This is St Mary’s, a quintessentially English church just twelve miles from my front door. What makes it so English?
It dates from the 12th century but has had a lot of makeovers in the ensuing centuries although, crucially, was spared restoration in the 19th century. The changes to its architecture are praised by Pevsner as “historical complexity”. Notice the little open 18th century cupola atop the SW tower. Inside the pews are around 1500, and the roofs medieval – one a mini-hammerbeam roof of the same period. The piers have different capitals, are of different heights and at one point the arching linking them does not precisely meet. It is a delight to look at.
The crowning glory of this beautiful church is a 12th century Norman doorway. Pevsner opines that it is the most elaborate piece of Norman decoration in the county and describes it thus.
The doorway is of oolitic limestone, of three orders, the inner with rosettes and knots of square shapes, running uninterrupted through jambs and vussoirs, the middle one with plain shafts and primitive beakheads in the voussoirs, and the outer again with uninterrupted zigzag.
Beside the church is Manor Farm Barn built in the 1420s. It is one of the largest (nearly 60 metres long) and finest, aisled, timber-framed barns in the country. English Heritage recently spent £1 million putting on a new roof.
After taking the picture of St Mary’s, at the head of this post, I turned around and took this picture.
If the third runway at Heathrow is built the village of Harmondsworth will be demolished and the airport perimeter fence will be where the red ‘phone box is. The church and barn are supposed to be saved but I wouldn’t rely on that and, if they are, what use is a church with no congregation beside a runway? A fly in the ointment, indeed.
It is fortunate to see a Church saved from Victorian reordering. Today’s post reminded me of some meet words by Sir John Betjeman, see below:
The Church’s Restoration
In eighteen-eighty-three
Has left for contemplation
Not what there used to be.
How well the ancient woodwork
Looks round the Rect’ry hall,
Memorial of the good work
Of him who plann’d it all.
He who took down the pew-ends
And sold them anywhere
But kindly spared a few ends
Work’d up into a chair.
O worthy persecution
Of dust! O hue divine!
O cheerful substitution,
Thou varnished pitch-pine!
Church furnishing! Church furnishing!
Sing art and crafty praise!
He gave the brass for burnishing
He gave the thick red baize,
He gave the new addition,
Pull’d down the dull old aisle,
– To pave the sweet transition
He gave th’ encaustic tile.
Of marble brown and veinèd
He did the pulpit make;
He order’d windows stainèd
Light red and crimson lake.
Sing on, with hymns uproarious,
Ye humble and aloof,
Look up! and oh how glorious
He has restored the roof.
Good to see some photos of Harmondsworth. I have a set of 3xgreatgrandparents that married in St Mary’s Harmondsworth in 1824 and then went on to have their children in Bedfont and Isleworth. I have an interesting little booklet I picked up in the course of my research, published by the West Middlesex Family History Society in 1993 “The Villages of Harmondsworth” which includes Harmondsworth, Heathrow, Longford and Sipson. On the last page is a “Lament for Heathrow 1944” by John Wild.