2 miles south of Oundle

A stream, bordered by green verges, tall trees and dipping willows, divides Barnwell from end to end. Communication between the stone-built cottages, with their worn stone fronts and neatly thatched roofs, is provided by a variety of bridges, some stone and hump-backed. others

wooden The main bridge, which is reminiscent of a garden rockery, connects the Montagu Arms pub with the general store and its attendant cottages, making as lovely a calendar picture as anyone could wish for.

From there, the street climbs a hill towards the church, opposite which is a delightful little square of stone-tiled almshouses with their own chapel at the far end. These could be of any age, but, in fact, they were rebuilt in 1864 on the site of an earlier charitable institution founded in 1601 by Nicholas Latham, the village parson from

1569 to 1620. ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters’, runs the inscription on the arch over the entrance to the almshouses, an injunction which the Reverend Latham obviously took to heart, since his generosity provided not only the almshouses, but also Cambridge scholarships, a new pulpit for the church and many other good works.

Medieval castle

The path to the 13th-century St Andrew’s Church runs through precise flower beds, yews and hollies; but before entering it is worth walking round the outside, past the carved, leaf-shrouded head of the Green Man - a pagan nature-spirit - at the rear of the building, from where the view conveys the entire flavour of the village. A wicket gate in the churchyard wall opens on to a neat path, which runs straight down the hill and over a bridge to the grey-white bulk of a medieval castle. It was built probably about 1266 by Berengar le Moyne, who ten years later ceded it to the Abbey of Ramsey At the Dissolution of the Monasteries, it passed into the hands of the Montagu family, who built the big stone manor house next door, and lived in it until the end of the last century. Both castle and manor are now the property of the Duke of Gloucester. Though the best view of the two buildings is obtained from the top of the church hill, perhaps the most picturesque is that from by the castle bridge, an extraordinary, long-legged, crouch-backed structure of stone Bridge, stream, castle and manor are framed by weeping willows and flowering shrubs.

It has been said that St Andrew’s is the model parish church. If this means that it distils the essence of the village, then the description is apt, for all of Barnwell’s story is there. The interior is rough stone with a heavy, wood-beamed ceiling, much altered over the years, notably by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in the 1860s There is a splendid three-part stone reredos, probably brought to the church when All Saints’ Church, at the other end of the village, was partly demolished in the 1820s. Round the walls are monuments to Barnwellians down the centuries.

Montagu monuments

There is a monument to the late Duke of Gloucester. who worshipped in the church for 35 years, and on the opposite wall a portrait in bronze of his son, Prince William, killed in an air crash in 1972. A seat in the porch, presented by the prince’s many admirers in and around the village, is also dedicated to his memory.

To visit the only remaining fragment of All Saints’ Church, a good way along the stream from the village centre, it is necessary to obtain a

key from The Limes next door. When the church was demolished it was decided to preserve the chancel, partly for its Montagu monuments and partly to avoid disturbing the remains of the many members of the family who lie in the vaults beneath. The result is a foreshortened building of considerable charm, almost as broad as it is long and with great high windows.

A plaque records the names of many, though by no means all, of the formidable Montagu family. which began in the 16th century with plain Sir Edward, and by the 19th century included the Duke of Buccleuch, the Earls of Hinchingbrooke and Sandwich, and the wife of an illegitimate son of the Emperor Napoleon.

But what first catches the eye is an obelisk covered with armorial bearings and containing in a niche the painted effigy of a small boy in red Jacobean dress. This is the curious, and to modern minds, somewhat eerie, monument to three-year-old Henry Montagu, who drowned in a pond in 1625. The symbolism of the child’s sad end seems to have gripped the sculptor to an almost ghoulish degree; the effigy holds a scroll that reads, ‘Lord, give me of ye Waters’, while the whole obelisk stands upon a pair of large, inward-turning human feet dripping with watery mud and holding between them an upturned gilt cup inscribed with the words ‘Pour on me the joys of thy salvation’. The plinth records the grief of the boy’s father, and that he was Master of Requests to the Majesties of King James and King Charles.