St Etheldreda, Guilsborough

Guilsborough Church has been in existence for over 800 years and is possibly on the site of a Saxon church before that. Over the millennia it has been developed and extended a number of times and the internal layout has changed over the years with the addition of the two side aisles in the 14th and 15th centuries and the installation of a second altar in the area known as the Lady Chapel. The addition of seating, be it the Georgian box pews of which two examples still exist today, or Victorian pews in the central area of the church or nave or more modern pews built in the 1920s in the Lady Chapel and the north aisle where the band sits on Remembrance Sunday, also

demonstrates changes over time. Before this seating, people stood at services or sat on benches within the body of the church.

Today, we are looking at modernising the internal layout to make it more user-friendly, more accessible and available for uses beyond its function as a place of worship. Following the consultation with the village in 2018/19, the church council have been looking at the ideas to improve the heating, accessibility, the kitchen and toilet, lighting, flexible space for multi-purpose community use while also safeguarding its historical features.  

Taking on board all those ideas and suggestions, we have prepared plans which show a raised floor, allowing underfloor heating, and therefore a level floor from the porch all through the centre of the church, the removal of some of the pews to free up space for other uses, a new servery and installation of a new toilet, relocation of the Rector’s office (vestry), new lighting and upgrading of the audio-visual system and lastly a new wood and glass door leading into the porch.

Plans have recently been published and shared at two public meetings demonstrating these ideas and are currently with the appropriate authorities for final approval. Once this has been achieved, it is our programme to start work on the physical project in early next year with completion in the summer. These plans can be viewed in the church during October.

A Thousand Years on the Hill: the story of Guilsborough Parish Church

Most of us walk past it every week. Fewer of us realise that the building at the top of the village has been standing, in one form or another, for something close to a thousand years — and that the ground beneath it may have been sacred for a good deal longer.

Before the record begins

Wetton's guidebook of 1849 notes that when an embankment west of the church was removed, around 1809, a quantity of human bones came to light. Local tradition put them down to a Roman burial place. There was certainly a Roman fort there, preceded by an Iron Age and Bronze Age fort. This was long before anyone locally wrote things down.

The first firm record comes in 1086. The Domesday Book lists at ‘Gisleburg’ - one church with some land, held by Count Robert of Mortain, half-brother of William the Conqueror. Crucially, it also names the man it was taken from: Leofwin, a Saxon freeman. So the church was already there before the Normans arrived, which places its origins somewhere between roughly 700 and 1000 AD.

Saxon clues in the stonework

Little Saxon fabric survives anywhere in England, but three details are suggestive. There is a small window cut from a single block of stone, with a narrow un-splayed opening — the same "hole in a block" design found at Brixworth and Ravensthorpe, typical of the mid-Saxon period. The tower stands on foundation stones that look too large for its 13th-century base. And the church's original dedication was to St Wilfrid, a name that only came into use after his canonisation in the 8th century, and up to about the year 1000.

Knights, dragons and the Seven Ages

The church we see today is largely 13th and 14th century. Warmer weather, better tools and a thriving wool trade filled parish coffers, and stone churches went up across the county. Around 1225 the church and its lands were given by William de Dive, Lord of the Manor of Nortoft, to the Knights Hospitaller — the Order of St John, still going today as the St John Ambulance. They appointed our first named vicar, Richard de Standen, and remained in charge of the church until the Order was dissolved in 1560.

Their masons left plenty behind. Look up and you will find sixty-eight carved heads in stone and wood, including a set representing the Seven Ages of Man. On the chancel arch sits a wyvern — a two-legged dragon standing for plague and pestilence — pinned down by the weight of the building, barred from the sacred space beyond.

Reformation, riot and repair

Change came hard. The rood loft with its statues went under Elizabeth I. During the Civil War the glass was removed and any wall paintings whitewashed. Soon after, the dedication quietly changed from St Wilfrid — too Roman, too troublesome for Henry VIII’s and the Puritan’s taste — to St Etheldreda, the Saxon abbess of Ely.

The 19th century brought the sharpest conflict. A new roof in 1815 cost £850, levied on every villager, and the parish's reply to this and other ‘high church’ changes was blunt: the church was defaced in 1816, stones thrown at the roof during services in 1817, windows broken by Dissenters, and in 1833 the tithe barn was set alight. Calmer decades followed, and by the 1870s the church was gaining stained glass by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, some of it in memory of Countess Adelaide Spencer.

Still going

The gallery put up in 1700 came down in the 1920s, heating arrived in 1926, the Lady Chapel in 1965, and roof and structural repairs in the 2020s. Further improvements are planned for 2027. A thousand years on, the work never quite stops — the building continues to evolve to meet the times.

David O'Neil