Walthamstow, Essex

Having spent hours at St Dunstan in Stepney I drove home via several churches in the M11 western belt. I had very low expectations of finding any open so it was a real pleasure when I found two that were.

St Mary wasn't one of them and, apart from the jam packed graveyard, there didn't seem to be much of interest here.The exterior has, at some point, been unattractively rendered and the whole church has a general air of declining shabbiness.

ST MARY. Hardly anything left of before the Reformation. W tower, aisles and chancel chapels built c. 1535. Altered and enlarged 1818 and again 1843. Present galleries and roof 1876. - FONT. Fluted bowl on baluster stem, white marble, 1714. - PLATE. Set of c. 1680; Beadle’s Staff 1779. - MONUMENTS. Sir George Monox d. 1543 and wife; brass with small kneeling figures. - Lady Stanley, c. 1630, standing wall monument with big kneeling figure. - Sir Thomas and Lady Merry 1633, by Nicholas Stone; she and her husband as demi-figures in oval niches, busts of four children in flat relief below, open pediment above; of very fine sculptural quality, especially the modelling of the hands. - Sigismund Trafford d. 1723 and wife and daughter, ambitious standing wall monument with husband in Roman costume and wife, both standing, and the child kneeling between them; the artistic quality not as high as e.g. at Wanstead. - Many more monuments (Bonnell Family d. 1690, with big sarcophagus and no effigies; Elizabeth Morley d. 1837 by Nicholl etc). - In the CHURCHYARD more monuments, closely placed to the W of the church, and mostly early C19.

The tower of the church, with the porch, aisles, and chapels, are all from the reign of Henry the Eighth; the chancel is modern. On the walls is a fine brass of Sir George Monoux wearing his chain as lord mayor, and by him is his wife in her 15th century dress; Sir George was the founder of the delightful group of red brick almshouses (with the original grammar school) seen in the churchyard. There is a palimpsest brass of 400 years ago, one side with an Elizabethan in a fur coat, the other with a civilian. Lady Lucy Stanley kneels in a cloak and coronet under a kind of triumphal arch, with four daughters dressed as in Stuart days; there is magnificent heraldry on her tomb. A monument by the famous Nicholas Stone has busts of Sir Thomas Merry and his wife, with richly detailed portraits of their four children. A Jacobean wall monument with fine ironwork in front of it shows Sigismund Trafford in Roman dress with his wife and their little one.

One of the odd things we found here was a beadle’s stick carved with a crown and mitre over 250 years ago, and on the wall is a memory of the Maynards who were for 300 years lords of the manor.

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Hundon, Suffolk

Sadly All Saints was locked - which seems a shame as the Suffolk Historic Churches Trust have contributed to the upkeep of the fabric of the church and that money comes from you and me...actually in this case not from me since I couldn't access the church and make a contribution.

That said, the exterior is a treat in itself with wonderful grotesques, elaborate carving and setting to die for. The interior was destroyed by fire in 1914 so I probably would have been disappointed but still.

ALL SAINTS. Burnt in 1914 and rebuilt by Detmar Blow & Billerey (GR). W tower with higher SW stair-turret. S porch with flushwork panelling. S doorway with small shields in one arch moulding. Two niches l. and r. The S clerestory has pretty openwork battlements with quatrefoils. Wide nave, low octagonal piers. -  PANELLING in the S chapel, from another source. - PAINTING. Copy of Titian’s earliest dated painting. - PLATE. Cup and Paten 1749. - MONUMENTS. In the churchyard ambitious monument to Mrs Arethusa Vernon, 1728. Pyramid on a sarcophagus, carrying a wheatsheaf. -  (Also in the churchyard HEADSTONES by Thomas Soane and other members of his family, C18, probably the earliest in the county. (F. Burgess)

HUNDON. Its thatched hillside cottages look up to the dignified church, to the turrets of its noble 15th century tower, and to its 14th century clerestory, adorned with a parapet of open quatrefoils like lace of stone. The porch shelters a little chapel reached by a steep and winding stairway within the wall, and the 600-year-old doorway leads into a nave with a glorious tower arch soaring almost to the roof, an impressive sight. The walls of the north chapel have some old traceried panelling which was long preserved at the vicarage and so escaped the disastrous fire which destroyed most of the treasures of the church a few months before Europe was set aflame in 1914.

