In a beautiful country of hill and dale, delightfully interspersed with green lanes and quiet hedge-rows—diversified, too, by the meanderings of the New River, on its course to supply the good citizens with water—each hill-top having broad prospects over a fine country, with London and its hundred towers and spires mingling in the perspective,—stands the suburban village of Hornsey. Is place of the smart villas and snug cottages which now thickly stud this neighbourhood, there stood, in old times, an extensive forest—Haringay Forest—the only abode of consequence being one belonging to the then Bishops of London, which stood in a park fashioned from the surrounding woods. In this lodge, in 1386, Thomas of Woodstock and other barons assembled to league themselves against the minions of Richard II., and commence that system of resistance which ended only by the death of that unfortunate King. Nor is this Hornsey’s only historical association. It was here that the citizens of London, in deputation, met Edward the Fifth, and subsequently Henry the Seventh, when those monarchs respectively approached the capital after their succession to the crown.
The appearance of the church is picturesque; and, seen from many points of view in the neighbourhood, enters pleasantly into the prospect. It boasts considerable antiquity, and, notwithstanding it has recently been “repaired and beautified” (those churchwarden processes so often fatal to the structures submitted to them), yet the evidences of its early formation may readily be recognised. It has, to a certain degree, been rendered a classic object, from Goldsmith having in his wanderings in the neighbourhood bestowed the offering of his praise upon it; and, at a later day, Geoffrey Crayon has embalmed it in his pages. It offers but few architectural pretensions, but one may well dispense with those more chaste and elegant proportions which are properly required in a church located in a great city,—the seal of art and civilization. Here, in one of the most beautiful of London suburbs, nothing could more pleasantly harmonize with the sylvan neighbourhood than the old Gothic outline of the church which forms the subject of our sketch.
The Illustrated London News, London, England, Week Ending November 26, 1842
