Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin

St Mary the Virgin is the parish church of Monken Hadley, the village-like enclave on the green at the northern edge of the London Borough of Barnet — "The Beacon Church", as it styles itself, after the medieval copper beacon that still crowns its tower: a symbol so beloved locally that it forms the badge of the nearby Church of England primary school. Grade II* listed since 1949, the church stands beside Hadley Green, where the Battle of Barnet was fought in 1471.

A church is believed to have stood on the site for over eight hundred years. The present building, in the Perpendicular style, was rebuilt in 1494 — the date is carved in stone between a wing and a rose over the west door — possibly after damage incurred during the Battle of Barnet, the Wars of the Roses engagement in which Warwick the Kingmaker fell on the misty ground nearby. The rebuilt church included two side chapels in transepts, dedicated to St Anne and St Catherine, and its benefactors probably included the Gooder family, "of considerable consequence at Hadley in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries": an 1827 account noted their punning rebus surviving in the north transept's painted glass — a partridge with an ear of wheat in its bill above a scroll reading "Gooder" — repeated in carved partridges on a pillar capital.

The square flint tower with freestone quoins carries the church's most famous possession: the copper signal beacon at its south-west corner, described in 1827 as "the unique vestige of the Middle Ages... a firepan, or pitchpot" — part of an ancient chain of signal beacons, and possibly also used to guide travellers across the wilds of Enfield Chase. The medieval beacon was blown down in January 1779 and carefully repaired, even though the age of signal fires had passed: Hadley simply could not do without it. The tower holds nine bells — eight hung for change ringing, regularly rung and in good order, with three large bells of the early eighteenth century and three of the late nineteenth among them, and a ninth serving as sanctus bell.

The parish was strongly shaped by Tractarianism and the Oxford Movement, and in 1848 the church was heavily renovated by G. E. Street — the great Gothic Revivalist's early work — who removed the pulpit, galleries and plastered ceiling, repointed the stonework and moved the aisle walls some eighteen inches outward. The south porch was rebuilt in 1855, and later Victorian additions brought an organ (installed in the former St Anne's chapel north of the chancel), a new pulpit, new stained glass throughout, and a vestry of 1888. In 1904 the church achieved a curious transatlantic fame, serving as the model for the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin at Chappaqua, New York. The Blitz destroyed the east window and other glass, and the side chapel of St Catherine was restored in 1958, remaining in use.

The church is exceptionally rich in brasses and monuments. The brasses run from Philip and Margaret Green and Margaret Somercotes (1442, moved in from an earlier building) through the Turner family (1494 and 1500) and the Gooderes (1504 and 1518) to William Gale and his family (1614). The finest monument is by Nicholas Stone, the greatest English sculptor of his day: a well-preserved memorial to Sir Roger Wilbraham (died 1616), Solicitor-General for Ireland, with his wife Mary Baber and their three daughters. Around it gather centuries of Hadley's gentry — Elizabeth Davies (died 1678) by William Stanton; Alice Stamford (c.1507–1573) with a painted portrait of her son Henry Carew in the chancel; the Ince, Smith, Pennant, Moore, Barroneau and Quilter families; Catharine Pennant (died 1797) by Richard Westmacott the Younger; John Walker, Hereditary Usher of the Exchequer; rectors including Frederick Charles Cass, the parish's own historian; and Charles Tempest-Hicks (1888–1918), among the last of the parish's war dead. The late fifteenth-century font, with a modern cover, has baptised Hadley for five centuries.

St Mary's remains a focus of eucharistic worship for the surrounding district, with a strong choral tradition — the Beacon Church still burning, in its quiet way, above the green where a kingdom was once decided.