St Stephen's Church, Baughurst

Join me on one of my projects, to explore as many of the UK's churches as possible, starting with those close to home

Welcome to another instalment of my Church project, with some 16000 churches to explore across the UK and probably a good 300 in my local area, which is around 30 miles out from where I live, dropped a virtual pin on the map and created a list of churches using Google Maps - in fact here it is, have a look, there are 344 on it right now, as a result of some armchair research https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5658573,-3.5420926,463982m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!1m2!10m1!1e1!11m2!2sY_MFzGg0RJ-pyoVCBzqErA!3e3?hl=en&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUyOC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

There are some that are further out and will be factored in on longer day-trips, long weekends away and so on.

I've now started to take a deeper interest in the connected histories not just between churches in particular parishes but any other points of interest that each location has.

St Stephen's

Every church has a standout feature and in the case of St Stephen's, for one it is Gothic; take a look at the tower/spire - it's octagonal which is an unusual design.

The following details were taken from Historic England

1845, by Ferry, replacing a medieval building. Ferry was a fellow-pupil of Pugin and this Early English design represents advanced scholarship for its date. Chancel of 2 bays, with vestry on the north side, nave of 4 bays, and Tower above the south porch (3rd bay). Steep tile roof. Walling of flint with stone dressings, eaves fascia on brackets, hood moulds linked to impost moulded band, cill band, plinth, stepped buttresses; at the west end a doorway of circa 1200 (from the old church) has been incorporated, with slender shafts. Lancets and coupled lancets beneath cusped plate tracery, the east end has 3 lancets below a circular window. The west has 2 lancets set within an external 5-arched arcade beneath a triangular (segmental) opening, having 3 circular lights. The tower has 4 stages, the 2nd having battered corners forming an octagonal base to the 3rd stage, which has small double lancets to each face and ends in a parapet, the 4th being a stone spire. Within there is a C15 Perpendicular octagonal font, the remains of a C15 wood screen, a Thomas Sympson bequest brass of 1674, and several C18 monuments. Of 1845, there is a stone pulpit, the prescriptions in 2 lancet panels set in the well opposite the door, and some stained glass (including 2 heraldic designs in the south side of the chancel), and an arch-braced hammer-beam roof. - https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1092592?section=official-list-entry

Augustus Pugin had an interesting career and is well worth reading about - https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/reputations/augustus-pugin-1812-1852

More details on Benjamin Ferry can be found at https://architecture.arthistoryresearch.net/architects/ferrey-benjamin where you can learn more about the "Gothic Revival". I shall be visiting a lot of the locations listed on this page in the future.

One church that I know was designed by Pugin that I've not yet covered on the #churchproject is that of St James's in central Reading, one of his earliest designs.

The Photos

All images taken on the Ricoh GR3x apart from the first one, that was taken on my iphone - apologies for the finger in the top corner, too lazy to edit it!!!

The Church Project

There are some 16,000 churches spread across the UK and all have some interesting stories to tell. Whilst I’ve never been a church goer at any point in my lifetime, apart from a short period of time when Tina and I would take Alice (my step-daughter) to our local church where we lived at the time, as she wanted to learn more about Christianity; I think we all got more than we bargained for, then moved house and haven’t been back since. Religion perhaps isn’t for us but churches are, they’re for everyone. I think this is because for the two of us, we’ve both grown up with an immense gratitude towards churches, we got dragged around them as kids by parents who had some fascination with these ancient places. Ok I used to hate the national trust, garden centres, churches, scones and jazz. Now I love those things and churches too. Then of course Tina and I got married in a Methodist church, North Camp, Farnborough where Alice went to her youth club as a young girl some years before.

This project is very much a husband and wife thing, it gets us out, we explore and discover places we wouldn’t have known existed otherwise