| Description | The Parish has existed since 1793 when St Edmund’s College was established at Old Hall Green. In that year a small chapel was built on the edge of the farmyard of the gabled seventeenth-century house known as Old Hall, serving both the school and wider scattered Catholic population. This was replaced by a larger ‘parish chapel’ alongside the old house, opened by the Rev. Thomas Griffiths in 1818. In 1911, The Edmundian wrote of this chapel ‘though its greatest admirers would not claim that it is handsome, nevertheless so many old memories cling around it that we are loath to part with it […] the square unpretending nature of the architecture with the characteristic gallery at the back breathes of bygone times, of days of penal laws and unemancipated Catholics’ (quoted in The Church of St Edmund of Canterbury &c, p.7). The chapel was not pulled down, but became the school gymnasium and rifle range, and is listed Grade II.
The site of the present church had been used as the drying ground for the College laundry. There may also have been a small burial ground – the description of 1911 describes the new cemetery as ‘adjoining the old one’. The church, dedicated to St Edmund of Canterbury and the English Martyrs, was built by Arthur Guy Ellis, a local resident and prominent Catholic lawyer, as a memorial to his wife Edith Cécile, who had died on 9 November 1909 and is buried here. The church was built from designs by Arthur Young, and was solemnly consecrated by Bishop Butt on 2 December 1911.
The church is served from Puckeridge, where a small ‘temporary’ chapel was built opposite St Thomas More’s school in 1926 to serve as a Chapel of ease for St Thomas of Canterbury School as well as providing the village with a local church.
The current church was built by Arthur Young and was a gift from Mr Arthur Guy Ellis in memory of his wife Edith Cécile.The church consists of an aisleless nave with south porch, and a narrower square-ended chancel with confessionals and sacristy to the north. It is built of red brick laid in English bond, with some darker brick banding and ashlar stone dressings. The porch is timber framed with brick nogging over a high brick and stone plinth. Both it and the main body of the church are roofed with clay tiles. The entrance porch has oak double doors within a Tudor-arched opening with carved shields in the spandrels and an inscription, ‘The Master is here and calleth thee’. Within the porch are a holy water stoup and a brass memorial panel to Edith Cécile Ellis, late wife of the donor. The nave has white plaster walls and an oak waggon roof, typical of Young’s churches. The church retains its original oak furnishings throughout, including high-backed sedile and stalls in the sanctuary, moveable benches in the nave with panelled ends with square moulded tops, and a high panelled and railed enclosure at the west end forming a baptistery area. Within this enclosure, the stone font is placed on a raised stone floor and has an octagonal bowl with wooden cover supported by a stubby column with floriated capital. Over the baptistery is a handsome brass wall monument, recording the gift of Arthur Guy Ellis. In the southwest corner is an oak Lady altar with a large semi-circular ceramic over, a depiction of the Annunciation in the style of Della Robbia, in memory of Anna Stancioff, Comtesse de Grenaud and Mistress of the Robes at the Bulgarian court, given by her children in May 1955. A small oak tabernacle has an enamel Agnus Dei on its door. In the northwest corner is a small pipe organ with an oak case, made by The Positive Organ Company, London NW. The Positive Organ Company specialised in cheap, sturdily-built organs for smaller churches.
There are three stained glass windows; the East window, with the Holy Trinity flanked by kneeling figures of St John the Baptist and St Francis, given in memory of Edith Cécile Ellis by her mother, 1911, signed by Ward & Hughes; on the south side of the chancel, a two-light window depicting the Annunciation, 1931, signed A.L. and E.C. Moore, London; the easternmost window on the south side of the nave, a narrow single-light depicting Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, possibly c1950, not signed or dated. |