Great Henny, Essex

Upon leaving Middleton the heavens opened with a serious deluge which may have biased my view of St Mary - but I think that even on  the brightest day she wouldn't have a lot to offer. I liked the roof angels with two grotesques in the east end but that was about it - a soulless, aisless over-restored church, although I did enjoy the newspaper articles about the woodpeckers who'd declared war on the wooden spire.

ST MARY. Nave and chancel without division; W tower. The lower parts of the tower are Norman, the diagonal buttresses and the broach-spire C15 or later. The rest of the church is C14, except for one Early Tudor brick window in the S side and the absolutely plain brick S porch. The only things calling for attention are the Sedilia, two seats with cusped pointed arches on detached shafts, and the nave roof with tie-beams on shallow arched braces, and queen-posts. - STAINED GLASS. E window, 1860, looks as if it might be Hardmans. - BRASS to William Fyscher and wife, c. 1530, with children; small figures, the parents only c. 10 ins.

GREAT HENNY. Much of its tower is Norman, and one of the bells has been ringing 500 years. The church was refashioned in the 14th century, and given a new brick porch 200 years later. In the opposite doorway a 15th century door is still opening and closing.There is a sanctuary chair 300 years old, finely carved, and a table in the vestry as old. A chest thought to have come from Italy in the 16th century is now the altar of the children’s chapel; and on the chancel wall are brass portraits of William Fyscher, his wife Anne, and their 15 children, all in the costume of Henry the Eighth’s day. With windows jutting from its thatched roof is the quaint village hall, a pair of cottages transformed for this good purpose by the men of the parish themselves. One who must have loved all these things in the 18th century was Jacob Brome, rector for 57 years.

Flickr.