Shephall

St Mary was lnk and I mistook it for a Victorian build but it seems that at its core it's old but, as so often with Herts churches, heavily tarted up (it is also a rather odd Herts church and not at all the usual style for these parts). I thought I hadn't missed much here but having read Mee, and taking the usual pinch of salt, now I'm not so sure.

ST MARY. Small; nave and chancel with big tiled roof. N aisle of 1865; no W tower, only a bell-cote. The nave Roof has arched trusses with broad pointed trefoil tracery in the spandrels. - SCREEN. Simple, C15. - MONUMENTS. Several epitaphs to members of the Nodes family, 1695, 1697, 1713, 1731.

Shephall. An avenue of giant elms guards the vivid green which widens in front of the church and surrounds the village well; and shading the lychgate are the quivering leaves of two tall aspen trees, rare in England now, but prized as the best arrow wood by our ancestors. They are old, but not nearly so old as the timbers which for 600 years have served as chancel arch in this church, one of the few wooden chancel arches in England. More venerable beams support the nave roof; there is a medieval chest scooped out of a huge log; and the top part of the chancel screen is 15th-century work of great beauty. All the rest of the church has changed and much is modern.

One of several brass inscriptions to the Nodes family records that George Nodes was master of the buckhounds to Henry VIII and his three reigning children. A century after this huntsman was laid here, John Rudd the rector was laid to rest, with a memorial painting of  him as a shepherd standing above the alabaster record of his life and service. We found the font, at which he must have baptised the Nodes children, crumbling away beside the stately yew.