Church Heritage Record 608570

Elmdon lies on the Icknield Way, an ancient network of prehistoric pathways. The site of the present churchyard has yielded finds of Roman funerary pottery. The village was probably established from before the Norman Conquest, and appeared in the Domesday Survey of 1086. The village was prosperous in the Middle Ages, as evidenced by surviving moated sites and high status buildings. The castle motte was a Norman fortification built by Robert de Lucy, brother to Richard de Lucy, Justiciar to King Stephen and Henry II

The church of St Nicholas is said to have been granted by Robert de Lucy to Lesnes Abbey (founded by Richard de Lucy) around 1180, but a list of clergy on in the church starts with William de Drayton in 1324. The present church is largely Victorian but was probably built on the foundations of a fourteenth century predecessor. The west tower was added in the fifteenth century; according to a wall tablet in the church it was restored in 1847. Major rebuilding took place in 1852 (nave and aisles), 1879-80 (chancel) and 1905 (south chapel, in memory of the Revd. John Wiles and his wife Lucy). The architect for these additions is given by Bettley as James Barr, but he can only have been involved in the first phase, for he died in 1869. A drawing of the church hanging in the vestry is signed by both James and his younger brother Edward (there is a further drawing, unsigned, but evidently in the same hand, placed in the organ loft; neither shows the church precisely as built, see figures 1 and 2). James and Edward may have been brothers of the Revd. John Barr, incumbent at St Nicholas’s from 1862-72 and before that curate at St Mary’s, Wendens Ambo (where James Barr also made additions). In the 1870s Edward Barr was architect for the restoration and extension of Holy Trinity, Littlebury, and this work bears a number of similarities to Elmdon, such as buttress design and general level of enrichment. As regards the south chapel, there is an ex situ piece of lead in the organ chamber bearing the name O. P. Milne Architect 1905. This must refer to Oswald Milne, who was articled to Arthur Blomfield and later worked in the office of Edwin Lutyens, setting up in practice on his own in 1904; might he have been architect for the chapel

The church is largely of nineteenth or early twentieth century date; only the foundations, tower and one or two furnishings are medieval. On plan (see figure 4 below) it consists of an aisled nave with west tower and south porch, and a chancel with north vestry and south chapel. It is built of flint and rubble, with dressings of clunch and limestone, with some use of creased tiles in the modern work. The nave roof is covered with slate, the south porch with lead and the chancel and vestry with copper (other roofs not visible from ground level). 

The fifteenth century west tower is much restored. It is of three stages with a moulded plinth, diagonal buttresses and a northwest turret. The west doorway and three-light window above have been externally renewed. Above this the belfry stage has a two-light window in each wall. The embattled parapet is modern, but four gargoyles below it appear to be original.

The rest of the church was rebuilt in stages in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in fourteenth and fifteenth century style. The south porch has a pointed entrance with creased tile detailing in the arch, stone shields and a pierced cross over, diagonal buttresses and two-light windows at the sides. Inside the porch, the floor is laid with stone slabs and quarry tiles, with side wooden benches supported on piers of creased tiles. The aisles have two-light windows with cusped tracery, and gabled buttresses marking the bay divisions. Windows on the south side are of Geometrical character, with pointed arches and carved heads to the label stops, while on the north aisle windows have triangular headed arches of more Perp character. There is a north door placed on axis with the entrance porch. Above, the aisle roofs are hidden by parapets, while the nave clerestory is of three bays, with small sexfoil windows within spherical triangles. The detailing at the east end is richer, in the chancel with elaborate Geometrical tracery and carved jambs to the three-light east window and a two-light window on the south side with enriched carved rinceaux eaves detail, and in the handsome, almost symmetrical design of the south chapel. This has an embattled stone parapet, its south elevation with a central door with stone surround and creased tile detailing and inset stone cross over, and flanking two-light windows with varying tracery patterns. The vestry on the north side is also ambitiously treated, with two- and three-light windows of Perp character.

Inside, the walls are plastered and painted, and the circulation areas paved with stone slabs. The nave arcade is of four bays, with octagonal piers sitting on what may in part be fourteenth century bases. The label stops have carved heads. Above the arcade is the alternating rhythm of three clerestory lights and a timber waggon roof. A tall tower arch at the west end has been renewed, but the stonework in the west door and window above may be original. An oak dado runs around the tower chamber, and in the northwest corner a narrow opening with an old door leads to the stair.

