Roman Catholic Church of St Edmund of Canterbury and English Martyrs and associated lych gate, Standon, Hertfordshire

Summary

Roman Catholic Church of St Edmund of Canterbury and English Martyrs, a small parish church in the Decorated Gothic Revival style, and associated lych gate, built in 1911 to designs by Arthur Young.

Description

Roman Catholic Church of St Edmund of Canterbury and English Martyrs, a small parish church in the Decorated Gothic Revival style, and associated lych gate, built in 1911 to designs by Arthur Young.

MATERIALS: the walls are of red brick laid in English bond, with some darker brick banding and ashlar stone dressings. The pitched roof is clay-tiled.

PLAN: the church consists of a single-cell nave with south porch, and a narrower square-ended chancel with confessionals and sacristy to the north.

EXTERIOR: the porch is timber-framed with herringbone brick nogging over a high brick and stone plinth. There is no break in ridge height between the roof of the nave and narrower chancel; instead, the transition is marked by a stone gabled bellcote, containing a single bell. The west window has five lights with cusped heads, under a depressed four-centred arch with hoodmould and carved stops of angels bearing shields. There are angled buttresses at the west end, and a narrow light in the gable. A wooden crucifix is attached to the west elevation below the window. The other window openings to the nave, and those to the sacristy, consist of a mixture of paired or triple cusped lights under flat lintels with hoodmoulds having square stops, and single-light ogee-headed windows. The high east window of the sanctuary is of three cusped lights with a depressed four-centred arch.

INTERIOR: The entrance porch has oak double doors within a Tudor-arched opening with carved shields in the spandrels and an inscription, ‘THE MASTER IS HERE AND CALLETH THEE’. Within the porch are a holy water stoup and a brass memorial panel to Edith Cécile Ellis (nee Duval), the late wife of the donor.

The nave has white plaster walls and an oak waggon roof with gilded decorative bosses on the ribs, typical of Young’s churches. Around the coving is a painted inscription, ‘Unto the King of Ages Immortal Invisible the only God be Honour Glory for ever and ever Amen (1 Tim. 1.17)’. At the chancel arch is a carved oak rood screen with delicate cusped tracery and surmounted by rood figures. Various coats of arms are attached to the coving of the rood beam, while in recesses to right and left are polychrome figures of the Sacred Heart and the Madonna and Child, both original to the church, possibly by Mayer and Co. Beneath the rood figures are the inscriptions ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’ (Behold the Lamb of God) and ‘Tu Dulce Lumen Patriae Carnis Negatum Sensibus (‘Sweet Light of our eternal home, To fleshly sense denied’, from St Bernard’s hymn for the Feast of the Transfiguration, translation by Bl. J H Newman). On the sanctuary side of the screen is a further inscription based on the second chapter of the Song of Solomon, which appears to be a plea to ambonoclasts not to destroy the screen: ‘O Qui stas post parietem nostrum Proscipiens per cancellos, Hunc decorum domus tuae tua decores luce; Hoc propugnaculum propugnes, Modo custodes Ipse custodias, Ut semper a securibus hoc opus stet securum’.

The chancel also has an oak barrel vaulted roof, and around its coving is a further painted inscription, ‘Splendor Paternae Gloriae Incomprehensa Caritas Nobis Amoris Copiam Largire Per Presentium’. The altar is described in the 1911 account in The Edmundian as ‘a large stone slab placed upon four stone pillars, encased in oak upon the front of which is the device of the Lamb’. This appears to survive unaltered, although has been brought forward. Its original reredos, which survives, is also of oak, with rather weak painted figures of angels and martyrs, their shields and emblems below. At the centre of the gradine, the wooden tabernacle has a brass door elaborately adorned with precious stones and decoration and with a pelican in its piety at the centre. A crucifix thought to be of ivory is placed in the recess for the monstrance throne above.

