Shelley, Essex

St Peter is another new build church apparently designed by an architect who combined Gothic with Handsel and Gretel - I rather like it but have to admit that the best thing about it is the cart lodge with a dovecot on top before you enter the church. The location is stunning, the exterior interesting, the interior Victorian.

ST PETER. 1888 by Habershon & Fawckner. With NW tower and broach spire. Windows in the C13 style. - PLATE. Jacobean Cup.

SHELLEY. With such a name it should be a beauty spot, and so it is. There is an Elizabethan rectory with its ancient timbers, a hall among the trees with a door older than the Armada, and a group of farm buildings with a dovecot. By a large pond is the church with a stone tower, a wooden turret, and a shingled spire, all made new. On the wall on the tower is a sculpture on which kneel a family of Charles Stuart’s day, John Greene and his wife with six children.

As usual I planned a route without pre-consultation and came across Shelley by mistake - the tower must have been locked since I have no record of the Greene monument.

Flickr set.