Church Heritage in Essex

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Church Heritage in Essex
The Diocese of Chelmsford, which was created in 1914, has over 600 churches, of which 410
represent medieval parishes. Although the Diocese includes those parts of Essex now in
Greater London, the modern county of Essex contains over 400 listed church buildings, as
well as about 40-50 listed Non-Conformist chapels and Catholic churches. Church buildings in
use are exempt from listed building legislation on condition that the religious organisations
have their own system of control in place. The County Council gives advice to the Church of
England, which owns the great majority of listed churches, through the Diocesan Advisory
Committee for the Care of Churches.
The parish church occupies a unique position in the landscape, symbolising the life and
history of the community in which it is situated. In the monuments, glass, fittings and
furnishings it is often possible to trace the outline of the history of the parish, and also the
evolution of changing architectural and artistic fashion from the Middle Ages up till the present
day. Essex churches range from small buildings tucked away in surprisingly rural locations,
little altered in the last 500 years, to fine gothic buildings which reflect the prosperity of the
medieval wool and cloth industry in the north of the county.
Many village churches today stand in isolation next to the manor house or hall. This
apparently puzzling situation is the result of them having originally been the property of the
lord of the manor and of subsequent settlement shift, and also of the dispersed (as opposed
to nucleated) settlement pattern which characterises parts of the Essex countryside.
The county has few well preserved Anglo-Saxon churches. The outstanding example is
Hadstock in the north-west, a big church with transepts and some carved decoration. The
west door and one of the window frames are also believed to be of Saxon date. A smaller
church in the same part of the county is Strethall with a narrow chancel arch, whilst towers
can be found at Holy Trinity, Colchester, and Little Bardfield.
These are all late Saxon, datable to the 11th century. Only one church building definitely
dates to a much earlier period, St. Peter’s chapel at Bradwell-on-Sea. It stands at the edge of
the marsh on the site of a Roman fort, and was founded by St. Cedd in c.654. Today it is a
simple rectangular structure, but once it had an apse and projecting porticus or side
chambers on the model of contemporary churches in Kent.
Unique to Essex is the only timber stave or log built church in Britain at Greensted-iuxtaOngar. This used to be considered Anglo-Saxon, but tree-ring dating indicates that it was
probably built just after the Norman conquest in 1066. The walls are built of the original log
boarding, but the rest of the church dates mainly from a restoration of 1848.
As might be expected in a county well known for its timber-framed buildings, Essex churches
have some fine roofs, from the early scissor-braced ones like that at St. Nicholas chapel, Little
Coggeshall, to the elaborately carved flat or camber-beamed roofs of places such as Bocking,
Saffron Walden and High Easter, and hammer-beamed ones as at Great Bromley, Castle
Hedingham and Gestingthorpe. As many as one hundred Essex churches have timber
belfries or, more spectacularly, timber bell towers located against the west wall of the nave.
The latter occur at Blackmore, Margaretting, Magdalen Laver and Bulphan. There are also a
number of notable timber porches, as at South Benfleet and Runwell.
Timber was much used in Essex because of the shortage of good building stone. The oldest
churches made extensive use of brick and tile quarried from the ruins of Roman buildings.
Flint and anything else that came to hand is the usual material of which church walls are
made. Some other stones do occur locally, notably septaria, ferricrete or ferruginous
conglomerate, and tufa, and these can again be found in older work, typically of the 12th and
13th centuries.
Increasingly, though, use was made of a limited range of other better quality stones. These
are oolite from the Barnack area (Northants.); Reigate from Surrey; Kentish Ragstone; clunch
from Cambridgeshire or Bedfordshire; and Caen stone from Normandy.
There are many small Norman churches in the county, consisting simply of a nave and
chancel. Good examples are Faulkbourne and Bradwell-iuxta-Coggeshall. A few have apses
(e.g. Little Tey, Little Braxted), which excavation has shown to have formerly been a common
feature of Norman buildings. Grander Norman parish churches survive at Copford and
Clacton which, uniquely in the county, formerly had vaulted naves. The best Norman interior
is to be found at Waltham Abbey where the nave of the 12th-century abbey is now the parish
church. Substantial remains of the early Norman priory of St. Botolph can be seen at
Colchester. An important late Norman church, as impressive in it its way as the Norman
castle in the same town, is St. Nicholas at Castle Hedingham.
