St Mary the Virgin
Woodford Halse, Northamptonshire
The church has been at the heart of the village of Woodford Halse since the 12th century although the church was substantially rebuilt in the late 19th century.
There were good quarries here in medieval times and the village buildings and in particular the layout, are a rare survival from that period.
The plan, and it clearly was a plan, foresaw two parallel streets (High Street and Lime Street) linked at either end. The rough rectangle that these streets encased provided individual plots of land for each dwelling. The houses, which form these streets, date from the medieval period onwards. They are constructed in the rich local ironstone.
The village also is unusual in the number of old rectories that survive: three in all but if you were to include the Hall built by the late 18th century the Revd Francis Annesley, a relative of Lord Mountnorris, it would be four. The hall was designed for him by James Lewis in a refined neo classical style between 1789-1791.
Whilst the church dates back to medieval times and the tower is 14th century, what largely remains is due to the rebuilding skills of the architect Richard Charles Hussey (1806-1887) who had inherited Thomas Rickman's Birmingham practice in 1835.
At Eydon he did a fine Tractarian job between 1864-5. It is no coincidence that he had worked on Newman’s church at Littlemore outside Oxford some 20 years earlier. Not to be missed is the unusual Norman font with its strange scalloped fluting.
