Braintree, Essex

St Michael for me sums up all that is wrong with the Church and, probably, society today. It was not just locked it was chained and padlocked like Earls Colne. Like Earl's Colne, albeit on a larger scale, St Michael sits in the middle of the town on a triangle of busy roads with plenty of road and pedestrian traffic passing by - the site is busier than Thaxted, Saffron Walden and Bishop's Stortford put together (all of which are open) but it's locked down as securely as Fort Knox.

I freely admit that I found it ugly, although if you replaced the spire with something more elegant something could be made of it - actually without the spire (having just crudely photo shopped it) the body of the building is rather elegant. I suspect the shingled spire was a late addition to a Norman template.

To return to the point - why bother maintaining a building which you then lock up against visitors? Particularly when it is a house of God - are the people of Braintree and the environs so deprived that they can't be trusted in their church except at stipulated times?

I have to admit that a locked church annoys me but a church in chains infuriates me - how can anyone knock on a chained door and expect admittance?
 

Anyway Arthur opines (bear in mind that Courtaulds is now long gone):
BRAINTREE. Its prosperity was founded on wool in the days of the Flemish weavers; today it hangs by a silken thread in Courtauld's giant factories. It was actually in Bocking that Courtaulds began a hundred years ago, but Braintree and Bocking are like neighbours growing into brothers, the Busy Bees of Essex. Their industries have sent out two names that are honourably famous beyond the borders of our land, for side by side with Courtaulds, makers of beautiful silks, are Crittalls, makers of beautiful windows.

The old world and the new keep company together, for in the narrow streets of Braintree are at least fifty buildings over three centuries old or more. It is delightful to walk among them, and delightful also to see the new development of this thriving town. The modern town hall in the market square, on which the town arms appear in rich colours, cost fifty thousand pounds and has a central bell tower and a dome with a bronze figure of Truth above it, the town's motto being "Hold to the Truth." Inside the town hall are panelled chambers with wall-paintings by Maurice Grieffenhagen, an admirable series of local history subjects. Here also is a museum of Bygones, including a rare scold's bridle.

The Courtaulds have, of course, always been great benefactors of this town and its neighbour; among other things they have given are an Institute with a magnificent library, a fine hospital, and a delightful group of homes for nurses. The houses stand in a sunny space with a great fountain near them, the architectural scheme having been designed by Mr Vincent Harris, and the fountain having in its centre a figure of Youth by John Hodge.

Two Roman roads meet in the town, one coming from Colchester and one from Chelmsford, and Roman bricks helped to build the church on an ancient embankment. The nave and the chancel have Norman foundations but are mostly 13th century, like the tower to which a shingled spire was added in the 14th. On the walls outside are two surprising things, a washbasin and an inscription to a Tsar's physician. The basin was put here for the pilgrims crossing England in the 16th century; the Tsar's physician was Samuel Collins, a son of the rectory 300 years ago. In a faded gilt frame inside is another curiosity, a parchment roll of 1684 on which are written the names of 300 Braintree folk who died of the plague.

Miracle plays provided the money for widening the south aisle in the 15th century. At the same time the medieval vestry, with its curious head outside, was given its roof, and the little oak door was strengthened with ironwork. Woodcarvers of the 16th century fashioned the magnificent beams above the organ, with Michael and the Dragon on a boss, and the roof of the long chapel opposite, which has three older heraldic bosses over the doorway to a spiral stair. It led to the vanished roodloft and gives us a peep into the south aisle through a tiny window. This chapel was for years used as a school, and we noticed that the children had left their pencil scribblings on the arcade pillar. A beautiful modern screen fills one bay of the arcade, and on the wall is a modern brass portrait of Samuel Dale who doctored Braintree folk 200 years ago. He was noted as a botanist and was the friend of the better known naturalist John Ray. A modest tablet records that Bernard Scale, who died in 1852, was vicar for 57 years.

To Braintree belongs the story of the ironmonger's son Francis Crittall, who gave the world the admirable idea of steel windows. He was working in his father's shop when there came to him the vision which was to prove his key to fortune. His mother injured herself in struggling to raise a heavy wooden window frame, and Francis thought a lighter metal window frame would be much better. He started experimenting in a shed, and at 27 he had two lathes, a forge, shaping and screw-cutting machines, an emery wheel, a gas engine, and three workmen. The making of Crittall windows had begun, and the adventure was a great success. Business grew until Mr Crittall was rich enough to visit India, where he found a great new market for window frames which did not expand in tropical heat and could not be destroyed by white ants. He developed his works on model lines, and built a village for his people, with social halls and shops, and his own house among them.

