Country Churches

117. St Lawrence Alton

As one approaches the church the eye is immediately caught by the large Victorian clock on the side of the Norman tower painted pale blue with gilt numbers. The tower is surmounted by a spire but most of the church is built in 15th century Perpendicular style.

Once inside the church note the oldest feature, a plain Saxon font standing in the south aisle. It was apparently discarded when the church was restored in 1868 but in 1934 was discovered in Cirencester and purchased back for £10. The central tower dominates the centre of the church and its pillars are surmounted by fascinating carvings of birds and animals, such as a wolf devouring a bone, a cock, a pelican, a dove and even two donkeys lying on their backs. On one of the north aisle pillars is an attractive 15th century fresco commemorating three figures. St Cornelius is at the top and in the centre is a King (possibly Henry VI) and below an Archbishop who may be St Thomas of Canterbury.
Two brasses are especially interesting. The earliest commemorates Richard Clarke (1485) and his daughter Margery (1534), requesting the reader to pray for their souls. The other, dated 1563, relates to Christopher Walaston “sometime groome of the chamber and one of the ostregere (keeper of falcons unto the Kinges and Queens of famous memorye, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Philip and Mary and to the soveryn ladye Elizabethe the Quenes majesty that now is.”

In the south door can be seen bullet holes and spike marks dating from the Battle of Alton in December 1643 when the Royalist forces were attacked and besieged by the Cromwellians led by Sir William Waller. One Royalist officer Colonel John Boles and 80 of his men took refuge in the church and barricaded themselves in. After a day long battle the Parliament forces broke in and killed Boles who was standing in the pulpit and 60 of his men. A brass nearby (a replica of the original in Winchester Cathedral) commemorates the memory of Colonel Boles saying “His Gratious Soveraigne hearing of his death gave him this high commemoration ‘Bring me a moorning scarfe. I have lost one of the best Commanders in this Kingdom’.”

Another interesting artefact is an Elizabethan alms box with a painted board over it saying ‘Remember the Poore and turne not thy face away from any poore man and the face of the Lord shall not be turned away from thee.’ Tobit 4.7

All the glass in the church is Victorian. The east window depicts the Ascending Christ, the Baptism and the Last Supper. The Lady Chapel glass shows scenes of Christ the Healer and on the north side is the Mary window in memory of Martha Hutchins. It shows Mary Magdalene and Mary wife of Cleophas. On the north side of the altar is a window installed in 1899 in memory of Henry Hall a local brewer. It has plain glass surrounds and in the centre the three Archangels - St Gabriel, St Michael and St Raphael - are shown flying upwards.

After the First World War the Lady Chapel was restored in memory of the fallen including two painted wooden statues of St Michael and St George on either side. A tryptych on the wall alongside has a roll of vellum inside listing over 100 men of Alton killed in the war. On a nearby pillar is a brass commemorating the three grandsons of John and Ellen Lowis - Lt John Lowis, Major Tom Bourdillon and Lt Robin Lowis - who were all killed on the Western Front. On the tower wall facing west can also be seen a Boer War Memorial listing four Alton men killed in that conflict 1899-1902.

Finally on the west wall there is an attractive 1950’s memorial to two former Church wardens Mr Ernest Ham and his wife Edith. One plaque shows St Lawrence and the other the Virgin Mary and Child.

Further details can be read in the excellent History of the church by a former Vicar D L Couper which is on sale in the church.

John Symonds