The church retains its original oak furnishings throughout, including high-backed sedile and stalls in the sanctuary, moveable benches in the nave with panelled ends with square moulded tops and a high panelled and railed enclosure at the west end forming a baptistery area. Within this enclosure, the stone font is placed on a raised stone floor and has an octagonal bowl with wooden cover supported by a stubby column with floriated capital. Over the baptistery is a handsome brass wall monument, recording the gift of Arthur Guy Ellis. In the southwest corner is an oak Lady altar with a large semi-circular ceramic over, a depiction of the Annunciation in the style of Della Robbia, in memory of Anna Stancioff, Comtesse de Grenaud and Mistress of the Robes at the Bulgarian court, given by her children in May 1955. A small oak tabernacle has an enamel Agnus Dei on its door. In the northwest corner is a small pipe organ with an oak case, made by The Positive Organ Company, London NW (Catalogue no. 883). The Positive Organ Company specialised in inexpensive, sturdily-built organs for smaller churches.

The windows mostly have clear glass set in rectangular quarries, with coloured glass chevron patterning in the margins. There are three stained glass windows; the east window, with the Holy Trinity flanked by kneeling figures of St John the Baptist and St Francis, donated in memory of Edith Cécile Ellis by her mother, 1911, signed by Ward and Hughes; on the south side of the chancel, a two-light window depicting the Annunciation, 1931, signed A L and E C Moore, London; and the easternmost window on the south side of the nave, a narrow single-light depicting Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, possibly c1950, not signed or dated.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: To the south of the church, a lych gate grants access from Farm Lane, and takes the form of a double-leaf timber gate under a hipped clay-tile roof. The gate bears the inscription ‘TO DAY FOR ME / TOMORROW FOR THEE’ in the same script as that decorating the porch of the church.

History

St Edmund’s College was established at Old Hall Green in 1793, succeeding Cardinal William Allen’s college at Douai in Flanders. In that year a small chapel was built on the edge of the farmyard of the gabled C17 house known as ‘Old Hall’, serving both the school and the wider, scattered Catholic population. In 1818 this was replaced by a larger ‘parish chapel’ alongside the old house, opened by the Rev Thomas Griffiths. The Edmundian (1911) noted of this chapel ‘though its greatest admirers would not claim that it is handsome, nevertheless so many old memories cling around it that we are loath to part with it […] the square unpretending nature of the architecture with the characteristic gallery at the back breathes of bygone times, of days of penal laws and unemancipated Catholics’.

The present church, constructed in 1911, is dedicated to St Edmund of Canterbury and the English Martyrs, was built by Arthur Guy Ellis, a local resident and prominent Catholic lawyer, as a memorial to his wife Edith Cécile, who died on 9 November 1909 and is buried there. The architect, Arthur Young (1853-1925), although not a particularly well-known architect, had an extensive London practice which operated from 1877 until his death. He was responsible for a number of Catholic churches, including Our Lady and St Thomas of Canterbury, Harrow-on-the-Hill (1894), Our Lady Help of Christians, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire (1909), Richard of Chichester, Buntingford, Hertfordshire (1914), and St Edward the Confessor, London Borough of Barnet (1914), all listed at Grade II.

Previously the site of the church was used as the drying ground for the college laundry and there may also have been a small burial ground located there. The new church was solemnly consecrated by Bishop Butt on 2 December 1911 and the previous chapel of 1818 (which is Grade II listed) was retained, now functioning as the school gymnasium and rifle range.

The Roman Catholic church and lych gate are identified on the 1923 Ordnance Survey map, indicating that the lych gate was most likely built at the same time as the church.

Reasons for Listing

The Roman Catholic Church of St Edmund of Canterbury and English Martyrs and its associated lych gate, built in 1911, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: as a well-composed church in a convincing medieval style, which is highly appropriate to its rural context, and distinguished by good detailing;
* Architect: as a church designed by the well-regarded ecclesiastical architect Arthur Young, a number of whose churches are listed;
* Historic interest: for its historic association with neighbouring St Edmund’s College, which played a pivotal role in the history and development of English Catholicism, and which contains a number of listed buildings;
* Degree of survival: for its thoughtfully detailed interior, which survives almost completely intact, and contains fittings, furnishings, and detailing of considerable architectural and artistic interest, including a fine, and rare, oak rood screen and original sanctuary furnishings;
* Group value: for the important group value the church holds with the numerous listed buildings of Old Hall Green and St Edmunds College, including the pre-Emancipation Gothick chapel (Grade II), and post-Emancipation chapel by A W N Pugin (Grade I).

External Links

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