St. Mary, Redbourn.
Lacy loft.
The low bulk of the church sits in a sliver of countryside between St. Albans and Hemel Hempstead within earshot of the M1 motorway, suburban encroachment munching away at its rural setting. The battered building with its tapestry of limestone, flint and brick hides from encircling commuter homes, peeping out from behind the pollarded trees of the churchyard.
Lacy loft.
The low bulk of the church sits in a sliver of countryside between St. Albans and Hemel Hempstead within earshot of the M1 motorway, suburban encroachment munching away at its rural setting. The battered building with its tapestry of limestone, flint and brick hides from encircling commuter homes, peeping out from behind the pollarded trees of the churchyard.
The deacon Amphibalus who was hidden by St. Alban is meant to have been captured and killed right here in 303 A.D. , and the nave and tower remain from the church built by the second Norman abbot of St. Albans, Richard d’Albini, and has stood now for 900 years. An arcade was cut through the north wall when an aisle was built in around 1140. Whenever a church needed enlargement, this was the obvious direction to go in, having the least graves to deal with. The big billet moulded round arches of the Norman arcade still stand on solid round piers of Totternhoe stone from Bedfordshire. Such expensive work could only have been undertaken by someone with a serious amount of clout, not to mention money and an organisation capable of dealing with the problems of transport. A tiny blocked Norman window remains in the aisle, widely splayed inside. The chancel dates from a rebuild of after 1300 and an attractive chequer of flint and clunch covers the east and south walls externally, though some of this and the reticulated east window were tidied up by the Victorians. The local squire wanted a new family burial vault under the altar, and the vicar wanted a gradine, the latest religious fashion being to raise the altar on steps; they achieved their ends at the cost of the original east wall. On the south inside there is a double sedilia with ogee arches, but reusing Purbeck marble shafts and foliate capitals of a century before. The south aisle had to wait until about 1350 to be built, and a chapel and porch with two niches were added to it around 1450. All received new windows and the pretty trefoiled cusping in brick was added as a corbel table beneath the battlements when the clerestory was built in 1478. The old tower ends abruptly with a plain parapet, as did many before the nineteenth century., but has a Hertfordshire spike. Inside the church there are the usual scatter of brasses and tablets, and a baroque baluster font carved with cherubs around 1700.
There is a well executed royal arms of George III in an early nineteenth century version, with German possessions on an escutcheon in the centre. Only in 1801 did the French fleur-de-lys finally disappear from the shield, and the arms of Brunswick, Luneburg and Hanover appeared as here with an electoral bonnet over them, the ruler still being part of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire. When Hanover became a Kingdom in 1816, the bonnet was changed for a crown. Throughout these changes the tiny shield with the crown of Charlemagne remained in the centre of the German shield, denoting the Arch-Treasurer of the Holy Roman Empire. When Victoria became Queen, and her sex forbade her succession to the German throne, confused sign writers and church wardens must have breathed a sigh of relief.
The greatest treasure here is the rood screen, complete with the vaulted coving of its loft. It is an unusual design to find in this part of the country; this type, with the upper section looking like a row of traceried windows, and with its fan vault coving, is closest in type to a West Country screen, in common with that at Flamstead. The symbols of the donors’ crafts have been carved on the dado, with acorns for a pig farmer, a barrel for a brewer, grapes for a wine merchant, a basket of teasel heads for a weaver and a sheaf of wheat for a farmer. Two pendants hang from the multifoil cusping of the doorway: these are carved with swans preening their feathers. Other roundels remain uncarved, though one to the east shows a face sticking its tongue out. The vaulting has no loft above, it having been destroyed in accord with the law of 1561, and at some time the webs filling its tracery have been removed, forming a lacy filigree through which you can see. This may have no historical precedent, but only a pernickety purist could object to so pretty an effect, especially on a sunny day with the light shining through.
The church is well looked after and has been open each time I’ve dropped in; the vicar lives on Church End nearby, phone 01582 791669.
All rights reserved for this entire site. Copyright reserved to stiffleaf for all text and images, which may not be reproduced without my permission.
The church is well looked after and has been open each time I’ve dropped in; the vicar lives on Church End nearby, phone 01582 791669.
All rights reserved for this entire site. Copyright reserved to stiffleaf for all text and images, which may not be reproduced without my permission.