St. Lawrence Hatfield - The Interior

A view up the tower

The exterior of St. Lawrence’s church in Hatfield, with its various building stones and styles of masonry, has plenty of geological and archaeological interest and I was hoping to see further evidence of the various phases of building in the interior. 

A view east along the nave

Unfortunately, the walls to the aisles, the nave and the spandrels between the arches to the arcades have all been plastered and I was therefore a bit disappointed not to be able to investigate this further. 

A general view of the north arcade

The arcades are considered by Pevsner to be C13 in date and they comprise circular piers with round abaci, with double chamfered pointed arches. The report for the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture refers to a plinth in the churchyard that matches one in the arcade, which is believed to be C12, but I didn’t notice any of these. 

A general view of the south arcade

Although the most ancient masonry was not visible, there are still some interesting features. The Norman west door has a double arch and, to the north side, there is the remains of the stairway to the Norman tower, which is in the form of a rounded projection from the wall. 

The west door and old staircase to the tower

Looking along the north aisle, a series of transverse arches span from the piers to the outer wall, which Pevsner thinks coincide with the late C15 building work. He further suggests that these may have been added for structural support but relating to the building of the tower and clerestory but, if this is their purpose, these should presumably also appear on the south aisle. Also, compared to the south aisle, where the window reveals show a very thick wall that is characteristic of Norman churches, the wall of the north aisle is very thin and indicates that the only C12 remains are those seen in the cobbled west end. 

Transverse arches along the north aisle

To the east of the aisles, large blocks of well squared dolomitic limestone are still visible in all of the walls but these aren’t generally of much archaeological interest. That said, the slender octagonal pier and arcade between the Lady Chapel and the chancel provide a good example of how the elegant Perpendicular Gothic style reflected a better understanding of the distribution of loads in the structure, compared to earlier periods. 

The arcade between the Lady Chapel and the chancel

The section of walling that separates the north transept and St. Catherine’s Chapel appears to show a remodelling of the arch between them, with a butted joint and a part of an arch providing evidence of this. Looking at the same wall from inside St. Catherine’s Chapel, the outline of this arch is much more pronounced and the stone used in the voussoirs is very different in colour

Views of the arch between the north transept and St. Catherine's Chapel

Also, when looking at the arcade to St. Catherine’s Chapel from the chancel, various discrepancies in the masonry are clearly seen, with the lower sections of walling being built in irregularly sized and shaped blocks and the upper sections built of larger rectangular blocks. 

Variations in masonry within the chancel

Various wall monuments are scattered around the transepts, chapels and chancel but the most interesting, from a geological point of view, is the C15 tomb chest with cusped lozenges carrying shields, which is placed against the north wall of the Lady Chapel. 

The tomb chest in the Lady Chapel

I didn’t examine it with a hand lens, or apply hydrochloric acid and scratch tests, but it is a very fine grained grey stone that reminds me of the side panels of the Daubeney tomb at St. Botolph’s church in Saxilby, Lincolnshire, which I thought was made from a muddy limestone quarried from the Lias Group.

A  detail of the Daubeney tomb in Saxilby