St Andrew, Northborough I

     Mid-week and a trip to that intriguing looking church at Northborough, in the Soke of Peterborough.

 

     Northborough is, or rather, was a small one street village of stone-built houses on the vast gravelly floodplain of the river Welland, one of the most continuously settled areas in Britain, just before it fades out into the vast fenland to the east. And it is in one of these old cottages that line the old village street that the poet John Clare lived in for some ten years.  In common with virtually all the villages on the fen edge here, the main street runs west to east, and it is at the west end of this street that you find, surprisingly, the Manor House - a rare and rather grand example of an early 14th century gentry house.  I say surprisingly, for although the original village is all in all quite pretty, it has not only paid the price of its proximity to Peterborough with a vast suburban extension of red brick houses and bungalows to the north, but from the fact that for far too many years the A15 thundered its way between Norman Cross and the Humber through the western edge of the village.  The stone work of the rather austere front range of the Manor is still in need of a clean.

     And so to the church, and a complicated story to unravel.  Firstly there is the small, humble village church of limestone rubble.  Not even a tower, just a bellcote.  Possibly the only one I can think in this part of the Welland valley. All the others have towers. A small, possibly poor village, in the Middle Ages. Or at least one without a wealthy patron.  Except that at one time it did.  Look at that monumental south transept constructed of neat ashlar masonry which from certain angles dwarfs the older structure.  A curious design too (willful or incompetent, I'm not sure which) - odd tracery, massive corbel table and strangely set back battlements.  What is the explanation for the lopsided positioning of those mighty octagonal turrets? And why does it look as though the work was abandoned? Pevsner offers no explanation for the latter but does say the transept was the work of the Delameres, one of whom was 'Forester of Kesteven', which is a rather nice title to have. I wonder if the duties were onerous or not? 

     Alas and alack, the church was locked and there was no notice as to where you could borrow the key. So I couldn't find out more or take pictures of the interior.  For now anyway.