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.

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Middleton, Essex

I've tried to find All Saints a couple of times previously without success but armed with a postcode I finally tracked it down and, to be honest, was seriously disappointed at first sight.

The very drab exterior conceals a seriously exciting Norman carcass - the first hint of which is the fantastic south door and inside the chancel arch is equally good. To the west of the arch is what appears to be an old doorway and in the nave are two similar recesses - purpose unknown.

The chancel has four good, modern, poppyheads, an elaborate ledger stone to Sire James Samson d.1349 and a wooden Bas relief Tudor coat of arms.

ALL SAINTS. Nave, chancel and belfry. The church was at the time of writing in a very neglected state. The S porch had fallen in and the spire was reduced to a timber skeleton. Yet the church is of some importance, especially for its Norman features. The S doorway has colonnettes with scalloped capitals and two orders of zigzag. The chancel arch has columns also. The inner order is of a remarkable design. Polygonal shafts decorated down each side by a chain of triangles. Another such column is now (re-used?) in a C13 recess at the E end of the S aisle. The capitals are scalloped or with volutes and slight leaf decoration. The chancel arch above the columns has decorated abaci. The arches are provided with a zigzag moulding and another with zigzags and a kind of stylized tongues lapping into them. In the nave N and S walls two identical C14 recesses on short triple shafts. - DOOR with traceried panels, C15; in a bad state. - STAINED GLASS E window, in the style of Warrington. - PAINTING. Annunciation, by a follower of Titian. A good picture, and ought to be looked after. - MONUMENT. Incised slab to James Samson, a priest d. 1349, 7 ft long. The style is Flemish rather than English, with an elaborate architectural surround, but the slab is of Purbeck marble, and we know too little of such pieces to decide against English authorship. The head of the figure unfortunately is renewed.

MIDDLETON. It clusters under a hill in the Gainsborough country, its small church with the rectory shaded by the fine beeches of the park. The 19th century spire, rising above the old timbered turret, looks down on the Norman walls of the chancel and the nave; we come into them through a doorway much as the Normans left it, with their round shafts, their zigzag on the arch, and their handsome capitals. Still swinging on its hinges is a door with the beautiful tracery of a medieval carpenter. There is a 16th century chest with quaint ironwork, and a painting of the Annunciation of the same age. In the floor of the chancel is a stone engraved with the portrait of James Samson, a rector of nearly 600 years ago, under a pinnacled canopy. The oak reredos is in memory of a rector who followed him after 500 years and stayed for over two generations. He came in 1823 and was rector till he died in 1889, aged 95. It is one of the most remarkable cases of long service we have come upon, for this rector, Oliver Raymond, followed his father Samuel who was rector for 54 years before him, so that father and son preached in this church for 120 years, through all the life of Napoleon and the French Revolution, through all the rise of modern England till after Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.

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Assington, Suffolk

Storm clouds were gathering as I arrived at St Edmund which I found locked but with, seemingly reluctant, keyholders listed and a notice advising that due to a string of burglaries it was now only open on weekends - this actually seemed fair enough as it's very isolated (let's not re-visit that debate) and only had Llamas as guardians...I assume they're are not very efficient watchdogs.

I might make the effort to re-visit.

ST EDMUND. Close to the Hall, and handsome in the contrast of its flint colour to the brick of the Hall. Chancel rebuilt c. 1830. Restored and W tower rebuilt in 1863. What survives of original work is all Perp, including the four-bay arcade. - SOUTH DOOR. A splendid Perp piece with tracery and a border of foliage trails. - PLATE. Set of 1843-4. - Monuments. Brass to a Knight and Lady, c. 1500 (nave floor). - Robert Gurdon d. 1577 and wife, and John Gurdon d. 1623 and wife. Double monument of c. 1625 with two pairs of the usual kneeling figures facing one another across a prayer-desk. Children in the pre-della. - Brampton Gurdon, dated 1648. His demi-figure and those of his two wives; represented frontally. He is flanked by columns. Top with a handsome pedimental arrangement. - John Gurdon d. 1758 and his wife d. 1710. The tablet must be nearer her death than his. Good cartouche with a cherub’s head below. - Philip Gurdon d. 1817 and wife. Tablet by the younger Bacon.

