St. Lawrence, Wormley

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The church is some way west of the main road that has captured most of the modern housing, out in the countryside close to the Georgian big house. Ermine Street once ran here, but now the A10 tears past underneath Church Lane and the church itself is normally only open for Sunday services. It is a much restored building, covered with rather suburban looking pebbledash, though its 1960's weatherboarded bell turret gives it a rural feel, and it's pretty enough in its country churchyard setting. Fortunately the gravestones and tombs have been left in place, with Georgian skulls and men of war in relief over Napoleonic sailors and City merchants who retired here for the peace that surprisingly survives.

The north door and a nearby window prove the early Norman date of  the nave, though the capitals and shafts have been poorly replaced in cement,  little original material of any date can be seen externally, and the church appears to be kept locked at all times. Why such hidden away churches have no local keyholder is difficult to understand, perhaps incomers from town just don't have enough interest or don't wish to be disturbed. Either way, the parish office is now in Broxbourne, so easy access is seemingly at an end. If the new locals can never get into the church it is difficult to see how they will ever come to appreciate it or feel any care for its future: such churches are presiding over their own demise. 

Through the windows it can be seen that the interior is not without interest, with an unusually carved late Norman font at the west end, a Jacobean pulpit with carved caryatids at the angles and some of M.C. Farrar Bell's  twentieth century glass in the aisle added in Victorian times by J. Clarke.   Memorial sculpture on two monuments carved by Westmacott glimmer whitely in the gloom, but the reredos painting brought from an Italian monastery and a decent C17 tomb are both invisible from outside.