Monday 16 September 2013

Great Holland

All Saints is a competent, if boring, Victorian rebuild; I think it fair to say I've seen worse but I've also seen better.

ALL SAINTS. By Sir Arthur Blomfield, 1866. Nave and lower chancel. The W tower of brick was preserved. It has polygonal clasping buttresses and a higher polygonal stair-turret. Tower and turret are embattled. W doorway with many mouldings in the arch. Large four-light brick W window with panel tracery. Blomfield shows himself here, in 1866, already tamed. No longer the challenging Butterfieldian crudities of his first years. He is now competently and dully E.E. with circular piers and geometrical tracery. - MONUMENT. Henry Rice d. 1812, by Hinchcliffe of London. With a kneeling, mourning female figure.

Henry George Rice 1821

GREAT HOLLAND. A small compact village on high ground, it has a quaint inn and cottages shaded by pines and rook-haunted elms; and it has from its churchyard a view of the sea over the sloping fields. A massive 16th century tower of red and black bricks is all that remains of the old church, but the modern interior is pleasing, and one corner of it must always be a solemn place to the village, for it was built while the Great War was raging. It is the vestry, where we read on a tablet these words of courage written in our Motherland’s darkest hour:

To the Glory of God and in complete confidence that victory will be given us, this vestry was added as an act of faith and thanksgiving. August 1917.

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