He wrote a book on Fifty Years of Work and Play in which he told the beautiful story of how he fell in love with 17-year-old Ellen Carter and remained in love with her until their golden wedding day, and after that. All through their working lives they were to­gether, and then Mrs Crittall passed away, and her husband went for a lonely cruise and came back to be laid in her grave. He was one of the backbones of the nation, the men who build up fine businesses and carry them on ungrudgingly whatever happens, sharing their prosperity with their people and seeking nothing mean.

It was a vicar of Braintree, one of the mystery men of the 16th century, who gave us our first English comedy. He was Nicholas Udall, headmaster of Eton in 1534 and vicar of Braintree in 1537. His comedy was called Ralph Roister Doister, and was in 5 acts divided into 27 scenes, with 12 characters. Udall's headmastership at Eton was cut short by his own misconduct*, for which he was im­prisoned. His second chance came with Braintree, for here his writings brought him the patronage of Catherine Parr, the lucky widow of Henry the Eighth. He was also befriended by Edward the Sixth, who made him a Prebend of Windsor, and finally he was employed by Mary Tudor to write dialogues for court festivities. It is said that as Princess Mary the queen had shared with Udall the labour of translating Erasmus. The last post held by Udall was the headmastership of Westminster School, which he lost when the school was amalgamated with the monastery. He survived the loss only by a month, and was laid to rest in St Margaret's Church.

*Udall's career had a downturn when he was imprisoned for stealing some school candlesticks. On 12th March 1541 a London Goldsmith named William Elmer was examined by the Privy Council "for the buying of certain images of silver and other plate which were stolen from the college of Eton". Subsequently two late scholars of Eton, John Hoord and Thomas Cheney, were charged with the theft. Cheney implicated Headmaster Udall and his servant Gregory. When Udall was sent for "as suspect to be counsail", he also confessed to having sexually and physically abused a number of his pupils, among them Thomas Cheney. A son of the Chesham Boys branch of the Cheney family, he was a relative of the wife of Sir Thomas Wriothesley. Wriothesley, perhaps Udall's patron, sat on the Privy Council and heard his case. He was convicted under the 1533 Buggery Act for committing sodomy. Although the felony of buggery carried a sentence of capital punishment (by hanging), his sentence was reduced to just under a year in Marshalsea prison.

A former pupil, the writer and poet Thomas Tusser, wrote in later years of Udall flogging him for no good reason. Despite all of this he was befriended by Catherine Parr, the Queen at the time, who was most impressed by his translation of 'Apothagmata' by Erasmus (1542). He also edited a version of St.Luke's Gospel at Parr's request.

Flickr set.

Bradwell, Essex

Holy Trinity was so far off the beaten track, and so far removed from the village, that I almost gave up looking for it - now I've read Mee I almost wish I hadn't found it.

It was, of course, locked and I can only offer this rather dry interior report from an internet search:

