THE CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW, HECKINGTON
By W. G. Watkins, A.R.I.B.A.
Five miles east from the market town of Sleaford, just where the rolling uplands dip down into the great fen stretching out to Boston and the Wash, lies the village of Heckington; it is mentioned in Domesday as Heckintune, where one Gilbert de Gaunt held land, and there was a priest and a church. This same Gilbert de Gaunt had accompanied William the Conqueror to England, and for his services was rewarded with large grants of land in this and many other counties; he rebuilt the Abbey of Bardney, on the banks of the river Witham, about nine miles from Lincoln; richly endowed it; and was there buried in 1094, leaving his son Walter to further enrich the abbey, amongst other endowments, with all the tithe of corn and hay of his land in Heckington. In 1345 it is recorded that Roger de Barrowe, the then Abbot of Bardney, obtained a royal licence to appropriate the Church of Heckington; and it is interesting to note that, among other tomb slabs revealed by the excavation of the abbey church in 1909, was that of this same Roger de Barrowe, while the foundations of the choir and transept showed that they were part of the same Norman church which the piety of Gilbert de Gaunt had raised.
At the time Roger de Barrowe was obtaining his licence one of those waves of building activity that swept over certain localities in the Middle Ages seems to have reached the district round Heckington. The naves of Sleaford, Silk Willoughby, Billingboro, Swayton, and Helpringham, and the whole Church of Ewerby, were rising white from the masons’ chisel in the new and graceful Curvilinear style; but it was at Heckington that this local school, through the resources of the rich and powerful abbey, were able to crown their work by one of the finest and most complete parish churches to be found in this or any other one period. The exact date at which the work was commenced is uncertain, but it appears that closely subsequent to the appropriation of the church by the abbey in 1345 the old fabric was swept away, and the foundations of the new structure laid. Richard de Potesgrave, presented to the living by King Edward in 1307, was the then vicar; his effigy lies under an arched recess on the north side of the chancel, the usual position for the founder’s tomb, and an inscription, now lost, recorded that he built the chancel of the church in honour of the Blessed Mary, St. Andrew, and All Saints, which may not necessarily mean that he provided the funds, but that the work was done under his care, just as we say that Bishop Hugh built the choir of Lincoln Cathedral.
Except in the great Perpendicular structures of East Anglia, it is comparatively rare to find a parish church built at one effort, in one style, and untouched by subsequent accretions, as at Heckington—so rare, in fact, that the picturesqueness and irregularity arising from the association of various styles and dates in the majority of our churches has almost come to be looked upon as an essential part of our Gothic architecture, and one of its leading characteristics; and though it is true that the mediæval builder excelled in the charming naïveté with which he superimposed his own work upon and adapted it to that of his predecessors, yet when the opportunity occurred of starting de novo, he built with dignity and symmetry, and devoid of intentional irregularity or straining after what we call picturesqueness. So at Heckington Church we find a perfectly symmetrical and dignified plan of apparently orthodox cruciform type, and with a western tower; while a more critical examination shows that the transepts are not in their usual position immediately west of the chancel, but separated therefrom by a short bay of aisleless nave, being, as a matter of fact, not really transepts at all, but attached chapels. And their position is therefore logical, for here the tower is, very properly for a small parish church, at the west end, while the true cruciform plan demands, nay requires it, on the crossing.
How well this apparent eccentricity and departure from the orthodox was justified by results is shown as the church is approached from the south-west, whence the nave may be seen continuing through and past the transepts, which are kept on a lower level than the nave, and thus break up the structure into a beautiful piece of grouping, without in any way detracting from its apparent length.
The tower and spire, 97 feet high to the parapet, and 182 feet to the top of the vane, is an interesting example of the transition stage between the early broach spire and the pinnacle and flying buttress treatment of the Perpendicular Period; for here are both pinnacles and broaches, the former hexagonal in plan, and attached to the broaches by gablets, through which openings are pierced, forming a continuous walk behind the parapet. The pinnacles are too high and the general grouping at the base of the spire too heavy for its height, and it seems likely that the architect used the proportions he had been accustomed to in a broached spire and parapetless tower as at the neighbouring Church of Ewerby (possibly by the same hand), and failed to allow for the shortening effect of the parapet and pinnacles. The outline of the spire has no “entasis” or swelling to counteract the drooping effect of the converging straight lines, but the same result has been achieved by the gablets of the eight “lucarnes,” or spire lights, which add bulk, and at the same time break the continuity of the outline; at Ewerby, which has no spire lights, the entasis is distinctly noticeable. Sometimes this refinement was carried to excess, as at Leadenham in this county, where the result has been to produce a grotesque resemblance to a sugar-loaf. No doubt the elaborate crocketing of the angles of later spires was another expedient to the same end.
