Church Micro 6674...Old Warden Traditional Geocache
Church Micro 6674...Old Warden
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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It is likely that there was a church in Old Warden even before the oldest parts of the current Saint Leonard's church were built in the 12th century. The earliest mention of the church in a document is in 1135 when the advowson is noted as belonging to Warden Abbey. The building is made of brown cobblestones with limestone dressings, though some later work is in red brick or coursed limestone.
The earliest surviving part of the church is the 12th century base to tower and tower arch into the nave. The chancel belongs to the next century and the arch from chancel to nave is late 13th century. The nave appears to be 14th century, certainly it has 14th century windows (though with 15th century tracery), and a blocked 14th century doorway. The south aisle is of the same date and has a three arch arcade but has a 15th century three light east window, although it was from 1883 to 1899 that most of the windows were filled with stained glass as memorials to various members of the Shuttleworth family. In 1787 a faculty was granted for the construction of the Ongley vault and mausoleum in the churchyard. It was in 1841 that the largest change to the church since the Middle Ages occurred. Nikolaus Pevsner in his Buildings of England volume for Bedfordshire notes, in rather horrified fashion: "There is nothing in this exterior to prepare for the shock in store upon entering. One can only just register the high unmoulded Norman tower arch…before going under in a mass of woodwork indiscriminately got together by Robert Henley, Lord Ongley, in 1841…It oppresses you from all sides; it is utterly disjointed…" The 3rd Baron Ongley crammed in woodwork from England and Flanders varying in date from the 16th to the 18th century; there is a Jacobean gallery in the south aisle and a hotchpotch of 16th and 17th century Belgian panels making up the box pews. To some it is oppressive, to others wonderfully eclectic and charmingly cluttered. Whatever one's view it is not quickly forgotten. As well as shoe-horning in all the woodwork the roof of the nave was also rebuilt in 1841 and a new barrel organ installed in the gallery in 1842, which was replaced by a harmonium bought by subscription in 1876. In 1872 the Shuttleworths succeeded the Ongleys as the principal landowners in the parish and, almost in a spirit of needing to do something to keep up with his predecessor, Frank Shuttleworth installed an 18th century pulpit from Edinburgh into the creaking mass of 16th to 18th century woodwork in the 1880s. He also gave a new organ in 1887 and a chamber on the north side of the chancel to put it in. The font is much mutilated and patched; it has twelve sides and stands on a circular pedestal, and at each angle beneath the bowl of the font are the tops of plain round shafts; it stands by the western respond of the nave arcade, and may be 14th-century, as is one of the bells.
Many thanks to Rev. Frank Coleman for allowing the placement of this cache.
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Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Lrj fubhyq svaq vg bss gur tebhaq.