Essex map

Dark Blue Placemarks = open
Light Blue Placemarks = keyholder listed
Yellow Placemark - revisit required
Pink Placemark = locked no keyholder listed
Red Placemark = ruin/redundant  

Green Placemarks = to be visited

Red Pin = Out of Area Essex churches to be visited.

Hadstock

St Botolph - I was about to be quite sniffy but then turned to Arthur who is quite fulsome so need to rethink and even more so after I read Pevsner.

I chanced upon Hadstock by taking an alternative way home from a visit to West Wratting - one of those long short-cuts you do in the hope of stumbling across something new. Unfortunately the light was from the west when I arrived but, with a bit of Photoshop help, I got some satisfactory pictures.

From the east side my first thought was WTF is going on with this church and looking at the photos now I still think that it's one of the most bizarre church designs I've ever seen. The chancel looks like a lady chapel from an abbey tacked on to a standard Norman church with an outsize family chapel tacked on to a largish porch both of which make the tower look disproportionately short. Actually the more you look at the building the stranger it gets.

This is odd and deserves a Google search - which reveals: St Botolph's is the main feature of interest and is an early Saxon building. In AD 654 Abbot Botolph started to build a monastery at Icanho. In AD 680 he died and was buried there. From ancient documents in Ely Cathedral it would seem that Icanho was the early name for Hadstock. During extensive archaeological excavations inside the church in 1974, an empty early Saxon grave was found against the east wall of the south transept. It was very shallow, so that most of coffin was above ground and that fact, and its position, denoted that it had been the burial place of a very important person. The body had been exhumed at a later date, and it is known that the body of St Botolph was removed and his relics distributed to the monasteries of Ely, Thorney and to the King's reliquary.

From circumstantial evidence, therefore, it would seem that this was site of St Botolph's monastery. The chapel where the coffin was found has always been known as St Botolph's chapel. From further finds during excavations this feeling has been reinforced.

There are many interesting features of Saxon origin in the church, but the main door is of special note. It is the oldest door in the UK to be in constant use and is mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records.

A 'holy' well is situated by the western wall of the churchyard and was said to possess healing properties. It was known as a cure for scrofula. It is fed by a spring that never dries up, and until 1939 was the source village's drinking water. On a certain day a young girl would drop a 'ring’ into the well and she was supposed to dream of the lad she would marry. This seemed like a fairy tale until two rings were found in modern days. In the late Victorian era, the rector of the day built a new rectory on the slope above the church and installed a 'modern' drainage system. It is said that one member of the rectory staff was a typhoid carrier, and leaks from the drains trickled downhill and into the well. Rumour has it that 40 folk from the village died, although no account of the deaths can be found in registers of the period. Presumably any illusion of the water's healing powers must have vanished!

The interior is a disappointment presumably over restored by Victorians.

UPDATE: This was an early visit when I knew little to nothing about church architecture but I've re-visited several times since and this is a fascinating place.

ST BOTOLPH. The church contains rare and interesting evidence of an C11 building, probably of before the Conquest. To this belong the double-splayed windows of the nave, the N doorway with one order of columns, a square abacus, an inner roll moulding of the arch and an outer band, quite distant from it (cf. Strethall). The capitals, abaci, and the band around the arch are decorated with an irregular pattern of diagonal lines which may signify leaves. Inside the church the evidence is even more interesting. It concerns the arches towards the two transepts. That on the S side is complete to the abaci. Of that on the N side only the bases survive. Saxon transepts are a rarity (cf. e.g. Dover). The rest is C14. The arch on the S side is earlier, probably C13. The Saxon jambs have one order of colonnettes at the angle towards the crossing and again a quite unskilled abacus. The capitals of the colonnettes, again decorated with the same sketchy leaf pattern, have basically a shape so similar to the Norman one-scallop that they may well be a Saxon craftsman’s version of this unfamiliar motif introduced with the Conquest. The N transept has an early C14 N window with flowing tracery. The W tower was added in the C15, see its tall arch towards the nave, the flint and stone chequer decoration at the base and the diagonal buttresses. - SCREEN (to S transept). C15, damaged, with broad single-light divisions, ogee arch inside pointed arch, with quatrefoil and other motifs between the two. - LECTERN. Good, C15, on octagonal concave-sided base. - BENCHES. Throughout the nave, C15, plain. - DOOR. In the N doorway is that unique thing, an Anglo-Saxon oak door. It is treated quite differently from the Norman way. It has plain oak boards and three long undecorated iron straps riveted through to circular wooden bars at the back.

