The Horsleys - St Martin's and St Mary's

My first outing on the train for four months was a week last Thursday. It was odd sitting in my mask and hearing the repeated announcements telling me 'Space on our services is extremely limited. Find other methods of transport if you possibly can' when there was no other soul in sight. Mind you, early afternoon on a Thursday is never the busiest of times. 

My aim was to visit the church at East Horsley which I knew would be open and which I had been told had been, once upon a time, a stronghold of the Catholic Movement in wild Surrey. Nowadays it is more middle-of-the-road, but you can still see the signs. As is often the case, a Victorian rebuilding affected most of the fabric apart from the tower, but in East Horsley's case it was a rebuilding carried out by Henry Woodyer, the Tractarian gentleman architect we have already met at Dorking, Hascombe and Grafham. The main elaboration that reveals his hand is the sumptuous tilework around the altar, and the extremely Eucharistic mottoes therein. This will all have been paid for by the Earl of Lovelace who built the extraordinary 'Victorian Disneyland' of Horsley Towers not far away - and who married Lord Bryon's daughter Ada, the mathematician and collaborator of Charles Babbage. 

There are no church history leaflets about at the moment, thanks to the Virus, so I don't know when the aumbry was introduced, but its existing form clearly owes its existence to some previous incumbent with a very Baroque taste. Is it an antique looted from the Continent, or a modern creation by someone like Martin Travers?

I suspect there used to be a Lady Chapel at East Horsley, which will have been swept away in the development of a new parish room which adjoins the nave. At least that's how I interpret the somewhat overpowering statues of the Virgin and Child and accompanying musician angels which now occupy one wall of the room. 

So much for East Horsley. Walking along the road to West Horsley was a gamble but by sheer good fortune I met the churchwardens who were debating how a forthcoming funeral was going to be accommodated, and they let me look around quickly. West Horsley has preserved its past better than East, and has medieval wall paintings, an old chancel screen, and a selection of huge 17th- and 18th-century tombs. There is not much Anglo-Catholicism on show, though, even given the restrictions attendant on Covid-19. There is an icon by the makeshift prayer station, and that's about it. 

However, the churchwardens were very keen that I take note of a roundel of glass that had been inserted into the restored east window in the 19th century, and as I looked I became convinced that it's an image of St Catherine. Her face is missing, but it seems to be the point in the legend where an angel smashes the razored wheels which fly off in bits to slam into the pagans round about the saint. I've never seen a reference to this glass before - 14th century, perhaps? -  so finding it was a bonus within a bonus!