The font has a C12 limestone bowl, originally square with a fine chevron design round the rim, cut to an octagon in the early C16; the early C16 stem is of brick, octagonal with moulded base and top, with a sunk quatrefoil in each face. The oak cover is C17, pyramidal with panelled sides, ball finial and iron ring, hung from a C17 pulley on the tiebeam of the bell-turret. In the Chancel are floor-slabs (1) lower part of priest, incised figure in mass vestments with marginal inscription in Lombardic capitals with date 1349, black marble, (2) to Edward Beaucock, M.D., 1665, with shield of arms, black marble, (3) defaced and partly covered, C17. In the Chancel are indents (1) of figures and canopy, 2 shields, group of figures, and inscription-plate, partly concealed below base of altar, (2) of inscription-plate. On the E wall of the Chancel, partly blocking the E window, is a monument (1) of Anthony Maxey (1592) and Dorothy (Basset) (1602), his wife, marble and alabaster, erected by their son, Sir Henry Maxey, with 2 round-headed recesses flanked and divided by Corinthian columns, and containing kneeling figures of 2 men in plate armour and wives at prayer-desks, with gadrooning below, entablature with foliate cresting and quartered shield of Maxey, with four smaller shields below. Also on the E wall are monuments (2) of Martin Carter, 1754, and Anne (Feake) his second wife, 1756, erected by his brother Milbourn Carter, 1766, grey and white marble with scrolled open and broken pediment with shield of arms, (3) of Milbourn Carter, 1773, of similar design, the shield of arms not in place but present nearby, and (4) of Michael Nolan, 1827, white marble sarcophagus, draped urn and arms on black marble. On the N wall of the Chancel is a monument of Sir William Maxey, 1645, Helena (Grevill), his wife, 1653, and Grevill, 1648, and William, 1659, their sons, black and white marble with scrolled broken pediment and achievement of arms, above it a funeral helm and crest, partly of the late C16. On the S wall of the Chancel is a monument to the Reverend Peter Milbourn Carter, 1813, white marble tablet with shield of arms, scrolled quadrants and guttae on black marble. In the NE window of the Chancel are fragments of glass in the tracery, with dog in roundel, C14; in the NW window, fragments of figures and tabernacle work, C15; in the SW window, part of an angel holding a shield and fragments of tabernacle work, C15. In the NE window of the Nave are fragments of C14 glass, grisaille and foliage, mostly in situ, and in the SE window, white trefoils on black roundels surrounded by blue foliage and gold borders, mostly in situ, C14. On the E wall of the Chancel are paintings, remains of the figure of an angel with lozengy background, with foliated lower border N of the E window, and S of it part of an arcade with foliate cresting; and on the splays and rear-arch of the blocked Norman window, ashlar-work and part of a capital. On the E splay of the NE window is a Trinity, the Dove obliterated; on the W splay, a full-length Resurrection figure of Christ, with cross-staff; and on the soffit of the rear-arch, a Majesty in a vesica, flanked by angels, one holding a cross and crown of thorns, all C14. In the Nave there are paintings - on the soffit of the rear-arch of the NE window, central circular panel with bird and scrolled foliage border and indistinct continuation on the W splay; on the N wall, W of the doorway, a small head, probably of the Infant Christ, part of a large figure subject; on the E splay of the SE window, the Incredulity of St. Thomas; on the W splay, figure, probably of St. James the Great, with book, staff and scrip; on the soffit of the rear-arch, central circular panel with Agnus Dei and flowing foliage each side, all c.1320. At the W end of the Nave are 238 medieval tiles, some plain, some with slip patterns glazed; others are set in the sill of the SW window of the Chancel; and others are loose in a chest. On the W wall of the nave is a Royal Arms of Charles II, painted and later re-painted. On the N wall of the Nave is a funeral helm with crest (dog's head razed), C17, on a plain wrought iron bracket. There are 2 bells by Miles Graye, 1609 and 1621.

'The church is of the utmost importance since it is the only substantial example of Norman brick-building in England' (Warwick Rodwell, Historic Churches - a Wasting Asset, CBA Research Report 19, 1977, 68 and 98; P.J.Drury, The production of Brick and Tile in Medieval England, Medieval Industry, CBA Research Report 40, editor D.W. Crossley, 126-7). RCHM1.

Having said it was dry, I have to say that this is a description of an interior that I think I would kill to get access to; this church has the potential to turn upside down my preconceptions of any church with this architectural style! It sounds truly glorious with a richness of history that surely ought to be accessible?

Sadly, despite the fact that "the church is of the utmost importance since it is the only substantial example of Norman brick-building in England", not to mention the cornucopia of treasures inside, it remains incognito. A search of achurchnearyou returns no information, as does a Google Images search - is it really just me who is outraged by this random excision of our mutual history? I appreciate that the Priest in Charge lives in Colchester but surely a key could be arranged for someone to hold in the village or are we as a society now so unworthy that our churches need to be permanently closed to us except on certain Sundays?

But now my familiar rant over; so Mee's view:

BRADWELL. It is the Bradwell near Coggeshall, with lovely cottages and an ancient hollow elm, and with great attractions in the church, notable among them the striking monuments to the Maxeys, who were stout-hearted followers of the king when most of Essex was against him. On a fine altar tomb we see kneeling figures of Sir Antony Maxey and his wife of Elizabeth's day, to­gether with Sir Henry and his wife of a generation later. A handsome monument close by was set up by another Henry Maxey to his father and two brothers, all brave Royalists in the time of the Civil War. Of the father, Sir William, we read that he was a man of Joshua's resolution, who would gather his family round him by five in the morning that he might bless them and read from the Prayer Book.

