Along the Willow Brook I: Fotheringhay

     Another Saturday, another jaunt.  This time the bf and I headed off to that beautiful and serene market town of Oundle.  It was his first visit.  Avoiding Peterborough, (which, to be honest is almost invariably a good thing), we drove over the Heath (part of the ancient Forest of Nassaburgh) at Helpston and down into the Nene valley at Ailsworth.  This area of upland, which roughly runs w-e between the river valleys of the Welland and the Nene is referred to as the 'Nassaburgh Limestone Plateau'. 

     We drove westward through Wansford, Yarwell, and finally to Fotheringhay - all of these very beautiful limestone villages sitting between the floodplain the Nene to one south and Rockingham Forest to the north.  Fotheringhay, which is really just a single street, sits between the Willow Brook - one of a number of small tributaries of the Nene that flow out of the forest - and the Nene itself.  It is the site of a once great manorial complex - think the Windsor of the House of the York.  There are the remains of a once vast collegiate church, and at the far end of the street the remains of a castle.  And between them the street is lined with two sets of lodgings built for guests - the Old and New Inns.  The castle itself, the place of execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, occupies the defensible position of a narrow strip of land where the Willow almost joins the Nene, before, unexpectedly, both rivers swing away north and south, finally for the Willow to flow into the Nene a mile or so downstream at Elton. Really there isn't much to see of the castle apart from the earthworks just a few scraps of masonry, but don't let that dissuade you from visiting - from the top of the motte there are lovely views of the Nene valley.
   A lot more survives at the church, but big though as it is, it is merely a fragment of a far larger complex of buildings founded by Edward of York in 1411.  The college and the chancel were demolished sometime during the Reformation, probably during the reign of Edward VI. The nave is the work of the mason William Horwood.  The exterior bristles with pinnacles which contrast with the massive lower storeys of the tower, which I suspect is later than the nave, and from which rises an elegant octagonal crown. The interior is a delight. Vast, big boned, something of the sublime about the space under the tower.  The nave itself is broad and full of light; there is very little stained glass.  Church as cage of light, an English, late Gothic interpretation of Abbot Suger's desire that church architecture make manifest the Divine Light of God.  It is also, thankfully, devoid of clutter.  Georgian fittings - altarpiece and box-pews - rub shoulders with Elizabethan tombs and a fantastic medieval pulpit re-coloured in the 1960s.  All parts are in harmony. Serene.