving of flowers, one to a Lord Mayor of London, and further yet is a Regency gothick tomb chest of 1787 designed by the elder John Bacon, R.A. for General Prevost, who fought the American forces off at the siege of Savannah. Right in the corner is the biggest tomb here, belonging to the baronet Sir Simon Clarke whose hatchment we’ve seen inside, the owner of the big house across the park. His grand gothic memorial was designed to be seen from his home, a tall octagonal lantern with an ogee onion dome top. Anywhere else in London there would be a hundred houses in between: here the theological students of Oak Hill still have a clear view, and this little corner of the city stays Herts. at heart.
The church on the top of Church Hill is open for a few hours each Saturday, but do check first; the parish office is open 10-12 during the week on 0208 441 4401.
The church on the top of Church Hill is open for a few hours each Saturday, but do check first; the parish office is open 10-12 during the week on 0208 441 4401.
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