The chancel arch is enriched with ballflower detail and rises from squared stone responds with triple wall shafts and carved crowned heads. The chancel is of two bays, again with carved heads to the label stops, some of them evidently portraits. Its floor is of red quarry tiles. A wide arch with half octagonal piers and foliated caps gives off to the south chapel, and another with half-round piers and moulded caps to the north organ chamber. Also on the north side, a door with fleuron and ballflower ornament and hoodmoulds terminating with carved heads leads to the vestry. The sanctuary is raised by one step.

The sanctuary of the south chapel has a marble and slate floor and a piscina set into the south wall (which according to the RCHM is fifteenth century, reset and restored). The remainder of the space is paved with stone slabs, ledger stones and herringbone woodblock.  

Amongst the furnishings, the following are pre-Victorian, at least in part:

The stop-chamfered base of the font appears to be medieval, c.1400. The bowl is nineteenth century and plain, and there was no font cover at the time of the visit.

Monumental brasses. In the chancel a brass depicting John Cooke (d.1532) and two wives, he in a fur-lined cloak with hanging sleeves, the wives in flat caps, with groups of children; a marginal inscription has Evangelistic symbols, but only the indent of the inscription. A second brass to Thomas Crawley (d. 1559) has four inscription plates, four sons, eight daughters and indents of two figures. On a slab leaning against the wall in the tower area is a brass to William and Katherine Lucas, c.1460, with four daughters (four sons to the left have been lost); this came from the church of St Dunstan, Wenden Lofts (closed and now ruinous).

On the north side of the chancel, is a table tomb to Thomas Meade, ‘secundo justiciaio de banco’, Justice of Common Pleas, d. 1585 (photo bottom right at top of report). It is a marble altar tomb, with an inscription around the plain slab, three decorated quatrefoils and shields under a depressed arch, quatrefoil decoration inside, quatrefoil frieze over and cresting. A large coat of arms is placed against back wall of recess. The general form is reminiscent of a traditional Easter sepulchre, secularised.

In the south chapel east window, four pieces of seventeenth century painted glass with a sundial and biblical scenes came from St Dunstan’s, Wenden Lofts in 1958. A shield in one of the south windows of the chapel may be from the same source. 

The bells (not inspected) are said to include one (the third) by Richard Keene, 1700 (RCHM). Keene was a bellfounder of Woodstock who set up a temporary foundry at Royston in about 1699.

Some eighteenth century black marble ledger stones on the chancel and south chapel floor.

Nineteenth century and later furnishings include (working from west to east):

A stone and marble Gothic plaque mounted alongside the west window in the tower records that the tower ‘was effectually restored from its dilapidated state and improved by John Wilkes Esq. of Lofts Hall by an outlay of £962 4s 3d in the year of Our Lord 1847’.    

The oak benches on timber platforms, occupying the entire space of the nave and aisles

In the north aisle, a white marble and slate First World War memorial, with a smaller one below to those who fell in the Second World War

In the south aisle, by the entrance to the south chapel, a striking white marble sculpture of the Madonna of the Lily (figure 3) sitting in the lotus position, by Allan Howes and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1923. A bronze version of the statue was acquired by Queen Mary in 1926. More information here

Oak pulpit

Oak eagle lectern, commemorating Queen Victoria’s jubilee of 1897 (brass plate)

The organ dates from c.1867 and was built by T. C. Bates of Ludgate Hill (restored in 1985). The case may be older (c.1840, more information here)

On the tiled floor of the organ chamber are placed various pieces of leadwork all dated 1905 and with the names of those (presumably) associated with the rebuilding of the south chapel 

Oak choir stalls in the chancel, Gothic with good carved detail

Timber and iron Communion rails in chancel and south chapel

Plain oak altar/communion table

In the sanctuary, a handsome pair of oak Gothic chairs

The timber reredos was erected by parishioners in memory of Kathleen Brabant Smith, 1917 (inscription) 

The east window showing Christ and the Apostles with angels is signed C&B 1911 (Clayton & Bell), and is in memory of the Revd Robert Fiske and his wife Emily (plaque)

On the cill of the east window of the south chapel a brass cross, Gothic.