St. Mary, Baldock.
The odd spire sitting on its tall thin octagonal base can be seen from every part of the town and from a fair distance outside too. The tower on which it stands looks Regency gothick in its upper half, coated in tidy salmon pink stucco, and most of the church with its battlemented flint walls appears to be Perpendicular, though inside reveals the C14th bones. The south porch had an upper room and stair turret added in the C15th, and the north porch was virtually built in 1836 in the neo-Tudor style popular at the time. The corbels of the stucco vaulting are one of the best things in the church, with monsters biting the ears of various heads, and the central bosses have dragons curled up in the foliage. The aisles are very wide and low, with c14 roofs with angels held up on stone figure corbels, those in the north aisle the best though battered, well worth working out to see the merchants and pilgrims. The arcades stand on c14 quatrefoil piers, and C15 screens run right across the church, that in the south aisle retaining its vaulting. Look at the detailed carvings on the northern section, with green men and angels, and Jaws about to eat a mermaid. Remains of an ornate early c14th tomb canopy can be seen behind the organ in the vestry, and in the south chancel chapel is a C14th atlas figure on a corbel, holding up the arches.
The odd spire sitting on its tall thin octagonal base can be seen from every part of the town and from a fair distance outside too. The tower on which it stands looks Regency gothick in its upper half, coated in tidy salmon pink stucco, and most of the church with its battlemented flint walls appears to be Perpendicular, though inside reveals the C14th bones. The south porch had an upper room and stair turret added in the C15th, and the north porch was virtually built in 1836 in the neo-Tudor style popular at the time. The corbels of the stucco vaulting are one of the best things in the church, with monsters biting the ears of various heads, and the central bosses have dragons curled up in the foliage. The aisles are very wide and low, with c14 roofs with angels held up on stone figure corbels, those in the north aisle the best though battered, well worth working out to see the merchants and pilgrims. The arcades stand on c14 quatrefoil piers, and C15 screens run right across the church, that in the south aisle retaining its vaulting. Look at the detailed carvings on the northern section, with green men and angels, and Jaws about to eat a mermaid. Remains of an ornate early c14th tomb canopy can be seen behind the organ in the vestry, and in the south chancel chapel is a C14th atlas figure on a corbel, holding up the arches.
 C14th porch with C15th upper floor.
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 C14th chequer on the chancel
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 William Clarkson's cast iron tomb of 1837
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The chancel is brightened up by some early Victorian glass by William Wailes, but generally the church is rather battered and unloved, it’s big and empty, and lacks the big memorials that such a town should have produced.
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Money here meant malt, and maltsters eschewed big monuments. There are some tablets in the chancel, and a big affecting deathbed scene like some Victorian melodrama come to life, with the husband weeping over his young wife, whose soul is being taken to heaven with her dead babe in her arms. She was the only daughter of the bishop of Calcutta, whilst he was a captain in the Madras cavalry; she died at 21, a reminder that childbirth was dangerous for rich and poor alike. Memento mori is the message of the shroud clad couple seen in C15th brass in the vestry, and in the graveyard is a tomb of 1830 completely made of cast iron; urn, pedestal and lettering all in the new material, the last full of admonishments to the passing sinner to mend his ways.
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This is a big empty feeling church, with one or two details worth a look if you’re in town; the church is generally open, and the little market town full of old inns is worth walking through.
 Early C19th carvings in the north porch.
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