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You might reasonably say that most churches have those qualities whilst being considerably older. It is, though, the wholeness of the interior that captivates; a feeling that you are seeing precisely what the congregation saw three hundred years before.
This must be one of the few churches in England about which we know next to nothing in terms of its development. There never has been a village here: just scatterings of farms and cottages. There is no entry in Domesday Book. It was probably founded in Norman times and its basic shape still looks like it was from that era. The earliest mention of it in mediaeval manuscripts is AD294. But who built it? What patron put his hand in his pocket to build a tiny church, probably inaccessible other than by boat for much of the year, in the middle of a boggy marshland? Somehow, we know not how, it has clung on over the centuries, periodically modified and is still standing eight hundred years later. In his super little book “Tiny Churches” (AA 2016) Dixe Wills postulates the notion that this church was never well-built because nobody ever knew how long it would be needed even at the last rebuilding in the eighteenth century and that the work was, therefore, invariably slipshod.
I can’t point you to any remarkable works of ecclesiastical or mediaeval art. But this church is a work of art as a whole. You are immediately struck (not literally, but it would be a close call for the tallest people!) by the four huge timbers that traverse the building and support the timber king post roof above. The timber frame of the building itself now encased on the outside by Kentish brick is visible throughout the church. If I told you the church was in Stratford-on-Avon and frequented by Shakespeare some of you might believe me! The prayer boards at the east end would give the lie to that, of course, since these were very post-Reformation tropes. Overall, it is certainly Georgian - but probably early Georgian.
Apart from its construction, the real joy here is the painted box pews and the the three decker pulpit. They make the place a visual delight and rather put me in mind of Shobdon in Herefordshire. The pulpit is a hefty piece of furniture for such a small and low-pitched church.
One little discussion point is the unusual - perhaps even unique - plain heptagonal font. Pevsner postulates it as “Perpendicular” (note to the late Nick P: that was a style not a period, mate) and maybe 1660s. He doesn’t say why. The information board suggests, more plausibly in my view, the fifteenth century. Not that it matters. Why heptagonal? Well. you can come up with all of the usual notions - six days to create the world and then another to rest, that sort of thing. We can’t know. But what I think is really odd is that it would be much harder to carve than the usual octagonal profile. Masons used what the great American writer Lon Shelby called “functional geometry”. In the absence of modern geometric instruments and Euclidian geometry masons found octagonal shapes easy. You draw out a square and then superimpose another square on top of it offset by ninety degrees and join up the points. Voila, you have the eight sides of an octagon. But a heptagon? How do you draw that outline easily? Of course. the mason was capable of it - but what a faff it must have been!
Anyway, I will finish this little piece with more words from Dixe Willis that express my own sentiments perfectly: “This is not a church to pick apart and analyse but rather one to enjoy”. Let’s take a look.
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