ASSINGTON. Standing in a park with magnificent cedars, the ivy-clad home of the ancient family of the Gurdons has for its neighbour the ideally situated 15th century church. The tower, 75 feet high, has been remade from the old materials, among which we may still see the long-and-short work of the Saxons, built into the interior. The fine porch has a magnificent old door with carvings of an angel, little animals, and birds pecking grapes clustered on the vine. In the church we found a robin blithely singing. Two 15th century portrait brasses in the nave floor show the figure of an armoured man with hair to his shoulders, a great sword by his side and a quaint dog at his feet, his wife in fur sleeves and with a handsome girdle about her gown. They are unknown.

The rest of the memorials are mainly to the Gurdons who rose to wealth and influence when Sir Adam Gurdon, defeated in single combat by Edward the First during the Barons War, was pardoned and made the royal friend and confidant. A wall-monument in the chancel, linking the 16th and 17th centuries, is to Robert Gurdon and his kinsman Sir John. Both wear armour and baggy red breeches, both kneel on cushions facing their wives, and below each pair kneel a son and daughter, wearing ruffs.

On a huge 17th century tomb, under a classical canopy supported by marble shafts  and enriched with heraldry, is the dignified figure of Brampton Gurdon, his curly head bare, wearing a cloak and holding a handkerchief and a knobbed stick; his two wives are with him, one carrying a book and wearing a big ruff, the other, aged and stern, in a cape and with a headdress reaching to her shoulders.

There is a tablet to Sir William Brampton Gurdon, who, born in 1840 and living into our own time, was proud to describe himself as a farmer. He was twice private secretary to Mr Gladstone. So particular was he concerning public money that as secretary of a Conference in Paris he deducted half-a-crown from the allowance for an illustrious member who had asked his son to the lunch provided for the Commissioners. Another tablet on the walls records a heroic triumph over physical disability; it is to William Francis Warner, blind organist at this church for 55 years, dying in 1926.

Note to self - having read Pevsner and Mee I probably should make the effort.

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Polstead, Suffolk

Without a shadow of doubt St Mary was the church of the day; the setting is stunning, the rather odd stainless steel nave roof with dormer windows - peculiarly attractive - and when you step inside the interior of the church is given a unique appearance by the use of brick and tufa blocks in the construction of the nave arches, the Norman clerestory windows and the chancel arch. Norman arches of brick are very rare; there is no other church like this in the whole of Suffolk and even where, as in St Alban’s Cathedral, brick arches were built by the Normans, the brick was Roman material re-used.

There has been some difference of opinion concerning the origin of the Polstead Bricks; it has been maintained that they are Roman and that this may be inferred from the presence in the walls of much geuine Roman brick and tile and in the arches themselves of the tufa blocks (which it is known were used for hearth-building in Roman villas).

On the other hand, the Polstead Bricks much more closely resemble the bricks used to build Little Coggeshall Abbey, in Essex, which are known to have been made on the site within ten years of 1200 A.D. Both the Polstead and Little Coggeshall bricks are of dark red, rough texture and about the same size, (viz., 10-11 in. long, 5-7 in. wide and 1 3/4 in. thick). It seems likely that here we have a very early instance of post-Roman brick-making in East Anglia and that the Polstead Bricks ante-date the Coggeshall bricks by some half-century.

Personally I found St Mary as architecturally exciting as Waltham Abbey but add in a murder, old glass, interesting monuments, brasses and the setting then this has to be a top ten church (she makes SJ's 1000 Best but only merits a ludicrous 1 star).