The transition to gothic and the development of the Early English style, is not well represented
in Essex, apart from some chancels provided with lancets (or narrow pointed arched)
windows (e.g., Easthorpe, Great Easton, Good Easter) and some doorways with slender
columns and foliate capitals. Stifford has a fine chapel on the south side of the chancel in this
style, Little Dunmow preserves an arcade of the chancel of the former priory church, and
Great Sampford has a transept which has a window with early tracery. Perhaps the most
complete building of this period is St. Nicholas, Little Coggeshall, the little gate chapel of the
Cistercian abbey, which dates from c.1220 and like the other abbey buildings is remarkable
for being one of the earliest instances of the use of brick in England after the departure of the
Romans.
Traceried windows became fully developed in the subsequent Decorated style in the 14th
century. Richly ornamented work of this type can be found at Tilty and Lawford. A number of
churches have fine 14th-century arcades with piers of a quatrefoil section (e.g., Thaxted,
Bardfield Saling, Finchingfield and Orsett). Stebbing and Great Bardfield are exceptional in
having stone rood screens.
Essex churches in the 15th-century Perpendicular style are perhaps not as grand as those of
Suffolk, only Saffron Walden, Coggeshall (rebuilt after war damage) and Dedham having
been totally rebuilt at this time. Bocking, Thaxted, Brightlingsea, Great Bromley and
Colchester St. James are examples of imposing churches which are predominantly
Perpendicular in character. A partially lost Perpendicular church is Chelmsford cathedral,
which was reconstructed after a collapse in 1800.
A feature of 15th-century work was the successful reintroduction of brick as a building
material, resulting in a large number of fine 15th and 16th-century brick towers (e.g., Theydon
Garnon, Rochford, Rayne, Tolleshunt Major) and porches (e.g., Sandon, Feering), as well as
a few brick churches (e.g., Layer Marney, East Horndon).
The Reformation tended to bring a halt to church building, as well as drastically affecting the
appearance of their interiors, the wall paintings being limewashed over, sculpture and images
removed, and much stained glass taken out. Two churches however that date from this time
Woodham Walter (1563-4) and Theydon Mount (1611-14), both on new sites to
accommodate the view from the neighbouring Tudor mansions.
Similarly, there is relatively little 18th-century or Georgian work in Essex churches, though
Lambourne is a remarkable instance of an attempt to make a small Norman church look like a
church in the City of London. It was cased in Roman cement and given a west door with a
handsome doorcase and an oval window above. Inside, parts of the roof, including the
medieval crown post, were remodelled in plaster.
A more convincing town church is Colchester St. Peter which although of medieval origin was
provided with a new tower in 1758 and was partially modernised in the 18th century. At
Debden, the chancel was rebuilt with an octagonal neo-Gothic chapel with a plaster ribbed
vault by Trench Chiswell in 1792. Ingrave church is the only entirely 18th-century church, a
curious brick building perhaps to the design of Leoni who worked for the eighth lord Petre,
whose improvements to his house at old Thorndon Hall included moving the parish church
away from it to this more distant location.
By the 19th century, there had been little building work at parish churches apart from the most
urgent repairs for over 200 years. The poor condition of churches at this time has to be
considered before being too critical of the very thorough restorations often carried out by the
Victorians. These restorations also satisfied the revived interest in medieval architecture and
liturgy brought about by the Oxford Movement and the Ecclesiological Society.
As a result, most churches underwent some degree of significant restoration in the 19th
century, which on occasion was a rebuild from the foundations upwards (e.g. South Weald by
Teulon) and which has sometimes left spectacular interiors like the work of Butterfield and
Geldart at Ardleigh, of Geldart at Little Braxted, and of Eden Nesfield at Radwinter. The
Victorians also built numerous new churches, of which George Gilbert Scott’s ones at
Greenstead Green and Halstead, Bodley and Garner’s at Epping, Lee’s at Brentwood, St.
