Thundridge Old Church contains artefacts dating from as early as Saxon times to the Victorian era. While many items, including internal monuments and the medieval bells, were moved to Thundridge New St Mary’s in 1853; other stone work, including the Norman Archway and Pelham Buckle Quatrefoil remain in the tower; a few graveyard memorials have been removed to Ware Museum; however, like the collapsed graveyard boundary wall, many more are showing their 200 years of age (and sadly the disrespect shown by some visitors to this consecrated site).
One way TOCAG would like to recognise sponsorship (corporate, community group, family or personal) is through the adoption of stones and monuments at the Old Church site.
Other churchyard custodians have raised funds to engage stonemasons to restore monuments and clarify carved inscriptions. TOCAG have approached local craftsperson’s who would be willing to undertake such work, if this is a fundraising project supporters which to pursue.
Memorials include:
The 18th century landlord and landlady of The Feathers, Wadesmill
The landlord of The White Horse, Ware, now the southern entrance to Tescos
The Pelham Buckle and Quatrefoil may be of interest to the villages and family they are named for
The family crypts of the Gardiner and other families also need attention
Other memorials, lost but recorded during earlier churchyard surveys, include one of the church’s Georgian vicars, Rev William Hughes, who was made an honorary member of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade by Thomas Clarkson, for speaking out in the pulpit against slavery