A delightful inscription of our own century tells of Henry Brunwin, lord of the manor. He was the last of his race, and his people had been connected with Bradwell for 700 years. The first of them were perhaps here in time to celebrate the centenary of the church, which shows us by Roman bricks and a little window that it was first built by the Normans. The chancel was rebuilt about 1340, when flowers were carved on the tracery of the windows; and they were 14th century craftsmen who made the porch, a little gem with fine timber work and 14 traceried openings. It shelters a studded door of about 1500.

Pictures on the walls and window-splays are 600 years old, some of them covering up paintings older still. Among them is a saint with staff and wallet, a cross with a banner, the lamb in a circle, and a picture of the Trinity in which Our Lord is a small figure with a dove on His head. He is also seen in glory between two angels.

The medieval screen has lost some of its tracery but has kept the panelling behind its vanished rood loft. There are traceried panels from another screen, a Tudor helmet hanging on the wall, two little alabaster cherubs with fragments of old carving and sturdy posts supporting a turret built at the time of the Great Armada. Some good modern woodwork includes a priest's desk carved with hares. There are tiles that have been here 600 years. A lovely one, framed on the wall, shows a pelican feeding her young. The font came here in Norman England as a square bowl carved with small chevrons. Tudor craftsmen shaped the bowl again with eight sides and set it up on an elaborate brick base with a design of leaves. Later the Jacobean cover was added, leaving it as we see it all today.

Having said my rant was over this entry/report makes me even more ire filled - why can a local priest decide to lock his church without making satisfactory arrangements to allow untrammelled access to the curious. "The word 'church'....referred to a body of Christian believers. Nowadays the word retains this meaning, as well as referring to the building that Christians worship in" (Richard Taylor, How to Read a Church. 2003, ISBDN 9781844130535.

As a practising Christian do I not have a right of access to any church, at any time and for any reason? I may be visiting churches for their historical information but whilst I do so I always feel closer to God and the reasons a church was built when I'm inside and excluded and unwanted when I'm merely recording the architecture of the outside.

I know the reasons for a locked church - I keep harking on about them - but I'm buggered to find a reason for the lack of keyholders. A point I've made before, and will continue to do so until someone starts a revolution, why is it that some of the remotest churches have full accessibility whilst a church in the middle of busy town is chained to the hilt? A case in point will be the next post.

Is it just me or does the fact that the interior report was published by the CBA really sum up the sad state of accessibility?

UPDATE: I passed nearby in Sept 12, stopped on the off chance and found a lady flower arranging and so got to see the interior - it really is as good as it sounded.

Flickr set.

Bocking, Essex

St Mary the Virgin is magnificent, and huge and locked. When I arrived there was a mother and toddler group in session and my courage to look round the inside of the church whilst this was ongoing failed me. This was a mistake since when I returned on my way home, having assumed that the mother and toddler group indicated an open church, it was locked. This is a shame since Mee indicates that there are some fine ornaments within.

It dates mainly from the 15th and 16th centuries but was heavily restored in the 19th and is built of flint rubble with limestone dressings. Carvings on the nave roof include the knot of the Bourchier family, the mullet of the de Veres and the leopard head of the Flitch family, apparently. There three brasses, two from the 17th century and one from the 15th. If the exterior accurately reflects the interior, I really regret not having the balls to gate crash the mothers with their toddlers weekly get together, after all the worst that could have happened is that they asked me to leave! Hey Ho I suppose, as my boys would say, I need to grow a pair.

Mee has a lot to say about Bocking but it should be noted that the Courtaulds factory has long since departed:

BOCKING. It has kept much of its ancient beauty and has not sold its soul to industry, but it shares with its neighbour Braintree the prosperity of the great industry in rayon. Here has been developed one of the great ideas of our time, artificial silk, and the fine factory is side by side with the church, old and new together. Bocking was a village when Samuel Courtauld began his work at the beginning of last century; little did he dream that the end of it would be, a hundred years later, the wizardry of transmuting trees into trousseaus.

