All Saints Landbeach

All Saints Church, Green End Landbeach

History of All Saints, Landbeach

Listed building:

Parish Church. C13 chancel extended mid C14 and west tower rebuilt, spire late C14, nave arcades and aisle C14. Clerestorey added and aisles widened with south porch mid C15. Nave roof, C15 with reused C14 tie beams, restored in mansard form possibly by John Tinkler, Rector in C19.

Enid Porter, in Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore p.35, notes the discovery of a human heart at the church in 1756, as recorded by the then vicar, Dr Robert Masters:

In the cavity were found 2 covered wooden dishes bound together with a linen cloth. In them were muscular remains of a human heart, evidently embalmed and then wrapped in linen, of which shreds remained. Th dishes had afterwards been filled up with vegetable fibre which might have been spikenard. No inscription. Probably deposited there before the Reformation and may have been a relic or may have belonged to one of the le Chemberlaynes or le Brays [lords of the manor of Landbeach]. Now in the British Museum.