Get to know: Five CCT Churches from a Republic

On the second Monday of each month, we welcome CCT members to an exclusive lecture.
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In May 2025, we were delighted to welcome Anna Keay for an inspiring lecture on The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown. To introduce the topic, we began the evening by exploring five remarkable CCT churches, each offering a window into the hopes, fears, and upheavals of Britain’s eleven years without a monarch.

We hope you enjoy this blog, which offers an overview of what our members discovered.

Between 1649 and 1660, the country was engulfed by revolution. Charles I was executed for treason, the monarchy and House of Lords abolished, and for the first time, the people were declared sovereign. What that meant—and what it would lead to—no one knew.

Anna’s book, The Restless Republic, tells the story of that decade through the lives of people who lived it: a shipwright’s visionary daughter, a propaganda master, a radical Digger, a scientist-cartographer, and even a defiant countess. Their lives were marked by turmoil, ambition, and transformation.

In this blog we will explore some of the spaces where people like them worshipped, argued, and endured. Because revolution didn’t just live in Parliament or print—it filtered into parishes, pulpits, and pews. The five churches that we are going to focus on from the Churches Conservation Trust offer a rare window into the spiritual, political and social worlds of the Interregnum. Some are plain. Some poetic. All powerful.

So let’s begin our journey in Somerset...

Here stands Low Ham Church, built around 1620 as a private chapel for Sir Edward Hext. It’s tucked in open farmland between Long Sutton and High Ham, an area that witnessed some of the English Civil War’s most decisive moments.

Known locally as the "Church-in-the-Field," this Grade I listed building reflects a rare example of Jacobean Gothic—a fusion of late medieval design and early modern ambition.

In 1645, the Battle of Langport brought real danger to Low Ham. Royalist forces, retreating after one of the Parliamentarians' most significant victories under General Fairfax, passed through the area, damaging the church. The manor house beside it—never fully completed—fell into ruin. Yet the chapel endured. Hext’s grandson, George Stawell, repaired the building and had it consecrated in 1669, after the monarchy had returned.

This church survived one of the most brutal campaigns of the first Civil War, reflecting the dislocation experienced by rural communities and the uncertain aftermath of revolution.

The interior of Low Ham is luminous and serene. Jacobean furnishings remain remarkably intact, including a chancel screen and pulpit—testaments to a family’s piety and pride.

Built in one coherent phase, the church preserves the layout, materials, and aesthetic of early 17th-century Anglican worship. There’s a sense of intimate grandeur—a quiet confidence, even in isolation.

Today, this field-bound sanctuary tells a story of faith and survival. Despite the turmoil of war and the collapse of royal authority, Low Ham stands as a symbol of continuity.

From aristocratic grandeur, we turn to Puritan restraint. Guyhirn Chapel, built in 1660, is one of the very few surviving Commonwealth chapels—and it tells a different story entirely.

Located in the Fens, Guyhirn was born in a landscape reclaimed from the water—and a spiritual landscape stripped of ornament. 

Clear windows, whitewashed walls, no altar rail, no kneeling—this was the Puritan vision made brick.

Although the monarchy had just been restored, Guyhirn reflects the aesthetic and theological sensibilities of the preceding decade: an age of sermons, not sacraments. It stands for the republic’s focus on plain worship and personal scripture. In its rigid seating—designed to prevent kneeling—it mirrors the suspicion of “Popish” practice that had grown under Charles I and was violently rejected during the wars.

Inside, the chapel is all about the Word. The high pulpit dominates. The seating is narrow and tightly packed designed to keep the body alert and the mind focused.

Built from Barnack stone and local brick, Guyhirn offers a rare, undisturbed glimpse of Puritan architectural theology. Even John Betjeman was struck by its honesty and integrity.

Here, we see the religious revolution that accompanied the political one—a call for simplicity, sincerity, and scriptural centrality. It speaks to that generation’s desire to cast down altars, remove bishops, and return to a ‘godly’ commonwealth.

St Margaret’s, Knotting, sits quietly in the Bedfordshire landscape—but its fittings speak loudly of conflict.

In 1637, iron chancel gates were installed as part of Archbishop Laud’s reforms. These ‘Laudian’ barriers, designed to mark sacred space, became physical flashpoints for wider opposition. The gates here represent a microcosm of the wider fury against ceremonialism—the very reforms that helped trigger civil war.

The two-decker pulpit and blocked north door reflect deepening divides between clergy and congregation, and the polarising influence of high-church ritual. These are not just architectural quirks—they are remnants of a country hurtling toward war.

Just a few years later, that tension erupted, and communities like this found themselves on the fault lines.

Near the source of the Thames, All Saints’ Church at Leigh tells a quieter story—but no less profound.

Flood-prone and semi-abandoned by the 19th century, its medieval chancel remains isolated in a field. 

Inside are painted Biblical texts—verses from Genesis, Isaiah, and Matthew—framed in soft, curling Baroque cartouches.

In an age of civil upheaval and theological controversy, these painted texts served a clear purpose: to anchor a rural flock in scripture, offering moral stability when kings were falling and Parliament ruled supreme. As factions debated the nature of church and state, Leigh’s cartouches quietly reminded parishioners of eternal truths.

Now we journey east to one of the most atmospheric churches in the Trust’s care. St Mary’s, Badley lies hidden at the end of a rutted track, its flint-and-brick walls nestled in a Suffolk valley.

The church contains 17 memorials to the Poley family—gentry with strong ties to local and national politics. One member, Thomas Poley, served as MP for Ipswich. The setting is remote, but the history is anything but parochial.

In February 1644, William Dowsing—the Parliamentarian iconoclast—visited Badley. He smashed its stained glass and ordered the removal of Laud’s raised chancel steps. His actions echo the widespread desecration of ‘idolatrous’ imagery, carried out in the name of purifying the Church of England. The result? A church left stripped but not empty.

Inside are Jacobean box pews, medieval benches, and a 13th-century Purbeck marble font. The atmosphere is one of silence and stillness—a church that absorbed the shockwaves of war and held fast.

Each of these churches reflects a different side of the republican experiment:

• Low Ham mirrors aristocratic collapse and cautious rebuilding.
• Guyhirn embodies Puritanism’s moment in the sun.
• Knotting reveals the fault lines that fractured conformity.
• Leigh shows scripture not spoken but painted.
• Badley gives us the silence after the storm—conservative, consistent, and deeply English.

Together, they remind us that The Restless Republic wasn’t only lived by generals and prophets. It was lived by rectors, glaziers, joiners, widows, farmers—people like us, holding their breath as the old world shifted.