Church Of St Leonard

Church of St Leonard, St Leonard's Road, Bengeo, Hertford

An Anglican church of 12th-century origin with alterations spanning the 13th to 15th centuries, an 18th-century porch, and late 19th and early 20th-century restoration work.

The building is constructed of flint rubble with ashlar, clunch and Barnack stone long and short quoins, and red brick stitching. Windows are of traceried stone. The porch is built of Flemish bond red brickwork. Clay tiled roofs cover the structure, with a curved east apsidal end. A 19th-century wooden bellcote features moulded framing and trefoil heads, with pierced trefoil openings in the lower panels and a tall pyramidal shingled roof topped with a small lucarne on each face and an iron finial.

The church follows a simple two-cell plan of nave and chancel with a curved apsidal east end.

On the south elevation, a 17th-century two-light window has elliptical heads with moulded brick jambs and dripmould. To its right stands a 14th-century two-light window with ogee tracery and mouchettes beneath a flat head with moulded dripmould. The chancel windows are 13th-century, comprising one flat-headed window and lancets either side. Above these stands a blocked 15th-century priest's door with a low four-centred arch, blocked with red brickwork and a stone panel dated 1889. A large 15th-century two-light window displays traceried cusped quatrefoil heads with flat dripmould. A small lancet east window has long and short jambs. A single blocked round-arched Norman window appears on the north wall of the chancel.

The north wall of the nave contains a single altered 12th-century window and an early 20th-century north doorway with red brick jambs and a Tudor arch with ashlar kneelers. A three-light 15th-century west window is also present.

The south porch interior retains an earlier roof structure than its 18th-century exterior brickwork, with 15th-century paired rafters originally fitted with pegged collars. The south doorway features 12th-century imposts with rough pilasters bearing roll-moulded caps. Remains of two incised mass dials survive. The doorway has a Barnack stone lintel and semicircular-headed arch internally. A 14th-century battened door retains original iron hinges and handles.

The nave is roofed with a 19th-century collared roof featuring arch bracing at the west end. A 12th-century chancel arch displays colonnettes and a roll-moulded round head, with internal piers bearing splayed caps, mutilated at lower level in the 18th century, allegedly to accommodate the box pew of Thomas Hall of Goldings. Paintings discovered on the chancel arch wall in 1938 include a 13th-century representation of the Deposition from the Cross showing the Virgin, Joseph of Arimathaea, and Nicodemus, alongside fragmentary four-leaf patterns.

The chancel, approached via two steps down from the nave, features an apsidal east end with a 12th-century window having a 13th-century outer square head and rebated jambs. To the north stands a blocked 12th-century window with remains of an anchorite's cell and squint below. On the south wall, the east inner jamb of the two-light window is 13th-century, with the remainder 15th-century and carried down to form a sedilia. A 13th-century piscina has a roll-moulded pointed arch with a sill formed from part of a stone coffin lid. The chancel roof is a crown post roof with an octagonal post bearing moulded base and caps, and curved boarded ceilings. Walls display fragmentary painted patterns of masonry blocks with red and white lozenges. At the east end lies a panel of 14th-century encaustic tiles recovered when an 18th-century vault dug for the families of Goldings was opened in 1882; the designs are comparable with those at Much Hadham. Communion rails dating to circa 1700 feature vase balusters and a heavy moulded rail.

The church contains several monuments: a mural tablet to John Byde (1665), Alderman and Sheriff of London, with a broken scrolled pediment, reset from Shoreditch Church in 1736 and created by artist William Stanton; an obelisk monument to Humphrey Hall (1695) with an armorial cartouche and profile medallion held by modelled putti, by artist Thomas Adey; a modest wall tablet to Daniel Minet FRS (1790) by Nollekens; and a tablet to Martha Hirst (1756) and Reverend William Hirst (1760), Master of Hertford Grammar School, Vicar of Bengeo, and Rector of Sacombe. Three framed hatchments survive, two in the nave and one in the chancel.

St Leonard's Church takes its name from a French saint who died in 559. The church was held by the de Tany family in the 12th century and was given to the Priory of Bermondsey, remaining their property until the Dissolution. It subsequently passed to the Byde and Fanshawe families. In 1846, the Abel Smiths of Woodhall purchased the rectorial tithes and converted the living into a rectory.