By Will Hardy
In recent years I’ve put together a series of local history talks at St Mary Magdalene Church, Littleton, just around the corner from Shepperton Film Studios. It has all been great fun, and I’m deeply grateful to everyone who supported them, helped out, and made them possible. During the pandemic, I have been trying to bring together these researches as a book, called Mysteries of Littleton Church.
The first chapter looks at the Littleton Saints, paintings from four-teenth-century Florence that were given to Littleton Church by an anonymous donor, probably in the early twentieth century. The sec-ond chapter is about the Millais window, a rare example of stained glass by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais, which was bequeathed to the church by his widow Effie in 1898.
Neither is there now, but what remains is the beautiful church which was being transformed by changes between the 1890s and the 1940s, including work by the respected church artist Martin Travers. The third chapter traces this story. The book is rounded off with an ap-pendix of short historical articles from the parish magazine Littleton Life, and it contains many illustrations from the original talks.
It has just been published and can be ordered online through Ama-zon. It makes available new research, and is backed up with refer-ences to sources from the time, but hopefully it’s also an enjoyable read with lively characters. Littleton Church was founded in 1135 by monks from Chertsey Abbey, and has features that date back to medieval times – it is well worth a visit.