Church Heritage in Essex

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-iuxta-Ongar. 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.