Transcriber’s Note: this image is clickable for a larger version.
St Andrews Church. Heckington. Lincolnshire.
Ground Plan.
In the flowing tracery and foliage of the south porch gable are three interesting shields—Edward the Confessor, a cross patonce between five martlets; St. Edmund, three crowns two and one; and the royal arms of England, three lions passant gardant. The figure in the apex of the gable is missing, but, from the adoring angels on either side, it was probably that of the Virgin and Child. The whole of the south side is a perfect example of Curvilinear art; the flowing lines of the window tracery and pierced parapets, buttresses with niches and pinnacles enriched with foliage and carvings of vigorous yet refined workmanship, the bold and lofty staircase turrets at the east end of the nave, all disposed in perfect harmony and proportion, and tied together by the admirable group of mouldings sweeping round the base. Here is English Gothic at its zenith—vigorous, yet refined; luxuriant, yet restrained. The priests’ door on the south side of the chancel cuts rather clumsily into the jamb and sill of the window, owing to lack of space between the latter and the adjoining buttress. The writer recollects a church in Suffolk where a similar difficulty had been surmounted by throwing the buttress clear of the wall on a flying arch and placing the door beneath it—a pretty instance of the manner in which the mediæval builder created a virtue out of a necessity. The east end is perhaps the most pleasing part of the exterior—admirably proportioned, vigorous, and graceful, the seven-light window one of the finest in the whole country; were this the only portion of the church left to us, it would yet have proclaimed the unknown architect a master of his craft.
The interior is at first disappointing; the arches only chamfered, not a moulding or a piece of carving visible; rood-screen, pews, pulpit, and every scrap of old woodwork swept away. But walk into the chancel, turn to the north wall, where Roger de Potesgrave, in eucharistic vestments, lies under an arched recess, and a little farther east appears a mass of tracery and sculpture, like an elaborate aumbry; it is the Easter Sepulchre, perhaps the richest in England, except one of the same date at Hawton, near Newark. Below, in canopied niches, sleep four Roman soldiers; next, the sepulchre itself, a small recess, with figures of the three women and the attendant angels, and above this the risen Christ attended by adoring angels. For richness and delicacy of execution it is beyond praise. Easter sepulchres in stone (often they were of wood, and have been swept away) were designed as a permanent receptacle for the celebration of a rite marking the advent and holiness of Easter. On Good Friday the consecrated host was deposited in the sepulchre, where it was continually watched until Easter morning, when it was again placed on the altar. In the articles of inquiry issued by Cranmer in 1547 one is, “Whether they had upon Good Friday last past the sepulchre with their lights, having the sacrament therein?” On the south side of the chancel are fine sedilia in three compartments, in design and execution equal to the Easter Sepulchre; the seats are covered by groining and trefoil arches with gables, above which are sculptured Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, SS. Barbara and Katherine, and St. Michael; the cornice bears figures of angels crowning the saints below and swinging censers. A recent writer on English mediæval figure sculpture says: “The stone of these pieces is the Lincoln and Ancaster oolite, and they are insertions in the body of the building, so they are probably importations from the Lincoln or Stamford workshops. Of coarser texture than the carvings of clunch at Ely, they have less freedom and incisive cutting, but their composition has the same quality of decorative story-telling.”
St. Andrew’s, Heckington, South Transept and Porch.
From the north wall of the chancel several steps lead up into the vestry, which has a double piscina, and below which is a vaulted undercroft, known as the “scaup” (skull) house. The south transept, known as the Winkill Aisle, from the local family who were probably benefactors to the church, has sedilia and a double piscina.
The architectural features of the church are beautifully illustrated by a series of forty plates in Bowman and Crowther’s Churches of the Middle Ages, but the full story of its connection with the Abbey of Bardney still waits investigation from the patient historian, and would probably prove of great interest.
St. Andrew’s Church, Heckington, East End.