Early History & Layout
Early History of Thundridge Old Church
Roman, Saxon, Norman, & Medieval Site Connections
Documents reference a Saxon chancel arch but there are no images of this or any other diagnostic Saxon features, so this remains speculative.
No archaeological investigation of the churchyard or moated enclosure has ever taken place, but Saxon churches were often located on pre-Christian sites of spiritual significance, taking advantage of people’s existing devotion to a particular place.
The Rib Valley in this immediate area has flint artefacts back to the stone age, early Bronze Age ‘Beaker’ burials and ring ditch structures most likely funerary/ceremonial round barrows of the same era, Roman barrows (with artefacts in the Verulamium Museum at St Albans), and 6th century BC pottery, bones and honing stones for sharpening metal, indicating an Iron Age settlement.
Prior to the current ‘Great North Road’/Roman Ermine Street, the church site is likely to have been on the location of the main North South artery, on an easier gradient and crossing point than Wadesmill Hill. In short, this location has had occupation and deep significance that has hardly begun to be fully investigated.
When Ware Priory was sacked in Henry VIII’s reign, the church was gifted to Trinity College, Cambridge:
“THE Rectory is impropriated to the perpetual Use of the Masters and Fellows of Trinity Colledge in Cambridgc; and this Vicaridge Anno 26 H.VIII. was rated in the King’s Books at the yearly Value of 6l [£6]. of which the Masters and Fellows aforesaid are the Patrons. This Church is dedicated to the Honour of the Virgin Mary, from whom it is called Little St. Maries, and is situated in the bottom of the Hill, near tile Mannor-house in the Deanery of Braughing, in the Diocess of London: The Chancel and Body of the Church are tyled, and at the West End of the Church is a square Tower, wherein are four small Bells, and a fair Shaft or Spire cover’d with Lead is erected upon the Tower.” Source: The Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, Sir Henry Chauncy, 1700
Church Layout
Before it’s partial demolition in 1853 the church measured about 25m by 12m. The foundations can still be seen in drought marks, such as those shown in 2020.
Several images of the church survive, shown below are an engraving by J Buckler in 1828 and a model that used to be in Hertford Museum, now lost.
The castellated 15C tower had a ‘Hertfordshire Spike’ on top. The nave was built of flint and rubble leading through the chancel arch to a tiled and plastered eastern chancel. The porch just to the east of the tower led to a Norman door (now set in the east side of the tower).
Contrary to the lurid tales still being peddled by local newspapers and elsewhere, the church is demonstrably on a perfectly normal East-West alignment, with the main altar at the east end of the church, facing Jerusalem and not in the lazily ‘rumoured’ satanic North-South orientation.