ST MARY. Close to Polstead Hall. The age of the church can only be recognized inside. Originally the church was aisleless and shorter to the W than it is now. Norman extension by aisles and a further W bay. Arcade of three bays. Square Norman piers with nook-shafts at the angles. These have small capitals.  Rough, single-stepped Norman arches of brick. Clerestory windows over, also of brick. In addition the W bay remains separated. It has a brick arch on Norman responds and yet one more clerestory window. The bricks are most puzzling. They are in size 10  to 11 in. by 5 to 7 in. by 1 3/4 in. So they cannot be Roman: the Roman size is 18 by 12 in. On the other hand the earliest accepted English bricks, those at Little Coggeshall in Essex, are 12 by 6 by 1 3/4 in., and that would go well with Polstead. But Polstead is earlier in all probability, and that would give it the distinction of having the earliest surviving English bricks. Norman also are the plain chancel arch and its imposts and the elaborate W doorway, now leading into the tower and the window above. The doorway has to the W two orders of shafts and divers zigzags in the arches. So there was no W tower originally. The next part in order of time is the W tower of c.1300 with later spire. It has lancets and Y-tracery. The W arch of the S arcade may also belong to this period. Of the Dec style the s doorway, the s aisle E window with reticulated tracery, and also the N aisle E window with a depressed arch. Most of the rest is Perp. - FONT. Octagonal, C 13, on five supports. - WALL PAINTING. Fragment of a Bishop, nave, N wall. - COMMUNION RAIL. Three-sided, C18.- STAINED GLASS. Many fragments, C15 and later, in the chancel. -  PLATE. Set 1816. -  BRASSES. Priest of the C15, 18 in. figure, chancel N wall. - Civilian, wife, and children, late C15, 21 in. figure, in front of the pulpit.

POLSTEAD. It was here that they laid poor Maria Marten, whose mysterious disappearance over a century ago led to one of the most sensational murder trials ever known. We can still see her thatched cottage, and the gabled home of her murderer. The Red Barn in which she died stood near the church, and her grave is in the churchyard, but her stone has been chipped away by louts until it is only a stump of a few inches.

We turn with relief from this most gruesome memory. Standing near the grave is the famous Gospel Oak, among fine trees between the church and the hall. It is said to be 1000 years old, and to mark the spot where missionaries stood preaching to the Saxons before the village had a church. It is now, alas, a most forlorn sight, hardly a tree in the accepted sense of the word. Far younger and more beautiful are other trees belonging to the hall, some shading a deer park of 90 acres, and others shading a beautiful well garden.

But a thousand years will not bring us to the beginning of things in Polstead, the pool-stead or pool-place named from the lake to which the steep village street descends. How old the name is we do not know, but it cannot be older than the thin red Roman bricks which the Norman builders picked up and used again when they were fashioning the round arches in the church. They used them for the nave arcades, the chancel arch, and the tower arch. Above the nave arches are red brick clerestory windows which have been blocked since the height of the aisles was raised about 1300. At that time, too, the big north porch was built, and it has kept its original oak door, with two long iron straps and a round iron handleplate.

The tower has the only old stone spire in Suffolk (14th century), and the tower arch has two pairs of pillars and three rows of zigzags.

The church has an old timber roof; and rather rare among its woodwork are the baluster rails of Shakespeare’s time, which enclose three sides of the altar. The tapering font cover is Jacobean, but the font itself is in the later Norman style. In the chancel are old glass fragments showing parts of a Crucifixion and a bishop. Eight 15th century people are here in brass, a priest in his robes, a father with bobbed hair and wide sleeves, a mother with furred sleeves, and their five children in long gowns. Still more attractive is the delightful little classical monument above the pulpit, where a 17th century Jacob is kneeling with one hand on the head of his Benjamin, a youngest son, like the Benjamin of the Bible. The rosy-cheeked boy is wearing a long green cloak and holding a skull, and his death in 1630 was a tragic one, for he fell from one of the windows of the hall on to the stone steps below. The father is bare-headed and black-bearded, with a red cloak and white sleeves; the two of them are very charming under an arch crowned by a coat-of-arms.

The village has a memory of one of the most important happening in our history, something which took place not long before this monument was set up; it is enshrined in the archives of the church, which have entries giving the names of people who went out in the Mayflower to seek a new world.

At the bottom of the churchyard a dignified cenotaph looks out over the countryside; it is carved with an armoured knight in the act of slaying a dragon, the everlasting symbol of the heroism of those who went from this green and pleasant land to die for us.

