BIGGLESWADE HUNDRED 



EVERTON 



in the south wall are two corresponding to them ; 

 they belong to the first half of the twelfth century. 

 The external stonework is in the same shelly oolite as 

 the eastern quoins of the chancel, but does not show 

 the tendency to long and short work which suggests 

 an early date for the latter. At the west of the 

 chancel are north and south windows of two lights, 

 c. 1500, and the chancel arch, with shafts and half- 

 octagonal capitals to the inner order, is probably con- 

 temporary with them. The traces of a blocked door- 

 way are to be seen on the south side of the chancel ; 

 it is shown open in a plan of 1837 preserved in the 

 library of the Society of Antiquaries. The nave 

 arcades are of three bays, with round shafts and 

 scalloped capitals, those of the south arcade being of 

 somewhat later type. The arches are semicircular, 

 of a single square order, and the date of the north 

 arcade is c. 1140, the south being probably twenty 

 years later. At the west end of the north aisle is a 

 twelfth-century round-headed light, probably not in 

 its original position, while at the east is a square- 

 headed two-light window of the sixteenth century. 

 In the north wall are two three-light windows, one 

 modern and the other perhaps of early sixteenth- 

 century date, and between them is a north door with 

 a fifteenth-century outer arch, but semicircular rear 

 arch. 



The south aisle has a fifteenth-century east window 

 of two lights and two south windows in modern 

 masonry. Between them is the south doorway, 

 ^.11 60, with an arch of two orders, the outer one 

 moulded, with scalloped capitals, and ringed shafts in 

 the jambs. Over it is a late fifteenth-century porch of 

 good detail, with a panelled plinth and parapet with 

 projecting gargoyles ; it has two-light windows on 

 north and south. The west wall of the aisle has been 

 rebuilt, and its window, a small twelfth-century light, 

 reset. The nave has a late fifteenth-century clear- 

 story with three quatrefoiled openings on the north, 

 and on the south three square-headed windows, two 

 of four lights and one of two, the former probably 

 of the second quarter of the sixteenth century, and 

 rephcing earlier and smaller lights. 



The tower is of four stages with a modern em- 

 battled parapet and two-light belfry windows, with a 

 stair in the south-west angle kept within the line of 

 the walls, while the three-light west window of the 

 ground stage is set out of centre to make room for it. 

 The whole seems to be a fifteenth-century addition, 

 and has an eastern arch of that date. 



The woodwork in the church is modern, but there 

 are sorne fifteenth-century stone corbels to the nave 

 roof, while others, of wood, have the classical egg-and- 

 tongue moulding, and are probably of seventeenth- 

 century date. The former arrangements of the church, 

 as shown in the plan of 1837 already referred to, are 

 worth recording as a fine example of the ' preaching- 

 house' ideal. 



At the west end of the nave was a children's gallery 

 on four wooden pillars, and immediately in front of it 

 the pulpit, reading desk, and clerk's desk, facing east- 

 ward. Round them were grouped a few benches 

 which were the free seats, while the rest of the nave 

 was taken up with square pews. The pulpit and 

 desks seem to have been before this time set against 

 the south arcade, about midway in the nave, and facing 



northwards. The chancel arch was blocked by a great 

 faculty pew, or rather gallery, as it appears to have 

 been reached by a staircase in the chancel, and the 

 east end of the north aisle was the vestry or robing- 

 room. The font stood in the west bay of the south 

 arcade as at present. 



The only monument of interest beyond the matrix 

 of a large fifteenth-century brass 6 ft. 9 in. by 3 ft. 8 in., 

 at the east end of the nave, is that of Sir Humphrey 

 Winch, 1624, on the wall above the pulpit at the 

 north-east of the nave. It is of alabaster and coloured 

 marbles, a very well-designed and effective composition, 

 having in the middle a recess containing a half-effigy 

 in judge's robes, the face keen and life-like, and 

 above it a pyramidal design of two stages sur- 

 mounted by the arms of Winch. The inscription 

 implies that Sir Humphrey is buried in the wall, 

 and at the back of the monument a masonry pro- 

 jection has been added which seems to give grounds 

 for the statement. 



There are five bells, the treble and second by 

 John Keene, 1630, the third by Richard Oldfeild, 

 161 1, the fourth by John Dier, c. 1590, inscribed 

 ' Johannes Dier hanc campanam fecit,' and the tenor 

 by Christopher Graye, 1 68 1, recast 1894 by Mears 

 & Stainbank. 



The plate includes a cup of Elizabethan type with- 

 out hall-marks, probably of local make, having a shallow 

 bowl with spreading lip, and a roughly-engraved band 

 of ornament. On it is the word ' Everton.' The 

 paten, with no other mark than that of the maker, 

 ' E. S.' in a dotted oval, is likewise undated, but may 

 by the mark be connected with the London smith 

 who made in 1652 a silver-gilt porringer noted by 

 Cripps {Old English Plate, 374). The flagon is of 

 1694, given 1695, and has an inscription within 

 a border of feather mantling, recalling the type in 

 fashion some twenty years before. 



The registers begin in 1656, a few earlier entries 

 from 1650 being copied in, and the first book 

 ends in 1738, containing a list of briefs, 1659- 

 1705. The second book, of burials in woollen, runs 

 from 1678 to 1706, and contains briefs, 1723-9. 

 The third, 1727-1813 (marriages to 1754), was 

 given by the Rev. Robert Greene, who wrote a 

 long and laudatory account of himself in a some- 

 what overloaded Latinity on the flyleaf. The fourth 

 book, with printed forms for marriages, runs from 

 1769 to 1 8 19. 



The Domesday Survey mentions 

 ADVOWSON the existence of a church and priest 

 in Everton.'^ This church was given 

 about 1 1 40 by Gilbert, earl of Pembroke,** to 

 St. Neots Priory, which continued to hold it down 

 to the Dissolution,^ when it passed to the crown, from 

 whom it was purchased in 1 544 by Clare College, 

 Cambridge, to whom the advowson at present 

 belongs.*^ 



Poor's Money or the Carey Fund. — 

 CHARITIES In 1764, legacies amounting to- 

 gether to ;^i6o left by the wills of 

 Walter and Elizabeth Carey were received by the 

 vicar and churchwardens. The legacies are now re- 

 presented by j£l74 London and North Western 

 Railway ^^3 per cent, debenture stock with the 

 official trustees, the annual dividends of which. 



68 V.C.H. Beds, i, 266a. 

 6'i Cott. MSS. Faust. A. iv. 



65 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iv, 

 261. 



66 Pat. 36 Hen. VIII, pt. 34, m. i j 

 Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.). 



229 



