Relhan Collection : 301 Swavesey church. NE view

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>1801 </p><p>St Andrew’s church was originally attached to an adjacent priory, a cell of the Abbey of St Sergius and St Bacchus in Normandy, of which some earthworks survive. It stands in a small island, with the church and manor house joined to the main village by a causeway. In the C18 it was the hub of the inland port connected to the Ouse by a lode. Established in the C11, some remaining walls of the buildings stand beside the chancel. A little Anglo-Saxon masonry survives and the grant of the church to the abbey at Angers before 1086, with rich tithes from neighbouring villages, suggests early minster status. The church was largely rebuilt in the early C14 with a grand S aisle and a fine series of 2-light windows; the N aisle is shown with six equally fine tripartite windows with various forms of tracery. Did this once face an open cloister? Three clumsy brick buttresses replace the original slimline buttresses; the roof to the nave is not shown. The C13 tower was raised with crenellated parapets in the late C14, it has double 2-light windows, and a small spirelet is seen with a weather vane. Layer (1586-1640) described the church as ‘<i>very large, beautiful and well-built of freestone’</i> and ‘<i>this is a very faire and large country church as any is</i>’. In his time the chapel was beautified (in his view) with monuments to the Cutts family (eg <b>302</b>). Under the chapel was a vault, also for the Cutts. Walls enclosed the churchyard, as today. In 1867, restoration by Steer<i></i>included rebuilding the chancel; windows were restored but those between the N aisle buttresses remain. The rural scene remains. Changes include loss of the ruined outbuildings in Relhan’s drawing. </p><p>Bradley and Pevsner 2014; Davis EM pers comm; Evelyn-White 1911; Woudhuysen, Tudor-Craig, James and Woodger in Hicks 1997; Palmer 1932; Ravensdale 1984; VCH 1989</p></p>