Church crawling in Bedfordshire

Plus a quick trip to Cambridge.

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On Sunday morning the sponsorship pack for the annual Beds & Herts Historic Churches Trust Bike n Hike was thrust at me (which means we’re an alarming way through the year already as the event takes place in September…)

Participants are sponsored to visit historic churches on foot, by bike or other means. Half the money raised goes to the Trust which helps to fund the repair of churches and chapels in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, and half goes to your nominated church. The Trust gives grants for conservation, restoration and development, as well as offering a programme of tours, talks and events. The event is national, with individual counties or groups of counties organising the day in their area. We’re plotting where we might go this year but in the meantime I thought I’d share some of our previous church crawls.

Limestone villages – 2020

The 2020 bike n hike was always going to be a bit different, with Covid-19 restrictions still in place we knew we were unlikely to find many, if any, churches open and offering refreshments and facilities. With this in mind we hatched a cunning plan. We decided to drive out to Harrold-Odell Country Park, leave the car there and explore the surrounding villages on foot. We could leave our picnic in the car while we did our morning walking and make use of the facilities in the park for cups of tea and toilets.

The day of the walk was warm and sunny and so we were able to enjoy the limestone villages of north Bedfordshire at their best. The first stop was Harrold which is home to three churches – St Peter’s, Grace Baptist Church and the URC chapel. Harrold is a pretty village with a long history, there has been a bridge over the river since before 1140 and the first incumbent of the church (which was originally owned by Harrold Priory) was listed in 1226. We stopped on the village green to admire the eighteenth century buttermarket (market house) and the village lock up where suspected criminals and drunks would have been detained.

St Peter’s Church, Harrold

Carlton Church has a similarly long history, medieval trackways and old maps suggest that it was once nearer to the centre of the village which has over time has drifted down the hill towards the river and the main road through Harrold. There had clearly been a recent wedding as the entrance arches to the churchyard and the church itself were decorated with flowers in pretty shades of pale pink and cream. In the churchyard a sign declared that one part of the grounds had been designated a conservation area, a few weeks earlier it must have been a riot of colour with wild flowers in bloom but now it was dying back gracefully, full of seed heads providing homes and food for wildlife.

The church of St Mary the Virgin, Carlton

All Saints in Odell also showed signs of caring for the resident wildlife – we spotted bird boxes in the trees and a log pile in one corner. All Saints stands on a man-made hill and dates from the fifteenth century, although there was probably an earlier church building on the same site.

All Saints Church, Odell

To our surprise Sharnbrook Church was open for visitors, a meeting was taking place in one of the rooms but the church itself was empty. We followed the Covid-19 instructions carefully and were pleased to be able to spend some time quietly in the church. A few minutes walk away, Sharnbrook Methodist Church allowed us to tick off a fourth denomination for the day.

Sharnbrook Methodist Church

September marks the ecumenical Season of Creation (sometimes referred to as Creationtide) and along our walk we also took time to appreciate the local landscape and the nature around us. Being on foot made it easy to step off the main paths and explore. In Harrold we came across a very pleasant spot near the old mill and mill cottages where we could enjoy the sunlight on the river. Walking towards Carlton Church, the hedgerows were full of blackberries, rose hips and hawthorn berries. Seagulls gathered over the recently ploughed fields. In the churchyard there were plenty of lichens and mosses to see – some varieties of lichen are only found on church buildings and in churchyards so they are an important habitat.

We had our picnic overlooking Kingfisher Water on the edge of the country park, watching the swans gliding peacefully by and cormorants diving for fish. Strolling through the park towards Odell we were diverted by the dragonfly pond, which lived up to its name with flashes of blue, green and red darting just above the surface as dragonflies and damselflies enjoyed the sun. Water-boatmen and pond skaters were also out and about. We came back via the water meadows, where we were rewarded with the sudden take-off of a watchful heron from the river bank.

Our lunchtime view

Despite the fact that the year was heading towards autumn there were still butterflies around – we spotted white and speckled wood varieties. In the shadier sections of the park there were fungi to see and the unmistakable scent of windfall apples starting to ferment on the air.¹

The Churches Conservation Trust – 2021

With some Covid-19 restrictions still in place and continuing uncertainty about what would and wouldn’t be open, we opted for a driving tour in 2021. The goal was to visit the six Bedfordshire churches managed by The Churches Conservation Trust². These are well spread across the county, often in remote locations, so they weren’t places we’d be likely to visit without this kind of impetus.

St Mary's Church, Potsgrove – ‘The church is set at the end of a lane in the farming uplands, south of Woburn.’

St Mary's Church, Lower Gravenhurst – ‘Much of this charming fourteenth-century ironstone church has been unaltered for over 600 years.’

St Denys' Church, Little Barford - ‘Tucked away down a private drive, this Norman church is idyllically set in a lovely meadow surrounded by willows near the Great Ouse.’

Church of St Margaret of Antioch, Knotting – ‘This small church, tucked into the north Bedfordshire landscape, is ‘a quintessential vision of the English rural church’.

Inexplicably, I don’t seem to have taken any photos of St Michael’s Church, Farndish and we were defeated in our attempts to find St George's Church, Edworth.

Cambridge – 2022

In 2022 we decided on a walking tour of Cambridge³, hoping to get inside some of the college chapels that are often closed to the public. It was a rather drizzly, warm and humid day but we did visit a good number of churches and college chapels. Two particular highlights were some of Tom Denny’s wonderful stained glass in St Catharine’s College Chapel⁴, and the surprisingly moving Cross of Migrants in Pembroke College Chapel, made by Francesco Tuccio, the carpenter of Lampedusa using timbers from one of the many boats that attempted the crossing of the Mediterranean to Lampedusa in 2016.

Tom Denny’s The Wisdom Window in St Catharine's College Chapel.

The Cross of Migrants in Pembroke College Chapel.

We weren’t able to take part in 2023 or 2024, so this year will hopefully mark a return to a day of exploring churches.

1. The 2020 write up was originally published in ‘Parish & People’, our church magazine.

2. didn’t write this trip up at the time, all the quotes are from the descriptions on the CCT website.

3. The observant amongst you will have noted that Cambridge isn’t in either Bedfordshire or Hertfordshire. There’s nothing that says you must visit churches in your region, although obviously it’s usually easier to do so.

4. See https://www.thomasdenny.co.uk/st-catharines-college-chapel-cambridge-the-wisdom-window for detailed close-ups.