6 BARNWELL ALL SAINTS
Consigned to history nearly 200 years ago
As a village churchwarden, I have two 13th-century churches in my care. All that remains of All Saints is the chancel (the eastern end where the altar is), the rest having been demolished in 1825 due to its poor condition. The chancel survives because it contains various monuments to members of the Montagu family – the Earls of Sandwich. Through that family there are connections to Samuel Pepys and Lord Nelson, but for most visitors the most striking feature and the thing they come to see is the monument to three-year-old Henry Montagu who drowned in the moat of the long-gone manor house when he dropped an orange and it rolled into the water.
There are sketches of the church, but if I could trace an original floor plan I would model it as it was. A tree now blocks the same viewpoint as the engraving.