Aubyn’s at Galleywood and Widford, and Caroe’s at Stansted are but some of the more
notable examples. A remarkable art nouveau church with a richly decorated interior by
Harrison Townsend is to be found at Great Warley.
Churches in the gothic style continued to be built into the 20th century; especially good are
those by Sir Charles Nicholson at Frinton St. Mary, Westcliffe St. Alban and Leigh-on-Sea St.
Margaret. Lawrence King’s St. George at Brentwood has a hint of Art Deco about it, whilst
more modern in style are St. Paul’s in the new town at Harlow, Insall’s extension to the tiny
medieval church at Thundersley, and the recently completed unique glass belfry at Basildon.
Unfortunately, the penalty of recurrent vandalism and theft is that most churches are now kept
locked. To be certain of being able to see inside them, it is worth making an appointment
beforehand. There is much to discover. The extensive remains of the 12th-century wall
paintings at Copford give a good impression of the richness of the interior of the medieval
church. Recent discoveries are high quality 13th-century work at Little Tey, and cartoon strip
sequences covering most of the wall of the south aisle at Great Burstead. 15th-century
paintings of St. Christopher can be found at Little Baddow and Lambourne. Wall painting was
a casualty of the Reformation, to be revived again the 19th century, notable examples of
which occur at Little Braxted, Halstead, and Foxearth.
Stained glass suffered the same fate as paintings and lacks the potential for rediscovery. Not
a great deal survives, though Rivenhall has some important French glass of the 12th century,
and Thaxted has extensive fragments, including scenes from Genesis. 19th-century glass
includes work by Burne Jones at Waltham Abbey and Frinton, and Henry Holiday also at
Waltham Abbey and Chelmsford. Notable are the windows by Leonard Walker at Stifford and
Bocking St. Peter.
Modern personalities and events can be found recorded in stained glass: Airey Neave,
assassinated by the IRA, is commemorated in a window at Fryerning, and the captivity and
release of John McCarthy at Broxted. Essex churches are rich in monuments and memorials
of all types: they range from the wooden knights at Danbury, to the beautiful Renaissance
monument to the rascally Richard Lord Riche at Felsted, to the baroque splendour of
Humphrey Carpenter at Rettendon. Woodwork includes mediaeval screens (Clavering,
Rickling), Jacobean pulpits (Great Baddow), the 18th-century reredos and panelling at
Hatfield Broad Oak, and the more recent work of modern carvers like Ernest Beckwith (screen
to design of Sir Charles Nicholson at Saffron Walden, lych gates at Great Waltham and
Gestingthorpe) and Ken Mabbitt (Birdbrook).
Non-Conformist and Catholic churches and chapels
With the passing of the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, and then the 1689 Toleration Act,
Non-Conformists were enabled to have their own places of worship.
One of the oldest of these is the Friends’ Meeting House at Stebbing, a lovely brick building
dating from 1674. Another fine early building (with a very interesting burial ground) is the
Congregational chapel in Bocking of 1707 though altered in the early 19th century. These
early buildings were domestic in style with two doorways in their long sides. With changing
fashion, they became neo-classical and then gothic in style, these options being preferred by
different groups at different times as being more in harmony with their beliefs. Catholics only
obtained full freedom of worship in the 19th century and therefore have fewer old buildings,
but the Convent of the Franciscan Sisters in Bocking has a chapel by J.F. Bentley, the
architect of Westminster Cathedral, whilst the new Brentwood Cathedral is a major work by
Quinlan Terry, a leading exponent of the neo-classical style.
Dr David Andrews, ECC. © 2000.
Further reading
Fitch, J. ed. 1996 Essex churches and chapels – a select guide, Stamford: Paul Watkins
Hewett, C.A. 1982 Church carpentry. A study based on Essex examples, Chichester:
Phillimore
Kaye, R. 1999 Chapels in Essex, Chellow Dean Press
Pevsner, N. 1954 The buildings of England. Essex, London: Penguin Books
Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) 1916-1923 An inventory of the
historical monuments in Essex, 4 vols, London: HMSO
Starr, C. ed. 1980 A guide to Essex churches, The Essex Churches Support Trust
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