Church Heritage Record 627414

W tower, nave with N aisle, lower chancel, S porch. W gallery.

Chancel 18’9’’ x 14’, nave 46’ x 17’4’’, N aisle 38’ x 10’, S porch 9’6’’ x 6’6’’, W tower 12’6’’ x 11’6’’; all measurements internal (VCH).

The church has been the site of a place of worship since the C12. It sits within Hamstead Marshall Park, Registered Grade II, dating predominantly from the late C17 but with C13 origins and C18 and C19 alterations; and it is on the boundary of a large SAM site (the churchyard extension falls within the designated SAM) containing motte and bailey castles, fishponds, and a deserted medieval village and manor site. Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and Roman remains have been found at numerous sites within a mile of the church.

The archaeological potential of the site is exceptional. The churchyard is heavily buried. There are also intramural burials.

The ‘Marshall’ in Hamstead Marshall derives from its connection with the Lords Marshal (subsequently, Earls Marshal) of England, and with the Marshal family that held this hereditary title in the Middle Ages. During the civil war of 1135-54, fought over the rival claims of Stephen and Matilda to the English throne, the castle of John Marshal – one of the two adjacent mottes within the SAM – was besieged by King Stephen and his son, William Marshal, taken hostage. William, later 1st Earl of Pembroke and guardian of Henry III, was probably responsible for the building of the first church, of which the late C12 S door survives. William’s son, also William, married Henry III’s sister Eleanor and entertained the king at Hamstead Marshall in 1228 and 1230.

The manor passed to the Earls of Norfolk in the later C13, before reverting to the crown in 1345. Edward I is known to have visited the manor in 1302, and Edward III in 1350 and 1358. From 1361-1560 (during which period the present church was substantially built) the manor was given by the monarch to Queens and consorts: it was held by three wives of Henry VIII, and may also briefly have been granted to Cardinal Wolsey. In 1550 Edward VI gave the manor to his sister, Elizabeth. As queen, Elizabeth gave it in turn to her adviser Thomas Parry in 1560, whose daughter-in-law bequeathed the pulpit and chalice to the church in 1622.

In the 1620s the manor passed by sale to the Craven family; the church tower is of this date. In the 1660s William Craven, protector of James I’s daughter Elizabeth, the ‘Winter Queen’ of Bohemia, employed the Anglo-Dutch courtier and architect Sir Balthasar Gerbier to build Hamstead Marshall House. Gerbier died at Hamstead Marshall in 1663 and is buried in the church; the building was continued by William Winde. The house was one of the largest in Berkshire and was surrounded by formal walled gardens, but was destroyed by fire in 1718. Eight (out of nine) pairs of elaborate gatepiers survive in the fields S of the church, each listed Grade I, as do the remains of the ornamental gardens and a number of listed barns and cottages. The Craven family held the estate until it was sold in 1983.

During WW2, the American 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, a unit of the 101st Airborne Division, was billeted in Hamstead Park; in May 1944 they were inspected in the Park by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, General Eisenhower.

The site is within a Grade II-Registered Park, an SAM and an SSSI Impact Risk Zone. The QIR states that the presence of bats is likely, but there is no physical evidence of them. The churchyard contains some mature trees.

The earliest surviving part of the church is the C12 S doorway, a plain semi-circular arch with a single chamfered order.

The nave and chancel are of the C14, though the latter was partly rebuilt in the C17.

The S side of the nave has three flat-headed cuspless Perp windows, of which only the easternmost, two-light window is original: the single-light middle window and two-light westernmost window date from 1893 (contemporary with the S porch).

In the C17 the E window of the chancel was removed and infilled with flint and courses of tile. The chancel is lighted by two square-headed windows of two lights on the S side, both with brick and stone patching and probably of the C17. The N side is blank except for a blocked four-centred doorway, probably bricked up in the C17.

The C15 N aisle is under a separate gabled roof. It is lighted on the north side by two original square-headed windows, each of two cinquefoiled lights, and at the east and west ends by pointed traceried windows of three cinquefoiled lights: of the latter. Mark Chatfield (Churches the Victorians Forgot, 1979) comments that “with their cheerful, star-like tracery design, [they are] not only visually attractive but also historically instructive. The tracery includes both the reticulation motif of the Decorated style and the characteristic rectilinear panels of the Perpendicular period. This combination of motifs from two stylistic epochs, which occurs only infrequently, proves that the divide between Decorated and Perpendicular is not always so clearly demarcated as is sometimes supposed.” All these windows have labels terminating in carved heads.

The upper part of the W gable of the aisle has been rebuilt in brick, together with part of the NW and SE angles of the wall.

The tower was built c.1622, perhaps replacing an older one. It is built entirely of 2 inch bricks. It is of three stages divided by brick string courses and has short diagonal buttresses on the W side and a crenelated parapet. The two lower stages are blank on the N and S sides. In the middle stage, 2-light, round-headed louvred belfry openings with stone surrounds to the W; in the upper stage, the same to N, W and S, with a sundial immediately below on the S side. C19 west door to tower, round-arched with square-topped brick surround.

The walls are plastered and painted. The floors of both nave and aisle are paved with brick. All but the west end of the church (under the gallery) is filled with box pews. Simon Jenkins calls the church’s furnishings “as good as any in Berkshire.”

The aisle is separated from the nave by an arcade of two wide, depressed four-centred arches springing from an hexagonal middle pier. The arches seem to be of lath and plaster and probably of the C17, having replaced an older arcade of three pointed arches contemporary with the aisle, the responds of which, consisting of five slender shafts with hollows between, remain.

The crude, pointed plaster chancel arch is the full width of the building, with remains of rood loft and stair to north on carved stone corbels. The N wall of the chancel contains the remains of what may be an Easter sepulchre.

There is a west gallery supported by four stone Tuscan columns with bottle-like entasis, C18, supporting the organ. The tower arch is semi-circular.

The open-timbered roof of the nave is of four bays, with arch braced collars and butt purlins. The queen-post truss at the junction with the chancel shows signs of f0rmer flat ceiling. The chancel has a boarded ceiling with a moulded central beam.