The Courtaulds were Huguenot refugees driven from France to England in the 17th century. They produced, a hundred years after that, an industrious idealist who was successively silk-weaver, paper-maker, and miller in Kent and Essex, then going to America to die in the attempt to found a perfect community. It was his son Samuel who started his silk factory here. Samuel's brother George returned from America to join the little firm, which linked the manufacture of crepe to the silk business, reached almost worldwide fame, and built up the nucleus of the financial resources from which immense developments were to spring. Courtauld succeeded Courtauld.

Synthetic chemists had long dreamed of copying the silkworm whose caterpillar, eating mulberry leaves, transforms the result into a gummy fluid which, on entering the air by way of its spinnerets, instantly becomes silk. The first man to rival the silkworm was actually Sir Joseph Swan, who patented a process for the con­version of cotton into a sort of artificial silk to serve as the filament of his electric lamp, in the invention of which he beat the famous Edison; and a Frenchman took up the idea and established fac­tories for the production of synthetic yarn by treating cellulose with acid. There were other efforts towards the same end, but the master process was found in that evolved, after 12 years of research, by two English chemists who sold the rights to Courtaulds. Today the rayon process marches with the accuracy and precision of a familiar experiment in a chemist's laboratory. They order their materials, treat them according to formula, and produce silks and fabrics with unerring accuracy. In a Canadian forest in any year of peace are certain spruce trees, 35 years old, which a year hence will be issuing from this factory ready to dress a bride from head to foot and to play a part in furnishing her home.

Such is the wonderful idea which has changed this place from an old-world village to a modern town. It has still a host of old houses, with overhanging gables everywhere. Standing out among them are the three gables of the old Woolpack Inn, built in Elizabethan times with rich beams carved with grotesques and foliage. Close by is Wentworth House, with a 17th century canopy finely carved over the doorway; and on the front of one of the inns there is a carving of a man with a wreath of fruit on his head. At Church End is Doreward's Hall, its splendid Tudor wing impressive with chequered buttresses and magnificent windows. There are farms and cottages that have been here 300 years and more. There is an old post windmill with sails 60 feet long, preserved for ever in a playground for the children; and there is the Deanery, with its 17th century gable and chimneys, so-called because the parson here has the title of dean, the living being what is called a Peculiar, under the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Beside the Deanery is an old barn and a dovecot with 135 nests of lath and plaster, the dovecot interesting because it was built during the residence here of John Gauden, the bishop who imposed a forgery on the world. He created intense interest in a book which was attributed to Charles Stuart - the Eikon Basilike, which pretended to be an account written by the king of his long sufferings, but was actually written by Bishop Gauden. It is believed that a copy was bought the day after the execution, and the volume ran through about 50 editions, calling forth a reply in Milton's Iconoclastes. Gauden, a Bury St Edmunds schoolboy, left a charity to Bocking in memory of his years at the Deanery.

The church, a magnificent 15th century structure, is dwarfed by the factory, which almost touches the Tudor wall round the church­yard; the iron gates on the south side are a peace memorial. The tower is splendid, with pinnacles and double buttresses, niches with carved heads, and rich stone panelling round the base. The fine embattled porch shelters a door covered with ironwork of great beauty, the craftsmanship of a clever smith 700 years ago. The interior is worthy of the impressive exterior, having a remarkable set of old roofs, those of the nave and aisles being 16th century and those in the chancel and the chapels a little older. The bosses show leaves and shields and other carvings. The south chapel has a window with beautiful 14th century tracery, and the net pattern of that period is also seen in the east window, where each space has an angel in modern glass. The lights below are resplendent with portraits of saints and martyrs, among them St Augustine, balanced with a splendid figure of Charles Stuart. Another beautiful window is the gift of two American citizens, Francis and James Goodwin, whose ancestors lived in Booking. The window shows the Annuncia­tion, the Nativity, and the Epiphany, with Bertha, Ethelburga, and other English saints in panels above and below. There are two 17th century chairs elaborately carved, a handsome modern screen, and a Tudor funeral helmet; and on a window shelf when we called was a clock-hand, saying: "From 1731 to 1859 from Bocking tower I told the hour." It had been turning for more than a million hours when it was taken down.

