English Church Architecture.
EDWORTH, St. George (TL 222 407), CENTRAL BEDFORDSHIRE. (Bedrock: Lower Cretaceous, Gault.)
A church situated close to the Lower Greensand, Woburn Sands Formation, built largely of ironstone.
The Lower Cretaceous Rocks of Eastern England, laid down 146-97 Ma.
Edworth is not so much a village as a few tucked-away farms and cottages, but it is certainly a pleasant and still deeply rural spot, even though the A1 trunk road passes less than half a mile to the west of the church. Mercifully it does so in a short cutting that takes it across the low rise of Topler’s Hill, and St. George’s manages to retain an atmosphere of profound calm – always providing that one can find it, up a track that winds through the centre of Manor Farm. Maintained by the Churches Conservation Trust, it is surrounded by a large area of mown grass, and although kept locked, at the time of this visit, the key could be procured from Edworth Manor, the large house one hundred and fifty yards to the north.
St. George’s church consists of a W. tower, aisled nave, chancel, and N. and S. porches. It is built of a mixture of ironstone rubble and ironstone cobbles, with other fieldstones, re-used Roman tile, and much patching in brick and cement. The tower rises to battlements in two short stages, and has angle buttresses to the first stage only and two-light, renewed bell-openings with straightened reticulation units between, characteristic of early Perpendicular times in this area. The embattled nave has a clerestory of two-light, square-headed Perpendicular windows and the chancel - which was shortened in 1836 - has three-light untraceried Perpendicular windows to north and south, but the N. aisle has a two-light E. window with (Decorated) reticulated tracery and the equivalent window in the S. aisle has curvilinear tracery. However, of finer quality than any of these are the two porches, with traceried spandrels above the outer arches, the dating of which will be considered below.
Reviewing this evidence together, some further consideration of dating is required. The church had two leaflets available inside when visited in 2003, of which the earlier ascribed the basic fabric of the nave to the time of the pillar piscina, and considered the aisles, chancel and tower to have been added c. 1340, and the porches, c. 1400. However, the second, produced by the Churches Conservation Trust, while agreeing that the aisles and chancel are early fourteenth century work, considered the tower to be a little later and the porches and clerestory, late fifteenth century in date. In fact, the Churches Conservation Trust seems to be nearer the mark in suggesting the tower postdates the aisles, but perhaps there is also the possibility, in view of the sunk quadrant mouldings of the arcades, that the aisles are later too (say, c. 1360), for some Decorated-style windows were certainly still being constructed in other eastern counties at that date and, indeed, later.
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