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English Church Architecture.
ORWELL,
St. Andrew
(TL 362 505),
CAMBRIDGESHIRE.
(Bedrock:
Upper Cretaceous, Lower Chalk.)
A church
notable for its excellent Perpendicular chancel.
The churches in the
southwest corner of Cambridgeshire form an
architecturally varied group but their interest is often compromised by excessive restoration.
That is rather the case here, yet the tower is a good
piece of thirteenth century work, albeit a little
patched, and the chancel was once a 'Perpendicular
masterpiece' (Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of
England: Cambridgeshire, Harmondsworth, Penguin,
1970, p. 445) even though the exterior has since been
comprehensively renewed.

The tower
is angle-buttressed and rises in two stages lit by
tall lancets, to Y-traceried bell-openings set in
shallow three-bay blank arcading. The battlements, in
darker stone, are clearly an addition. The arch to
the nave is formed of two flat chamfered orders, of
which the
outer order continues uninterrupted by capitals down the
jambs and the inner
is supported on shafts of semi-octagonal section.
The three-light
aisle windows and the depressed Y-traceried clerestory
windows in a manner common around 1400, have been
partially renewed externally, but the N. aisle walls
have been completely reconstructed in Flemish-bonded
gault brick, which is surely the most unfortunate
material used in this context. This is exceptionally
unpromising
yet inside the nave, the four-bay aisle arcades both
to the south and north, and the tall chancel arch
(shown at the foot of the page), are original
fourteenth century work and a little at variance with
one another, perhaps in witness to their slightly
different dates or to being the work of different master
masons. Both the arcades carry
double-flat-chamfered arches but whereas the N. arcade
has dripstones without label stops, quatrefoil piers
with very slight shafts in the diagonals and fine
mouldings around the capitals, the S. arcade has large
head label stops, piers with hollows between the foils
and distinctly non-standard bulbous capitals.
Curiously, the chancel arch capitals fall between these designs, but the arch also introduces fillets down the
foils of the responds and sunk quadrant mouldings above
the springing.
The chancel itself is a tall, proud
piece of work which, according to Pevsner, was formerly
dated by a lost inscription in a window, stating it was
built at the expense of the rector, Richard Anlaby, who
died in 1396. The side windows are segmentally-pointed,
three-light and
transomed, with additional mouldings around the internal
splays and tracery featuring strong mullions, split
'Y's, and quatrefoils in the eyelets. The vestry
to the northeast appears to be contemporary but the
renewed five-light E. window with intersecting
subarcuation of the lights in threes,
through reticulation, and daggers above odd-numbered
lights, may or may not represent an original feature.
Furnishings are
not of great significance in this building but the
chancel has a ceiled wagon roof with shields for bosses
at the intersections of the ribs, which Pevsner dated to
the eighteenth century, albeit with repairs by William
White (1825 - 1900) in his restoration of 1883.
The nave roof, of tie beam construction, now appears
largely new. The chancel is lined to the north and
south with mediaeval misericords, but their quality is
poor and all the figures beneath the seats have
unfortunately been hacked off. The monument on the
S. wall of the sanctuary with an inscription in Latin,
commemorating Jeremias Radcliffe (d. 1623), features a
diminutive effigy facing north across the chancel,
boasting a straight-ended beard and clad in a red robe. |