Peeping from under the organ are John Doreward (in the armour worn at Agincourt) and his wife in a horned headdress. Another brass shows Oswald Fitch of Shakespeare's time in his long cloak and ruff, and there is a monument of 1624 with a beautiful figure of Grisell Moore kneeling between fine columns.

Most of the church as we see it would be familiar to the three courageous Bocking people who perished for their faith in the cruel reign of Mary Tudor: Catherine Hut and Richard Spurge, murdered in the name of God at Smithfield in 1556, and William Purcas, who was burned at Colchester in 1557.

Flickr set.

Black Notley, Essex

It appears that pretty much all the churches around and in Braintree are locked and that most of them do not list keyholders which, perhaps, speaks volumes.

SS Peter and Paul is no exception. Built of flint and rubble with a wooden shingled belfry typical of the area it is situated in the grounds of Black Notley Hall, just south of Braintree. Originating in the 12th century the church has been extensively over the years particularly after being damaged in the second world war. Now I have to admit that by the time I got to Black Notley I was on my ninth church of the day (I visited two more afterwards) and eight of them were locked, so I don't think I gave SS Peter and Paul the attention it probably deserves. The location is great with a fine 15th century manor house and accompanying farmyard providing a lovely setting - I wouldn't be surprised if it has been used as a film location at some time.

For all that, this architectural style doesn't really float my boat, I prefer a tower or spire over the timbered belfry which, to me, seems to reduce the overall magnificence of the churches, either that or it's because most churches in this style I've visited have been locked and that, for me, negates the whole purpose of a church.

Anyway what do I know! Mee observes:

BLACK NOTLEY. It lies on the road running down the valley of the River Brain, and has quaint cottages, a little Norman church, and a 15th century hall with a barn of five bays. The church is curious for having neither tower nor chancel arch. The thick walls are pierced with the doorways, and there are great posts in the nave which support the bell-turret, with its shingled pyramid roof and a tiny spire. The most remarkable possession the church has is the ornamental ironwork on the door in the north porch; it is among the rarest old ironwork in this country, having been worked by Norman craftsmen. Soon after this door was made Walter de Wydenal was the parson here, and a marble gravestone under the belfry records his burial in Norman French. He may have used this dug-out chest, and may have seen the men at work on the curious oak frame of the sedilia. The most remarkable woodwork in Black Notley, however, is at Stanton's, a farm a mile away. The house has a 600-year-old hall with moulded capitals on its timber framework. The hall has been divided into two storeys and a 16th century chimney inserted, but the roof remains as it was in the 14th century.

There lies in the churchyard here, under a notable tomb with an obelisk and shields, a village boy who came back to his birthplace to die. He was the village blacksmith's son, John Ray, and was born in 1628. His father was able to send him to Braintree School and then to Cambridge, where John became lecturer on Greek and mathematics, and, taking orders, delivered sermons and discourses forming the basis of books which later established his reputation as a philosopher.

A born naturalist, he explored England, Scotland, and Wales, carefully describing and cataloguing his collections. Driven out of the University by religious difficulties, he visited the Continent with pupils, and renewed there the Nature studies begun at home. With Francis Willoughby, his most famous pupil, he published the results of their discoveries as to the rise and fall of sap in trees. Alone he worked out a system of classification in Nature which, preceding the more perfect system of Linnaeus, led Cuvier to say that Ray had laid the foundations of the science of zoology.

He was elected to the Royal Society and for many years an­nounced his discoveries in the form of Communications to that famous body. His interests were wide, embracing the study of rare words and phrases surviving in our language: observations on mushrooms, maize, musk-scented insects, spiders, the air-bladder of fishes, the anatomy of the porpoise. His observations were clear and exact, and revealed for the first time many of the marvellous adaptations by which life maintains itself in the plant and animal kingdoms.

Later generations built on his foundations. From his data his successors proceeded to new discoveries, and to deductions which would have startled this wonderful pioneer. He spent the last 26 years of his life in Essex, active to the last as student and teacher, and, dying in 1705, he sleeps within hail of the spot where he was born.

Flickr set.

Beauchamp Roding, Essex

St Botolph is in a sad state, the first things I noticed was that someone has put a stone through the north window and the generally run down appearance both inside and out. However its setting is stunning atop a hill, surrounded by trees and fields - a tranquil spot for an imposing church. At first sight I thought that it had been abandoned or was in the care of the CCT but on closer examination it appears that it is still in regular use with two services a month being held.

