Ayot St Lawrence is a village in Hertfordshire just north of London. Its claim to fame is that it was the home of the playwright George Bernard Shaw (and later Douglas Fairbanks and Nick Faldo). The new church was built in 1778 in a neo-Palladian style by Sir Lionel Lyde, a wealthy tobacco merchant, who had taken a dislike to the village’s medieval church. The demolition of the latter was halted and it remains as a picturesque ruin.