St. Mary Magdalen, Barkway.
Jorrocks and Jesse
In the gently rolling chalky countryside where Hertfordshire fades quietly into Cambridgeshire, a solid Victorian tower hunches over the low spreading flint mass of a late mediaeval church. In the churchyard Georgian cherubs and skulls tilt their faces at the sky as they slowly sink beneath the pines planted to break the winds sweeping south from the fens.
Past the Victorian porch the wide interior gives few surprises, early restorer Benjamin Ferrey rarely being more exciting than safe. This church is more redolent of the relatively recent Regency than the distant past. Virtually everything has been redone, and the furnishings are full of the feeling of past pieties, to God and to Squire. Hatchments hang over the chancel arch, and anything of any age is pushed into a corner. Punch cartoonist John Leech based his drawings of Jorrocks[8] on a plump coachman he sketched in the church, for this was hunting country, and it is still easy to imagine R.S.Surtees’ infamous character snoring gently in a pew. A few original roof corbels supporting Tudor timbers show up their newer neighbours, otherwise the nave looks just like a Commissioners’ Gothic church.
Jorrocks and Jesse
In the gently rolling chalky countryside where Hertfordshire fades quietly into Cambridgeshire, a solid Victorian tower hunches over the low spreading flint mass of a late mediaeval church. In the churchyard Georgian cherubs and skulls tilt their faces at the sky as they slowly sink beneath the pines planted to break the winds sweeping south from the fens.
Past the Victorian porch the wide interior gives few surprises, early restorer Benjamin Ferrey rarely being more exciting than safe. This church is more redolent of the relatively recent Regency than the distant past. Virtually everything has been redone, and the furnishings are full of the feeling of past pieties, to God and to Squire. Hatchments hang over the chancel arch, and anything of any age is pushed into a corner. Punch cartoonist John Leech based his drawings of Jorrocks[8] on a plump coachman he sketched in the church, for this was hunting country, and it is still easy to imagine R.S.Surtees’ infamous character snoring gently in a pew. A few original roof corbels supporting Tudor timbers show up their newer neighbours, otherwise the nave looks just like a Commissioners’ Gothic church.
 Early C18th gravestone.
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 Admiral Jennings' memorial by Rysbrack, 1742
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The large monument to Admiral Sir John Jennings of 1742 is by Michael Rysbrack, and probably designed for the chancel, but either size or the pendulum of taste have exiled its creamy marble cherubs to beneath the tower. Several good baroque memorials from the early Eighteenth century remain on the walls of the chancel, with barley sugar columns and some crisp charnel house detail by the Stanton family workshop.
 Typical memorial detail from Stanton workshop, 1707
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 C15th Jesse tree king
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There is rather a lot of second rate Victorian stained glass, but one three light window of mediaeval fragments at the east end of the south aisle goes a long way to make up for any other deficiencies here. It is a window with plenty of interest, though not easy to read due to breakages and their re-leading and would benefit from a modern repair. The tracery contains angel musicians with a range of instruments; one even bangs little bongo drums. The side lights are a mass of fragments and figures, St. Peter holds his keys, though with the Magdalene's reversed head, a fashionably dressed St. Roch has his plague sores anointed by an angel, Petronilla’s virgin hair tumbles from below her martyr’s crown, a Magdalene (repaired with yet another saint’s head) holds her spice jar, next to her a donor’s wool shears, all mixed amongst chunks of canopies and crowns. . The central light contains a big portion of a fifteenth century Jesse tree window[9] showing the lineage of Christ, and holds at least five kings imprisoned in a rambling vine, the root and the crown doubtless destroyed by early Puritan fury, royalty saving what sanctity couldn’t, a security not to last.
This village church is open in the daytime, and lies centrally, up Church Lane west of the B1368.
 C16th virgin saint
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 St.Sitha with her keys, C15th glass
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 C15th roof corbel.
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[8] John Jorrocks was the anti-hero of a series of humourous novels written by Surtees in the 1850s about the misadventures of a sporting Cockney, illustrated by Leech, now better known for his drawings for Dickens.
[9] Jesse was an Old Testament prophet, whose dream of being the ancestral root of a family that would produce a Messiah is often represented literally, with a tree growing from his sleeping form flowering with kings, prophets and the Virgin and child.
[9] Jesse was an Old Testament prophet, whose dream of being the ancestral root of a family that would produce a Messiah is often represented literally, with a tree growing from his sleeping form flowering with kings, prophets and the Virgin and child.
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