The listing on www.achurchnearyou.com (a great tool for anyone interested in churches) says:

St Botolph, Beauchamp Roding(pronounced Beecham) is one of four Churches in the South Rodings Parish in the Deanery of Dunmow & Stansted and in the Diocese of Chelmsford. The Church is situated away from the centre of the village, standing in a church yard surrounded by fields and is approached via an entrance on the B184. The Church building, which is listed Grade II*, looks out onto an idyllic location with a beautiful view. The Church is always open and attracts a substantial number of visitors who are struck by the beauty of the surroundings and by the sense of peace and tranquillity they find there.

The church building consists of a nave, chancel, tower and south porch. The present nave dates from the fourteenth century, although this may have replaced an earlier structure dating from the eleventh century. The tower dates from the fifteenth century and contains the belfry; the bells are still in position although they are no longer capable of being rung. One unique feature of the Church is the staged benching at the rear of the nave.

ST EDMUND. C14 nave and C15 chancel and W tower. The tower is quite tall and has diagonal buttresses and battlements. It is at the time of writing in a dangerous state of preservation. Chancel roof with a tiebeam on arched braces. The beam rests on carved stone corbels.

Arthur says:

Beauchamp Roding. Quiet and remote it lies, with belts of tall trees behind its thatched cottages. The 14th century church is in the middle of the meadows, its 15th century tower seen from afar. For over 500 years two corbels have been a source of wonder to children here, one a beast protruding its ugly tongue, the other a long-winged angel whose head has been ruthlessly cut away. There is a stone panel of the scene in Gethsemane.

Flickr set.

Aythorpe Roding, Essex

St Mary the Virgin is locked with no hint of a keyholder so I can't comment on the interior but the exterior is in the style of a lot of Essex churches south of the A120; flint rubble walls and a wooden octagonal shingled belfry - the style is prevalent in the Braintree area.

As you approach the church there's a really nice lych gate on the east side.

ST MARY. Nave and chancel, C13, but much renewed, and C15 belfry with broach spire. - BENCHES. Plain, in the nave, C16 also fragments of the C17.

Mee says:

Aythorpe Roding. It is a tiny place and ever has been so. The church stands among the cornfields halfway between Sleepy Hollow Farm by the stream and the fine smock windmill looking down. A good example of a 13th century manor church, every window in it is still in the style of the plain lancet which replaced the Norman. The bell-turret was set on oak posts in the nave 400 years ago to shelter three bells which rang out to herald the accession of Henry the Eighth.  We noticed that Henry Ludgater was rector here for 53 years of last century; he sleeps under the limes.

Flickr set.

Abbess Roding, Essex

I haven't been posting updates due to the school holidays (which always lead to less time for personal pleasures) however I have managed to visit some churches and will resume from where I left off at the beginning of August.

St Edmund in Abbess Roding was a very pleasant surprise - an attractive exterior containing two lovely memorials; one to Sir Gamaliel Capel and the other to Mildred Lucklyn.

The fabric of the church dates from the 14th and 15th centuries but was extensively restored in 1867 under the direction of the Rev Laurence Capel-Cure and at considerable personal cost. To my, untutored, eye the restorative work was sympathetic.

The memorial on the north wall of the nave shows Sir Gamaliel Capel, who died aged 50 in 1627, his wife, Jane Brown (who was his first cousin), and their six sons and three daughters.

Here lieth Sir Gamaliel, knight, son of Henry Capel Esq., and Lady Katherine, daughter of the Earl of Rutland. He marryed Jane one of the daughters of Weston Brown Esq., by whome he had six sonnes viz:- Gamaliel, knight, Thomas, Anthony, Henry, Theodosius and Francis, and three daughters - Mary, Anne and Mildred - Ob. A.D.1627 aet fuae 50.

"We bragge no vertures, and we begge no teares.

O, Reader, if thou hast eyes and ears

It is enough; but tell me why

Thou comst to gaze? Is it to pry

Into our cost? or borrowe

A copie of our sorrowe?

Or dost thou come

To learn to dye.

To practice by?

If this be thy desire,

Remove thee one step nigher,

Here lies a President; a rarer

Earth never showed, nor heaven a fayrer.

She was... but roome denyes to tell the what.

Summe all perfections uppe, and she was that".

