In the English Civil War, aren’t we lucky not to have had another one for nearly five hundred years, for much of the time Northamptonshire was the front line between the Royalist and Parliamentary armies. Northampton itself supported the Roundheads.
All Saints is the main church in the centre of Northampton. The medieval church was burnt down in the Great Fire of 1675. The rebuilt church (Grade I Listed) was consecrated in 1680. Today we can barely build a bus shelter in five years. Charles II had every reason not to favour Northampton but he was magnanimous and wanted to reunite his kingdom. Accordingly, he gave a thousand tons of timber for the new church and was rewarded by having his statue placed on the portico parapet in front of the clock. It is rather small and you can barely make him out even if you expand the picture of the west facade, above.
All Saints, at least the interior, is built in the manner of Christopher Wren’s St Mary-at-Hill, Billingsgate, which was destroyed in London’s Great Fire. “At the centre (of All Saints) is a dome, supported on four Ionic columns, which is lit by a lantern above. The barrel vault extends into the aisles from the dome in a Greek-cross form, leaving four flat ceilings in the corners of the church. The church is well lit by plain glass windows in the aisles and originally there was a large east window in the chancel, that is now covered by a reredos. The plasterwork ceiling is finely decorated, and the barrel vaults are lit by elliptical windows.” (Wikipedia)
You can see a small part of the dome, above. Pevsner opines that it is “one of the stateliest churches of its date outside London”. But he is dismissive of the church monuments – “many, all minor”.
In the churchyard there is a Lutyens War Memorial, 1926; a Stone of Remembrance flanked by twin obelisks draped with painted stone flags standing in a small garden. I must say the flags look very realistic, at least in photos.
To digress, I watch very little television. If I did, last night I would have had to watch Glastonbury on BBC 1, 2 and 4. At least it wasn’t on Radio 3 where there was a double-bill: Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci – a popular combo from Bavarian State Opera.