The Mystery of the Old Red Barn

WILLIAM CORDER was the son of a wealthy farmer and a man of some education who, being involved in a love affair with Maria Marten, the beauty of the village, proposed a secret marriage. With her mother’s consent he arranged that she should go disguised in male attire to the old Red Barn on his mother’s farm. From there, after she had changed her clothes, he would take her to Ipswich and marry her.

During the day Corder was seen to approach the barn with a pick-axe on his shoulder. Maria duly appeared, dressed as a boy, and was never seen alive again. Corder went to her parents and declared that the marriage had taken place and that Maria had gone to stay with friends of his at a distance so that the wedding should not be known. From day to day Corder visited the barn, and then, five months having elapsed, he pleaded ill—hea1th and the need for a holiday abroad and left Polstead with money obtained by a trick from the Manningtree bank.

Time passed, and letters from Corder bearing an Isle of Wight address but a London postmark reached Maria’s parents, telling them that the girl was living happily with him. Never did they hear from her. Her mother dreamed repeatedly of the Red Barn, and a year after Maria’s departure the building was searched. Eighteen inches below the floor the body of Maria was found.

Corder was traced to a house at Brentford, where he had married a woman of good family and was keeping a School for Young ladies. His trial at Bury St Edmunds aroused such excitement that The Times gave a quarter of its whole space to it. The court was so crowded that solicitors fainted in the crush.

The case, after a year of mystery, was brutally simple, and having made a full confession in his cell Corder was executed before ten thousand spectators. A guinea an inch was paid for the rope which was used to hang him; a book recording his trial has been bound in his skin; his skeleton is preserved in West Suffolk General Hospital at Bury St Edmunds; and while this book was being written the old melodrama of Maria Marten, founded on the crime, was drawing half London to see it.

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Newton Green, Suffolk

Just as I was beginning to think that this was going to be a locked church trip along came All Saints. In an unusual arrangement the chancel is managed by the CCT and the nave is run as a community centre by the village; the two are separated by a glass screen. In the chancel is a fine monument to Margaret Boteler d. 1410 and in the nave is an earlier one to an unknown wimpled lady.

The two true glories of All Saints, a fine pulpit and very good wallpaintings, are also in the nave. On top of all this throw in a Norman north door, some old glass and a picturesque setting and you end up with a very fine church indeed.

ALL SAINTS. Norman N doorway. Two shafts with scalloped capitals. Zigzag in the arch and the hood-mould. Nave of c.1300, see the S doorway and the windows. Chancel Dec with reticulated E window. Dec also the Sedilia, simple, but with a pretty ‘two-light’ Piscina. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, simple. - PULPIT. Perp, with tracery. Inscription referring to its being a gift of Richard Modi and his wife Leticie. - LECTERN. Handsome C17 piece, with mostly consciously used Gothic motifs. - MONUMENTS. Nave s side. Lady of the early C14 in low early C14 recess. - Chancel N. Lady of c. 1400. Under an ogee arch with straight cresting.

NEWTON. The village is spread about a splendid green half as big as St James’s Park, and from the green a lane runs off to its church. The flint tower is 500 years old, but the nave has a Norman doorway with zigzag ornament, now blocked and framing a window. Some of the windows have fragments of ancient glass with heraldic shields and foliage. The 15th century pulpit, with lovely panelling and a trumpet stem, has an ancient inscription with the names of its donors, Richard Modi and his wife Letticie. The font is also 15th century, the wooden lectern 17th. In the nave, under an arch, is a 14th century lady in a wimple, wearing a long dress from which her tiny feet peep out like mice. The chancel has another woman’s figure under an arch, resting calmly here since the 15th century in her long gown and corded cloak, her head on a tasselled cushion, her hands in prayer, a little dog at her feet.

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Borley, Essex

Having previously researched Borley church (as noted in my Liston entry its dedication is unknown) I knew that it was kept locked and that no keyholder would be listed. This is because, somewhat odd as it may seem, the church is reputed to be Britain's most haunted church and as a consequence they shun the public.

The church is surrounded with yew topiary and sits in a beautiful spot - the view across the Stour valley towards Long Melford is stunning.

