Palladian Church
Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire
A temple to Apollo where George Bernard Shaw played the organ.
St Peter's is a listed Victorian Church in the Arts & Crafts style that has been carefully maintained over the years and is in exceptional and original condition.
The church features in the Simon Jenkins book England's Thousand Best Churches (1999). It was designed by the noted architect John Pollard Seddon and completed in 1875. It has a fine font, pulpit and a beautiful painted ceiling in the chancel. It also features the only church commission undertaken by the famous Martin Brothers pottery.
JP Seddon was linked to the leading Pre-Raphaelites through his brother, landscape painter Thomas Seddon (1821 – 1856). The Pre-Raphaelites had a lasting effect on his work. The V&A Museum has an item made by Seddon in 1861, known as King René’s Honeymoon Cabinet, which has painted decorations by Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Coley Burne-Jones and Val Prinsep.
The parish war memorial stands in front of the church and commemorates twenty men who died for their country in the First World War.
This current church is at least the fourth one to have existed in the parish - the previous churches were on a different site along the lane to the north, where a disused churchyard still exists. The first burial in the current churchyard took place in 1919, and burials continued in the old churchyard until 1945.
Much more information about the history and architecture of the church can be found on the parish website. A free quarterly email newsletter is available for people with loved ones commemorated in either churchyard - please contact us if you would like to be added to the mailing list.