Almost directly opposite, on the south wall, is Mildred Lucklyn's memorial which shows her looking out from a curtained recess with her head reclining on her right hand while her left hand is on an open  book. Cherubs are holding back the curtains and two angels are depicted about to place a crown on her head.

ST EDMUND. Nave C14, chancel C15, E window from the restoration of 1867, W tower also 1867. The nave roof has tie-beams on arched braces with a little tracery in the spandrels. Inside the chancel on the N side a niche which was originally the opening into a closet recognizable on the outside. - FONT. Square, of the late C12, decorated on one side with a Norman foliage trail, on one with a trail of a rather unusual stylized shape, on the third with the sun, a whorl, and two rosettes, and on the fourth with two flowers and three small roses. - SCREEN. With two-light divisions, the mullion being carried up into the apex of the four-centred arch. Each light has an ogee arch with some panel-tracery above. - PULPIT. With an uncommonly fine, generously large tester; C18. - HOUR GLASS STAND. Wrought iron, early C18, near the pulpit. - STAINED GLASS. In a chancel S window. Good figures of a Bishop and a female Saint surrounded by tabernacle-work not in its original state; C15. - MONUMENTS. Sir Gamaliel Capell d. 1613, with the usual kneeling figures facing each other, the children kneeling in the ‘predella’. - Lady Lucklyn d. 1633, with frontal demi-figure, head propped on elbow and a book in front of her. Two cherubs, seated on the outer volutes, hold a curtain open. Flying little putti behind. The monument has been attributed to Epiphanius Evesham (J. Seymour). 

ABBESS RODING. Elms line the deep lane which brings us to its small medieval church, with a thin lead spire on a modern tower. Here are almost the best screens in the county for a church of its size, a deep band of elaborate tracery carved in the closing years of the 15th century and filling a third of the opening below the low-pitched arches. The panels have tracery at both ends and rich ornament along the rail. The roof of the chancel is 15th century; the rich woodcarving on the canopy of the pulpit is 18th. The oldest possession of the church is a square Norman font, but its chief  treasure is in the windows, which have medieval glass showing a bishop and a saint. The bishop stands with great dignity in his robes and mitre, his staff in his hand and two fingers raised in blessing - a little masterpiece said to have been saved from destruction by being buried in some time of danger. The saint is probably Margaret; she has golden hair and is shown thrusting her staff into the mouth of a dragon. Both figures are 15th century.

There are two brightly painted monuments to the Capel family with a span of 300 years between them, the older one showing Sir Gamaliel Capel kneeling with his wife at a desk with a cloth of green and gold, their nine children in Jacobean costume below; and the modern one in memory of Lawrence Capel Cure, who was rector here for 54 years. On his wall-monument is his gorgeous coat-of-arms in full colour. The old hourglass is still on his pulpit, half-full of sand; he must have turned it over many times, and perhaps heard the applause of his congregation as he did so, starting his fourthly and fifthly in those days of long sermons. On another monument a lady of Stuart times (Lady Lyckyn) is being crowned by two angels.

In this village John Thurloe was born in the year Shakespeare died; he rose to be Secretary of State to Cromwell. To him we owe most of our knowledge of the Commonwealth under Cromwell. He was one of the Commissioners sent by Parliament to treat with Charles Stuart at Uxbridge, and was Secretary of State during the Protectorate. A man of great ability, he played an important role in Parliament, but was chiefly valuable to the country as over­seer of home and foreign posts. So successful was he in detecting plots and plotters that it was  said that Cromwell carried at his belt the secrets of all the princes of Europe. Sincere friendship linked the two men, Thurloe being one of the few to whom Cromwell un­bent. Thurloe revered and loved him, and would have had him king. Under Richard Cromwell he was the one strong man of the nation, able, sincere, and selfless. When the Restoration came he was imprisoned for treason, but was released and took no further part in public life. Charles the Second desired him to return to his old position, but Thurloe answered that he despaired of serving him as he had served Cromwell, whose rule, he said, "was to seek out men for places, and not places for men."

He died at his chambers in Lincoln's Inn in 1668. Many years after his death his vast store of State papers was found hidden in a false ceiling of a garret above his room: letters, copies of Cromwell's speeches now first made known, and reports by spies. He betrayed no man, taking his secrets with him to the grave.

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