Thursday 4 November 2010

Farnham

St Mary the Virgin was undergoing some serious work, I assume re-roofing, and was locked when I visited with not only no sign of a keyholder but no sign at all. The only reason I know it's called St Mary the Virgin is the interweb.

On the one hand I can understand why it is locked - this is the hardest to find church in the history of hard to find churches - but on the other that surely works in favour of keeping it open since, I suspect, only locals can find it with regularity, I'd certainly struggle to find it again!

Having found it I was slightly disappointed to find that it is a Victorian church built in 1859, however, this is more than made up for its location. I assume it is, or was, connected to the Hassobury estate since my sat nav was determined to take me through private roads to reach it - hence the trouble finding it since I'm not a drive along on private roads type.

UPDATE 13/09/14 - Gained access today...internally it's dire.

ST MARY THE VIRGIN, 1859 by Joseph Clarke.

St Mary the Virgin


St Mary the Virgin (2)

It appears that Mee couldn't find it either.


One of the county's most remote churches, stuck in a fold of fields at the end of a narrow lane in that hook of Essex beyond the Hertfordshire town of Bishop's Stortford.

The church is alone in the fields, a grand sight on a rise above the Jacobean stately home of Hassiobury in the fold beneath. It was entirely rebuilt in the 1850s by John Clarke in a jaunty flint, with exposed beams, which cannot have been entirely approved of by the ecclesiologists. The steep roofs and exposed wood gave the effect of a gingerbread house, or at least of a church for a village of gingerbread houses.

It was tempting to ring the keyholder, but the church appears to have little of interest inside, and there was only a phone number, suggesting we'd have to wait for them to come and open up. I decided that the interior could not compete with the exterior, so instead we headed on through increasingly narrow and flooded winding lanes northwards to the pretty village of Manuden.

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