CHURCH (Dedication unknown). A topiary walk to the porch is the most notable feature of the church. The nave may be C11, see the sw quoin. The chancel and the W tower are Late Perp, the tower with thin diagonal buttresses and stepped battlements. - MONUMENTS. Sir Edward Waldegrave d. 1561 and wife d. 1599. Tomb-chest with recumbent effigies under a six-poster. The columns have shaft-rings. Straight top with big achievement. - Magdala Southcote d. 1592; with big kneeling figure; not good. - Black marble floor slab to Humphrey Burrough d. 1757, rector of Borley and Gainsborough’s uncle.

BORLEY. Its people look across the Stour valley into Suffolk from the churchyard, which has some remarkable clipped yews, like umbrellas with round frills and huge round bases. The church tower, like the chancel and the porch, is Tudor, but the
thick south wall of the nave may be 400 years older. There is a bell old enough to have rung for the defeat of the Armada, a 17th century doorway made of wood, a 15th century nave roof with embattled wall-plates, and a little bench with two poppyheads carved 500 years ago. In the chancel we see Magdala Southcote of 1598 kneeling at a desk, and in the nave is the great canopied tomb, 14 feet high, of Sir Edward Waldegrave and his wife Frances, who outlived him by 38 years. At her feet sits a squirrel with its paws to its mouth, and kneeling round the tomb are three sons and three daughters. The canopy rises on six Corinthian columns. Sir Edward was a Tudor Master of the Wardrobe. As an officer of Mary Tudor’s household he was put in the Tower in King Edward’s reign for refusing to prevent the princess from celebrating mass, but was set free on account of his health. On Mary’s coming to the throne he continued to serve her but objected to her marriage with Philip of Spain, so that his feelings were overcome by a pension of 500 crowns. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth he was thrown into the Tower again for allowing mass to be said in his house; and in the Tower he died, being buried in the chapel.

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Liston, Essex

Onwards to Liston and its church whose dedication is unknown - strangely this applies to both Liston and Borley - which I found locked with no keyholder named. Quite why this should be is beyond me but ours is not to wonder why.

I'd have liked to gain access as the Norman door and C15th glass sound interesting.

Pevsner: CHURCH. Nave and chancel Norman, see the masonry at the E end, and the plain, blocked N doorway. The chancel was widened in the C13, but the windows are all renewed. W tower, not too big, early C16, of brick with blue brick diapers, diagonal buttresses, a three-light brick W window, and stepped battlements on a trefoiled corbel frieze. The stair turret reaches higher than the tower. The S chancel chapel was added in 1867. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, traceried stem, and bowl with cusped panels and shields. - BENCH ENDS with two poppyheads. - STAINED GLASS. N window, in the tracery, several small C15 figures. - PLATE. Large Plate of 1683; Paten on foot probably of 1683; Flagon of 1702; Cup probably of 1702. LISTON HALL has been demolished.

LISTON. Its fine red tower is Tudor brickwork, and stands in a churchyard with neatly trimmed yews, by the side of Liston Hall park. One of the two bells is older than the tower, but far older than both is the Norman nave, which has a small doorway ornamented in the 12th century with zigzags and flowers. The chancel was made wider in the 13th century, but has kept its Norman wall at the east. A Tudor door is still swinging in the porch, and inside are handsome roofs 400 years old, that in the chancel having four angels looking down. A 15th century beam takes the place of the chancel arch, and there is a 15th century font, poor battered thing. The chancel has a medieval wooden seat, and the organist has a 17th century stool. One of the windows is delightful with glass new and old. It has nine charming roundels of Bible scenes, and in the tracery are figures coloured 500 years ago, the clearest being the Madonna holding a palm leaf and an orb. The others are probably St Anne, St George, Mary Magdalene, and St Michael. The church has a pathetic link with one of the most tragic events in the history of the Empire, the Massacre of Cawnpore. We read here how  Robert Thornhill, his wife, their two little ones, and a faithful nurse, were cruelly massacred after 66 days and nights of extreme suffering; and how Henry Thornhill and his family had already been murdered at Neetapore in those bitter days of the Mutiny.

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