St Ethelbert

The church is orientated roughly north-south, but this description follows conventional liturgical orientation, assuming the altar is located to the east.

The building was listed relatively recently, in 2009, and the list entry is more detailed than most (see below). Repetition is unnecessary, and this description is limited to additional information and one correction. The roof of the timber framed porch is covered with oak shingles, not slate

The tracery of the east window is said to be modelled on that at St Ethelbert, Lyminge, Kent. The stained glass here is a memorial to Louise Agnes Herbert, donor; artist/maker not identified. The four carved stone heraldic shields below the west window commemorate Fr Rogers (cross and AR monogram), the arms of Pope Leo XIII and Bishop Hedley, and Mrs Herbert (floriated cross and initials LAH).

There are three two light stained glass windows in the Lady/Cadwallador Chapel: to the east (The Annunciation, in memory of Nigel Fowler Wright, by Hardman & Co 1988) and south (to Bl Roger Cadwallador, 1976, by Patrick Feeney of Hardman & Co. and to Bl Nicholas Wheeler, in memory of the Norman Charles Reeves, scholar and author of the parish history, d2001, signed W & B). William Storr-Barber, responsible for the stone statue of St Ethelbert in the niche on the west front, is a Leominster sculptor who carved several First World War memorials.

The only memorial in the church (other than those introduced from elsewhere) is a marble tablet in the nave to AC Amsler ‘musician and linguist’ who died in 1918. The Eric Gill memorial in the Lady Chapel is to Richard and Geoffrey Snead-Cox, both killed early in the Great War. This and other items (including a pipe organ) were brought to St Ethelbert’s from the Snead-Cox family chapel at Broxwood (1863, Charles Hansom, listed Grade II), which was closed in 1987 and has now been converted to residential use.