St Etheldreda's is the Anglican parish church of Old Hatfield, Hertfordshire in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. Parts of the building are 13th century and there is evidence there was a church here before this in Saxon times. It is situated in the old village of Hatfield just east of the modern town of Hatfield and close to the walls of

Hatfield House Hatfield House is a country house set in a large park, the Great Park, on the eastern side of the town of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. The present Jacobean house, a leading example of the prodigy house, was built in 1611 by Robert Cec ...

, once a royal palace. It once also served Hatfield House as a place of worship as well as the village and so is exceptionally grand for a parish church. The dedication to St Etheldreda derives from the Bishops of Ely for whom she is a

patron saint A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, or Eastern Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or perso ...

and who once occupied the House when it was a bishops' palace.

Description

The church stands at the top of a hill with Old Hatfield village centre to the west. The building material is largely

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

. It is

cruciform Cruciform is a term for physical manifestations resembling a common cross or Christian cross. The label can be extended to architectural shapes, biology, art, and design. Cruciform architectural plan Christian churches are commonly describe ...

with a tower at the western end. Most construction was between the 13th and 15th centuries. Two

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...

s have been added on either side of the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

; on the north side is the ''Salisbury Chapel'' and on the south side the ''Brocket Chapel''. The Salisbury Chapel is the traditional burial place of the Cecil family and contains the ornate tomb of Robert Cecil, the first Earl of Salisbury. Two British Prime Ministers,

Lord Melbourne William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, (15 March 177924 November 1848), in some sources called Henry William Lamb, was a British Whig politician who served as Home Secretary (1830–1834) and Prime Minister (1834 and 1835–1841). His first pre ...

and

Lord Salisbury Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (; 3 February 183022 August 1903) was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen y ...

(both the first and last Prime Ministers of

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previo ...

's reign), are also interred here. Some rebuilding, particularly of the window

tracery Tracery is an architectural device by which windows (or screens, panels, and vaults) are divided into sections of various proportions by stone ''bars'' or ''ribs'' of moulding. Most commonly, it refers to the stonework elements that support the ...

, was done during the Victorian era. Historically, St Etheldreda's Church had a steeple on top of the west tower and this is shown in many early illustrations. It was last re-erected in 1847 to commemorate the visit to the town of

and Prince Albert. However it was removed in 1930. There are eight bells in the tower which now form a Carillon, installed in 1786. It is set to play different tunes on each day of the week. There are many memorials, the oldest being a knight in armour of about 1160.

References

External links

Church plan and list of monuments
St. Etheldreda, Bishops Hatfield, Guide First Edition, 1939. Published by the British Publishing Co. Ltd., Gloucester. Accessed May 2016

at the church's website. Accessed May 2016, Archive December 2019.

From Topographical Dictionary of England, 1831. Accessed May 2016
St. Etheldreda
atfield Churches by Peter Massingham (2009) Accessed May 2016 {{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160609190433/http://www.ourhatfield.org.uk/page/Hatfield_Churches , date=9 June 2016
St. Etheldreda's
'Parishes: Hatfield', in ''A History of the County of Hertford: Volume 3'', ed. William Page (London, 1912), pp. 91–111. published at ''British History Online'' pp 91–111 Accessed May 2016 Hatfield, Hertfordshire Hatfield