St Mary's Church,

Hemel Hempstead Hemel Hempstead () is a town in the Dacorum district in Hertfordshire, England. It is located north-west of London; nearby towns and cities include Watford, St Albans and Berkhamsted. The population at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 cens ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and one of the home counties. It borders Bedfordshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Essex to the east, Greater London to the ...

, England is the

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the Church (building), church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in com ...

of the town and its oldest place of worship. It is a

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

building.

History

A Saxon coffin was discovered in the churchyard in 1836, with an inscription on the lid claiming it to be that of King Offa of the Mercians. British Library Newspaper Archive , published in the Bucks Herald on the 20th August 1836. This supports speculation that a Saxon church once occupied the site. The coffin is unfortunately now lost. Construction of the present building commenced in 1140 and the church was dedicated in 1150 although construction continued for another 30 years. It is not known why such a grand church was constructed in what at the time was a small hamlet. The building is cruciform in shape, with a

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

(the first part to be built), a

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

, south and north

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform ("cross-shaped") cruciform plan, churches, in particular within the Romanesque architecture, Romanesque a ...

s, and a tower. A

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spire ...

, one of the tallest in Europe, was added in the 14th century with a total height of 200 feet. It is topped by a gilded weather vane. A 19th century

vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government of a parish in England, Wales and some English colony, English colonies. At their height, the vestries were the only form of local government in many places and spen ...

was added on the church's north east corner. The church is built from the local clunch stone and

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. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...

with some addition of Roman bricks. The architecture is Norman throughout apart from

porch A porch (; , ) is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance to a building. A porch is placed in front of the façade of a building it commands, and forms a low front. Alternatively, it may be a vestibule (architecture), vestibule (a s ...

es added in the 14th and 15th centuries. In 1302 a cell to Ashridge Priory was founded in Hemel Hempstead and the church had collegiate status until the Dissolution of the monasteries in 1536. A door at the base of the tower allowed the monks access to the church and avoided them mixing with the townspeople. The church contains a memorial to Sir Astley Paston Cooper. There is a Walker organ which was refurbished in 2008. A ring of five bells was recorded in the reign of Edward VI. None of these remain and the present ring is of 8 bells dating from 1590 to 1767. In 1950, as part of the 800th anniversary, the bells were retuned by Gillett and Johnston of Croydon and rehung on steel frames with completely new fittings. The eight bells are inscribed as follows: 1. (Treble) Lester and Pack - 1758 2. Lester and Pack - 1758 3. Chandler made me - 1688 4. Praise the Lord - 1633 5. Lawdate Domini - undated 6. God save King James - 1604 7. Sana Manet Christi - 1617 8. (Tenor) Lester and Pack - 1767 The

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...

is original Norman, although surrounded by 19th century decoration.

References

* ''St Mary's Church guidebook'' with foreword by the rector Peter Cotton, 2008 * *

External links

St Mary's parish websiteDiocese of St Albans
Hemel Hempstead, St. Mary's Church Former collegiate churches in England History of Hertfordshire Tourist attractions in Hertfordshire Hemel Hempstead, St. Mary's Church {{England-Anglican-church-stub