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Stradishall, Suffolk

St Margaret of Antioch was locked but with keyholders listed, one of whom was out and the other I couldn't locate. I'm not sure I missed out although there's a St Christopher and other wallpaintings and some poppyheads.

Rather strangely the nave appears to have lost its roof and now is flat rather like a kitchen extension I once had.

Nearby is the former RAF base where a memorial commemorating its use from 1938 to 1970 and the fallen is located - which explains the CWGC headstones in the graveyard.

ST MARGARET. Small, but with a clerestory. N aisle (see the E window) and W tower of c. 1300. S aisle and chancel Dec. S porch of raw timber. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, very closely decorated. - SCREEN. Only the r. part of the dado. - BENCH ENDS, and COMMUNION RAIL. Fragments built into the chancel stalls. Some bench ends also at the W end of the nave. - PAINTING. St Christopher; N wall. - PLATE. Two Almsdishes 1638; Paten 1694; Cup 1799.
RECTORY (former). According to Cautley panels from the screen of the church frame some of the windows.

STRADISHALL. It has many thatched cottages and a small  14th century church in a snug churchyard. A pretty wooden poch leads into the nave where the light streams through a 15th century clerestory. On the walls are traces of St Christopher and other ancient paintings. The traceried panels of the altar screen, crowned with the old altar rails, are 14th century; the font with its finely carved tracery and flowers is a century younger.

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Berechurch, Essex

St Michael is in the care of the CCT and the chancel and tower have been rather cleverly converted into office space. The north east Audley chapel remains as was.

During the late 1400s and early 1500s the church had been rebuilt in slender Tudor bricks. This building may have replaced a 14th-century church as it reused a fine doorway of this period in the tower and also some late-14th-century windows, although it is thought that these may have been brought here from St John’s Abbey, Colchester. The abbey owned the church and estate until its dissolution in 1536, when Henry VIII granted Berechurch to Thomas, Lord Audley, his Lord Chancellor. Around this time the Audley Chapel was added to the north of the chancel as a memorial chapel for family members and their descendants who, presumably, are buried beneath it.

The chapel appears to have received some alteration in the 17th century when it was extended northwards, maybe to accommodate the tomb of Sir Henry Audley, and again in 1872, when the church underwent a thorough restoration by Mr W Shead of Berechurch to the designs of Mr Charles Pertwee of Chelmsford.

The 1872 restoration involved an almost total rebuilding of the body of the church, but not the tower, nor the Audley Chapel. A report at the time stated that, ‘Here the care shown to the remains of the old fabric is strikingly exemplihed. The ponderous weight of the monument to Sir Henry Audley had forced the north wall considerably out of perpendicular and the old roof, worn by successive ages, had become too tender to be tampered with and so the chapel has been, as it were, encased in a new building, with the old roof about six inches (15.2cm) under the new one'. In fact, the restorers seem to have concentrated mostly on encasing the north wall, as original brickwork may be seen in much of the east and west walls.

Because St Michael’s was so far from where most of its population lived, it was declared redundant in 1975. The Audley Chapel, because of its great interest and beauty, was vested in 1981 in what is now The Churches Conservation Trust, for people to visit and enjoy. As such it remains a holy place, consecrated for prayer and worship. The main body of the church (which is not open to the public) now has a new lease of life as offices.

