From Duxford, a pretty byway--far prettier till, a year or two ago, the picturesque wooden foot-bridge across the Granta was replaced by an iron modernity--leads to Hinxton, where the church has some interesting architectural developments, and a good brass to Sir Thomas de Skelton, steward to "old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster." He is shown in full plate-armour, and his two wives lie beside him. The Parochial Register here dates back to the very first institution of such documents, in 1538, by Thomas Cromwell. This is quite rare; for the idea was, in its first inception, to the last degree unpopular both with clergy and people, who suspected, from their experience of Henry's illimitable greed, that a tax would be exacted upon each of the ecclesiastical functions thus registered. On the outside of the spire, which is of wood covered with lead, hangs a "Sanctus" (or "Sacring") Bell, which of old was rung at those places in the High Mass where a small bell is sounded by the Server at the Altar; that is to say, at the _Ter Sanctus_ and the Consecration of the Host. Thus those of the faithful who were unable to attend church were invited to unite themselves in spirit with the worshippers there at the most solemn moments of the Service. Few of these bells remain, as their associations were, of course, specially distasteful to Protestant feeling, so that they were mostly destroyed at the Reformation. At Hinxton we are on the borders of Essex, and a shady westward-running lane takes us on, across the river and the railway, to the last Cambridgeshire village on this line, Ickleton, where the church is of quite unique interest. Here, too, there is a Sacring Bell, on the side of the steeple; surviving, doubtless, through the same unknown local influence which also saved that on the sister spire of Hinxton. But the real interest of the church is entirely hidden from passers by. Those even who look from the pretty little Village Green to the southward see nothing that calls for notice, except the Sacring Bell and a fairly good Geometrical window in the steeple. The rest of the exterior shows only poor fourteenth century work--and cruelly "restored" at that. But, once inside, we discover that the unsightly exterior is but an outer shell, built round, and over, a smaller and far older church, still standing, and so entirely enclosed that its clerestory lights now open into the existing aisles. Above them are the lights of the later fourteenth century clerestory, which, no doubt, originally contained Geometrical, or more probably Flowing, tracery. Now, however, they are mere "churchwarden" apertures, of various indefinite shapes, with mean wooden sashes, having been remorselessly doctored in the second decade of the nineteenth century.