Retaining Wall And Railings With Overthrows, Gate And Letter Boxes To Pountney Churchyard

LAURENCE POUNTNEY LANE TQ 3280 NE (west side) 16/436A Retaining wall and railings with overthrows, gate and letter boxes to Pountney Churchyard

GV II

Churchyard retaining wall and railings with overthrows, gate, and letter boxes. Late C18, minor alterations. Pink and yellow brick wall with Portland stone coping; wrought-iron railings, overthrows and iron gate. The walls and railings are in 2 sections, linked by an overthrow, each section forming 2 sides of a rectangle (along Laurence Pountney Lane and returning to flank alleyway between them) and returning a short distance along the 3rd side. Each has entrance with overthrow to the shorter, 3rd side, and the northern section has gate to entrance and double letter box next to it. Walls: height varies with slope of ground between approx 0.5m and 2m, and has flat coping; some patching. Railings have square bars with spike finials, urn finials to standards, straight and curved brackets. Overthrows have decorative, scrollwork and lamp holders. Gate is plain. The double letter box is of 1870s type, having royal cipher flanking crown at top, above aperture, and door with collecting plate at base. These railings surrounded the 2 old churchyards that once belonged to the Church of St Laurence, Pountney Hill, destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt. In 1779 an entry in the Churchwardens' accounts records the resolution, "that liberty be given to lower the walls of the 2 churchyards on St Laurence Pountney Hill, and to fence the same with a coping of stone and iron railings'. (Wilson, The History of the Parish of St Laurence Pountney, p175). The existing railings are almost certainly the result of that resolution.

Listing NGR: TQ3273780802