ST MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS. A brick church of  c. 1500. W tower with diagonal buttresses with stone dressings; battlements. E window of three lights dated C17 by the Royal Commission. E window of the N chapel of three lights, depressed pointed with intersected tracery. The N chapel is the only interesting part of the church, on account of its hammerbeam roof, with decorated purlins and wind-braces, the C17 shields applied to the hammerbeam, and the C17 MONUMENT against the N wall. To Sir Henry Audley and wife, erected 1648. Stiffly semi-reclining, in armour; kneeling figures below. Big reredos background with inscription and segmental pediment. Black and white marble. - Sir Robert Smyth d. 1802, large, with urn in relief. - Mrs Charlotte White d. 1845. By J. Edwards, 1848. She lies on a couch, with two angels hovering near her. - DOOR. Early C16, of linenfold and other panels.
BERECHURCH HALL. Broad and towering Neo-Elizabethan mansion quite
asymmetrical, with plenty of French motifs mixed in. By Lee, 1882.

BERECHURCH. It has what it still calls a maypole green (without the maypole) to remind it of the gaieties of days gone by, traces of a Roman road recalling days when merchants came this way to Colchester, and a FIne church made new at the end of the 15th century. Its tower has a 14th century doorway and, still swinging in it, a door made up of linenfold and traceried panels by a Tudor craftsman. The font is 16th century. The magnificent hammerbeam roof of the Audley Chapel is richly carved with heads and flowers, with the arms of the Audleys below the wall-posts. The chapel was established in the days of Thomas Audley, who founded the family fortunes. He was town clerk of Colchester and rose to be Henry the Eighth’s Lord Chancellor and to preside at the trial of Sir Thomas More. He took Berechurch Hall from St John’s Priory at Colchester when the King and Thomas Cromwell broke up the monasteries. There is a splendid monument of Civil War days with Sir Henry Audley lying in armour in black and white marble, his five children kneeling.

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Birch, Essex

At first appearance St Peter appears to be a run of the mill Victorian build with a massive tower and an oddly placed south west chapel. As you draw closer you realise that something is seriously amiss here - the church has fallen into disrepair and appears to have been abandoned to its fate despite being Grade II listed.

Apparently the church has been redundant for twenty years and plans are in hand for redeveloping the building for other uses.

ST MARY. 1850 by Teulan, but with none of the offensive features so favoured by this architect. Quite a normal aisled interior, and an exterior, ambitious, but not showy. The W front has a tall NW steeple with spire, 110 ft high. Dec tracery.
OLD ST MARY. By Birch Hall. A small Norman church now in ruins and not much looked after. W tower all in ivy. In the nave one can still recognize the plain C12 S doorway, one S window with Roman brick jambs and one much larger N window with one Roman brick jamb. ·
BIRCH HALL. Large and dignified Italianate villa, chaste and correct in the motifs; nothing debased yet. Ionic colonnade on one side, deep Ionic porch on the other. The architect is Hopper, the date c. 1845. Menaced with demolition.
WINDMILL, 1/2 m. S. Post Mill in a dilapidated condition.

BIRCH. A 19th century church stands among trees by the green, and has nothing ancient; but it has a bright east window of the shepherds at Bethlehem, attractive modern carving of angels and lions and foliage on the desks, and panelling in classic style behind the altar. On the wall are stone flags in memory of an officer who died in a massacre at Cawnpore; and there are memorials to the Round family whose home stands in a fine park with a lake.

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Layer Breton, Essex

St Mary the Virgin is more a wayside chapel than a church and was locked.

ST MARY or ST NICHOLAS. 1923. In it an interesting piece of SCULPTURE: Tondo of the Virgin seated on the ground and playing with the Child; Italian Mannerism.

Again Mee missed it.

Layer de la Haye, Essex

St John the Baptist has undergone, presumably because of the 1884 earthquake, a brutal overhaul leaving a dull interior but an impressive tower.

CHURCH. Overlooking the South Essex Company’s reservoir. Norman SE angle of the nave. The remaining parts mostly C14. Good S porch of timber with C14 gable - see the bargeboards. S side and S arcade C19. W tower with diagonal buttresses and battlements. In the chancel a C15 MONUMENT, combined with Easter Sepulchre. The recess is straightheaded with curves down to the jambs. Quatrefoils in the coving, quatre-foil frieze above, and cresting. No effigy or brass on the tombchest. - PLATE. Late C16 Cup with band of ornament, on later stem; late C16 Paten.

Mee missed it.

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