The Sadleir Web

The present structure of St. Mary's church in Standon (Herts.) is a 13th century flint stone construction. There is some evidence that there was a preexisting structure here though no apparent records exist to support it. The flint stone exterior was originally arranged in a chessboard pattern but was rebuilt randomly during restoration work in 1864.

Click to view a
1944 copy of the
St. Mary's Church Magazine. The magazine is an Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) file and is 6.8MB large.

The church tower, also in flint, stands on the south-east corner and was originally a free-standing structure. Built in the 15th century it was connected to the main building in the 1860's. The tower houses six bells with the following instrictions:

"Thomas Mears, Founder, London." (1843)
"Ralph Sadleir, Esquyer, 1630, Miles Gray made me."
"Mears and Stainbank, Founders, London, 1868."
"Ralph Sadleir, Esquyer, 1630, Miles Gray made me."
"W.Bigg, T.(J.P.) Snow, Church-wardens, J. Briant, Hertford, Fecit 1792."
"Anthony Watt, Vicar, William Bigg and William Knight, Church-wardens, 1778; Pack and Chapman of London, Fecit."

The Interior of the Church houses two effigy tombs, that of Sir Ralph Sadleir (1507-1587) and his son Sir Thomas Sadleir (1534 - 5 Jan 1606).

The website for St. Mary's Church can be found here (http://www.standon.org/).
Also, see Chris Reynolds' website "Genealogy in Hertfordshire" where he references the book "A History of the Parish of Standon" by Christopher Perowne. This is a wonderful book detailing the history of St. Mary's.


Stereoscopes and Stereographs The parlour entertainment of the past.

		Anyone who frequents antique and resale shops has undoubtedly seen one of these devices. They resemble a cross between binoculars and some outdated optometrist's torture device. It is called the stereoscope and it was the parlour entertainment of the past.
The first stereoscope was created in 1833 by Sir Charles Wheatstone and used drawings instead of photographs since photography was not yet invented. The stereoscope used two tilted lenses to look at a card with two slightly different views of the same image. When looking at the card, or stereograph, in the stereoscope it appears as though the image pops out at you in three dimensions. One could buy a stereoscope camera allowing the average person to capture these early 3D images while on holiday.

I recently acquired three stereographs of St. Mary's Church in Standon. These early views of St. Mary's are undated but written on the back of each card is a description of the photograph as well as what appears to be the initials "RE". Click each image to see a larger version.