Church Of St Andrew

The Church of St Andrew stands on the north-west side of Church Street, Chesterton. Although the original church was 13th century, the present building is principally 14th and 15th century, with 19th century alterations.

Exterior

The church is built of rubble with some flint, freestone and clunch dressings. The spire is of ashlar, and the roof is slate and lead. The 14th century west tower is buttressed and embattled, with the spire lit by two tiers of crocketed dormer windows. The spire was restored in 1847, and both spire and tower and chancel were restored in 1968.

The doorway is at the west end of the south aisle. The windows are Perpendicular, apart from the easternmost window of the south aisle, which is Decorated. All windows are much restored. The south aisle is buttressed. The north vestry dates from the 16th century and was extended in 1934 to form two vestries. The nave and aisles are embattled, and the north porch is embattled and pinnacled. Gargoyles adorn the north and east aisles and the tower. A small carved figure appears on the south face of the tower, by the top of the eastern buttress.

A plaque dated 1797 on the north wall commemorates Anna Maria Vassa. The inscription reads:

"Should simple village rhymes attract thine eye, / Stranger, as thoughtfully thou passest by, / know that there lies beside this humble stone / A child of colour haply not thine own. / Her father born of Afric's sun-burnt race, / Torn from his native fields, ah foul disgrace; / Through various toils, at length to Britain came / Espous'd, so Heaven ordain'd, an English dame, / And followed Christ: their hope two infants dear. / But one, a hapless Orphan, slumbers here. / To bury her the village children came, / And dropp'd choice flowers, and lisp'd her early fame: / And some that loved her most, as if unblest, / Bedew'd with tears the white wreath on their breast: / But she is gone and dwells in that abode / Where some of every clime shall joy in God."

Interior

The nave has aisles with 14th century arcades of seven bays supported by octagonal piers. Towards the east end of the north aisle is an ogival-arched tomb recess. Towards the east end of the south aisle is a double piscina. At the east end of the south aisle stands a chapel dedicated to those who died in the 1914-18 war. The clerestory is 15th century. The roof is supported by stone corbels, largely 19th century.

The chancel is 15th century but was much reconstructed in 1842-4, with windows completely restored. In the south wall of the chancel are sedilia with small ribbed vaults within the canopies. There are 15th century angel corbels in the chancel, and the floor is laid with polychromatic tiles.

A 15th century painted Doom over the chancel arch extends into the east bays of the clerestory, with much detail remaining, as well as portions of later painting, including a rose and thistle to left and right of the arch. In the west tower, a door leads to a 15th century staircase which is corbelled out on a lion bracket. An organ of 1860 stands to the north of the chancel.

The stained glass includes an east window of 1897 and other glass of 1803, 1872, 1873, 1875, and 1884.

Monuments in the chancel include a pair of black and white marble wall tablets in the form of chest tombs to William and Anne Wiles, who died in 1849 and 1827, made by A. Swinton of Cambridge. In the south aisle is a wall tablet with urn and weeping willow to Diana Elizabeth and Sir Broderick Chinnery, 1840; a stone in the nave marks their vault. In the north aisle are four plain 19th century wall tablets to the Wragg family.

The church contains carved benches, most with poppyhead ends and two with standing figures; some are 15th century, some are copies. There is an early 17th century oak pulpit and a plain 13th century font.

The church has group value with the churchyard and its wall, which are listed, as is the Old Manor House which overlooks it to the south. The listed vicarage of around 1820 lies at a short distance to the east. Chesterton Tower, a listed mid-14th century domestic building, is a little further east.

History

The church at Chesterton is first recorded around 1200. In 1217 the church and living were presented to the papal legate, Cardinal Guala, by Henry III, in gratitude for Guala's efforts at reconciliation during England's domestic unrest at the end of the reign of King John. Cardinal Guala in his turn presented the church and living to the Abbey of Sant'Andrea, which he himself had founded in his home town of Vercelli, near Milan. The Italian abbey thus became rector of the parish of Chesterton and held the benefice for over 200 years. Guala also appointed an English vicar. In 1273 it was directed that "all priests celebrating in the church are to obey the abbot's procurator and also the vicar, who has the governance of the church on account of the English tongue, and they are to do principal reverence to the procurator and secondary reverence to the vicar."

A vicarage was ordained in 1273 to the south of the church. A vicarage of around 1820 lies to the east of the church, though it is no longer inhabited by the vicar. In the mid-14th century a house was built near the church, thought to have been for the procurator. This building, known as Chesterton Tower, remains and is listed at Grade I. It is a rare example of a house built for a foreign appropriator. Until recently it stood in the grounds of the vicarage, but now stands at the centre of a small housing estate, Chesterton Towers.

In 1436 Henry VI seized the advowson of Chesterton from the Abbey of Vercelli and gave it to King's Hall, Cambridge. King's Hall became Trinity College, which is the church's patron today. Many of the vicars of Chesterton have been fellows of Trinity.

The church has a special link with the abolition of the slave trade in England. On the north wall is a plaque commemorating Anna Maria Vassa, daughter of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave and one of England's most effective campaigners for abolition. The plaque tells us that she was interred "near this place", but she does not appear in the church's burial records. According to baptismal records, Anna Maria (Ann Mary) was three years old when she died, though the plaque says that she was four.

Gustavus Vassa was the name given to Anna Maria's father when he was a slave. Olaudah Equiano was the name under which he chose to publish his autobiography, upon which much of our knowledge of his life depends. Olaudah Equiano's was the pre-eminent black voice of British abolition. As a slave, working mainly on board ship, he learned to read and write, and at the age of about twenty he managed to buy his freedom. He settled in England, where he built a life for himself, working at first as a servant. He also participated in an abortive venture to establish a plantation on the Mosquito Coast, his role including selecting the necessary slaves. Appointed commissary for a project to resettle former slaves in Sierra Leone, he suspected corruption in the administration and resigned. Equiano joined the anti-slavery campaign, writing to Queen Charlotte "on behalf of my African brethren" in 1788, and became associated with leading abolitionist figures – Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, and William Wilberforce. In 1789 he published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. The first account of the realities of slavery by one who had experienced them, the book was a huge commercial success and made a dramatic contribution to the campaign for abolition. Equiano became a celebrity, touring the country to promote his book and the cause.

In 1792 he married Susanna Cullen of Soham, Cambridgeshire, where the couple appear to have made their home. They had two daughters, Anna Maria (born 1793) and Joanna (born 1795). Susanna died in February 1796. Equiano left his daughters in Cambridgeshire, presumably with someone in Chesterton, and went to London, hoping to consolidate his estate and so provide for them. He died on 31 March 1797. Anna Maria died on 21 July 1797, possibly in a measles epidemic. Joanna married a Congregational minister and lived to the age of 62.

It is not known who erected the plaque or composed the verse, but it may have been Martha Peckard, widow of the Reverend Peter Peckard, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Martha Peckard was a poet, whose surviving verse bears some similarity to that on the plaque. She also wrote a verse epitaph to a former churchwarden of the Peckard's parish of Fletton, near Peterborough. Her husband was an early supporter of the anti-slavery movement. It was he who set the legitimacy of slavery as the subject of the 1785 Latin essay prize which inspired Thomas Clarkson's abolitionist career. A friend and patron of Olaudah Equiano, it may have been through Peckard that Equiano met Susanna Cullen. Whoever was responsible for it, the plaque demonstrates eloquently how unusual the presence of an African and his family was in a Cambridgeshire village at the end of the eighteenth century, and the respect with which Olaudah Equiano and his achievements were regarded.