Standon

English Church Architecture.

STANDON, St. Mary (TL 433 308),

HERTFORDSHIRE.

(Bedrock: Upper Cretaceous, Upper Chalk.)

A large and significant church, most strikingly situated.

This is an extraordinary building for the northern Home Counties (as shown above, viewed from the east) for it is built into steeply rising ground in the side of the little Rib valley, giving the chancel total dominance over the nave, and the church is further distinguished by a large W. porch and a detached S. tower (now tenuously linked to the chancel by a Victorian organ chamber), giving something of the impression of a cluster of mushrooms emerging surreptitiously from the ground.

The chancel and perhaps also the tower were originally thirteenth century work. The tower rises in three stages to battlements and a characteristic Hertfordshire spike, buttressed only at its southwest angle with heavy angle buttresses. The two lower stages are constructed of flint rubble and there are little lancet openings in the second, but the bell-stage is rendered and possibly early Perpendicular (i.e. late fourteenth century) to judge by the renewed bell-openings with their straightened reticulated tracery. The large lancets in the chancel are now all Victorian, including the stepped group of three to the east and the equal pair to the north, to the right (west) of the vestry. There is nothing to detain the visitor here, but downslope, the aisled nave is lit by attractive Decorated windows, renewed externally but seemingly original within. They are formed: (a) in the nave W. wall, above the porch, of a four-light window with non-standard flowing tracery; (b) in the N. & S. walls of the aisles, of two-light windows with large reticulation units above the ogee lights (there are four of these on either side, divided in the central bay by a blocked doorway to the north and by a surviving doorway inside a nineteenth century half-timbered porch to the south); (c) in the aisle E. walls, of three-light windows with conventional curvilinear tracery; and (d), in the aisle W. walls, of a compressed variation of the previous design, which looks Victorian on first sight but appears authentic within. (The photograph below right shows the N. aisle E. window and the photograph below left shows the S. aisle W. window.) Perhaps the difference is the result of the engagement of a different mason a couple of decades later. The clerestory consists of two-light windows with quatrefoils above, aligned internally above the arcade spandrels.

The Perpendicular W. porch is two bays deep (i.e. from east to west) and is lit by two, two-light supermullioned windows on either side, set internally beneath segmental-pointed arches. The very tall outer doorway has a complex profile formed of wave mouldings that die into chamfers running down the jambs. The very large, porch inner doorway carries a series of rolls with fillets, hollows, and little flat chamfers, and has a single order of narrow side-shafts, integral with the jambs. This is presumably early fourteenth century work, like the W. window above, around which the porch was constructed.

Inside the church, the relationship between the nave and the chancel dominates everything. The chancel is approached up eight steps and the sanctuary up five more, but if this were not enough, the floor of the chancel also slopes noticeably, so that as one walks towards the nave from the sanctuary, one is curiously aware of walking downhill. The attractive chancel arch, seen from the nave, appears at first a wholly Victorian piece, with two orders of pink marble side-shafts in shaft rings, topped with stiff leaf capitals. However, the arch above the springing is still essentially Early English, composed of a detailed series of rolls and a prominent band of dog-tooth. Squints on either side of the arch look through from the aisles into the chancel. The five-bay nave arcades appear, rather troublingly, to post-date the aisle windows, for although the pier section is a little unusual, its overall form - of four semi-octagonal shafts separated by mouldings - suggests a late fourteenth century vintage at the earliest. The quirk in the design is to be found in those intervening mouldings, which consist of two small hollows separated by a fillet. (See the N. arcade pier, illustrated left.) The arches above bear an asymmetrical arrangement of waves. Two other features to notice in the S. aisle are the Decorated E. window, now only visible within, where it looks through to the organ chamber which today links the chancel to the tower, and the large recessed ogee arch in the S. wall that must have once housed an effigy.

The church contains two prominent monuments worthy of mention which facing each other across the sanctuary. The monument backing against the S. wall commemorates Sir Ralph Sadleir (d. 1587), who was active at the court of Henry VIII (notes in the church) and features an effigy of Sir Ralph beneath a round arch, with semi-classical figures proffering laurel wreaths in the spandrels and brown alabaster side columns supporting an entablature carrying an achievement flanked by obelisks. The profiles of his three sons and four daughters face each other over a prayer desk carved in bas-relief on the tomb-chest. (See the photograph below left.) The monument against the N. wall (shown below right) is dedicated to Sir Thomas Sadleir (d. 1606) and his wife, who are likewise depicted, lying on their backs with their hands clasped above their chests in prayer, this time beneath a coffered arch and with black alabaster columns supporting the entablature. Two fully-carved, miniature supporters - presumably a single surviving son and daughter - kneel at separate prayer desks below.

Finally, a note should probably be added on the curious font in the S. aisle (shown below), which seems to defy accurate dating. For Pevsner (Nikolaus Pevsner & Bridget Cherry, The Buildings of England - Hertfordshire, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977, p. 340) this was 'a very interesting early C13 design' while the very brief church guide describes it as 'much restored but [partly] of the 12th century', and the britishlistedbuildings web-site, which often copies Pevsner, considers it an 'unusual C13 octagonal font [with a] cusped C19 arcaded base', but no precise date really fits and the visitor must make of it what he or she will.