HADSTOCK. We are on the borders of Cambridgeshire, and from the churchyard is a wonderful view over the thatched roofs of the village to the downs and woodlands beyond. Close by is the timber-framed manor house, with the original chimney-stack built in Shakespeare's time, and not far away is a farmhouse a century older, with a projecting storey and three terracotta niches in the walls.

All this has its own beauty, but it is to the church that we must come if we would feel ourselves back in the old world, for here is one of the oldest churches in the county, into which we come through the oldest door in all England. This door of Hadstock church has been opening and shutting for about a thousand years. Had the Conqueror come this way he would have found it swinging on its hinges. It is the only Saxon door we have come upon in our tour of 10,000 towns and villages. It must be the door the Saxon carpenter hung when this church was built. We do not know exactly when that was, but it is believed that the church may have been built to celebrate the victory of King Canute over Edmund Ironside in 1016.

The nave and one of the transepts remain from the Saxon building, though there is evidence that they were repaired or refashioned after the falling of a central tower in the time of Magna Carta. The other transept, with its original gable cross, is 14th century, and the present tower is 15th. In the walls of this 500-year-old tower, however, is something older than the Saxon door, a number of Roman bricks.

We come to the wonderful doorway through a 15th century porch, and open with a thrill this plain oak door with three iron straps riveted through it. If we have been to Saffron Walden and called at the museum there we shall remember a piece of human skin which was found under these straps of iron, the skin of a sacrilegious Dane which was nailed to the door in the days of King Canute; it is one of the brutalities which were practised in those days.

Above the doorway is a blocked-up Saxon window, and there are two other windows between a doorway and the tower, 15 feet up from the floor, both still with their Saxon window frames. It is almost incredible that these timbers should have survived in the door and windows of this little church. We have come upon half a dozen Norman doors and about the same number of Norman roofs in our tour of England, but nowhere except at the timber church at Greensted have we found Saxon timbers still in their place.

As if all this were not enough, Hadstock has three other ancient doors, one 700 and two 600 years old. They are all in the tower, and the oldest leads into the churchyard, the other two leading to the stair turret and the belfry. Still another wonder, a remarkable ladder, has been in use for 500 years, its rungs cut in a curious shape; and under the tower arch are the remains of a 15th century screen on which one of the spandrels is carved with the quaint scene of a fox dressed as a priest, standing in a pulpit and seizing a goose by the neck. Here, therefore, are timbers from the 11th, 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, a unique collection. The lectern is a dainty piece of work in oak, its stem carved by a Tudor craftsman (and therefore probably adding another century to this remarkable collection of timbers).

Flickr set. 

Great Sampford

For reasons I wont go into I have a soft spot for St Michael, and even more so for its sister church, St Mary the Virgin, in Little Sampford. It is Grade one listed, constructed mostly in the 14th century of flint and rubble with stone dressings although the south chapel is late 13th century and was the transept of an earlier church. It apparently owes its existence to the Knights Hospitallers and on the walls of the chancel are stone arcades with clustered columns and cusped pointed arches mounted above stone benches. The north wall has 11 bays and the south 15, each is supposed to have seated one of the Knights.The arch from the south aisle has some of the finest carving in Essex - see Mee's comments below.

The interior is fairly plain but the details, like the carvings and the chancel bays, make the church special. All, or pretty much all, of the stained glass has been lost but this gives a light and airy feel, particularly true of the huge traceried east window and the chancel in general. On either side of the altar survive four finely carved panels, the two to the left being Exodus altarpieces and the two on the right containing the Our Father and The Creed.

There appears to be a lost stone rood screen, presumably a victim of the Reformation rather than Dowsing's attentions, as at Stebbing and Great Bardfield, which must have made a magnificent entrance to the chancel if the quality of the east window is anything to go by.

On the north wall of the nave are traces of frescoes and deep grooves are cut into the tower arch where the bell ropes have, over the centuries, worn their way. It is, admittedly, light in the monuments and brass department but I think I can forgive it that.

ST MICHAEL. The S chancel chapel is the transept of a former church. It dates from the later C13, as is proved by the two two-light E windows with a separated sexfoiled circular window above. The two pointed windows have each two pointed trefoiled lights and an un-encircled quatrefoil above. The rest of the church is all of the first half of the C14, and the chancel is more lavish than usual. It can hardly be later than 1320, as ogee arches occur only very secondarily in the S side windows. The E window is very large, of five-lights with a large circle as the central tracery motif. In the circle are four smaller circles with quatrefoils arranged in two tiers, and not cross-wise. Buttresses with niches. Also two niches l. and r. of the E window. Inside, seats under deep cusped pointed arches run all along the sides, and all windows are shafted. The N aisle is contemporary with the chancel. The windows show that, and also the arcade of quatrefoil piers with very thin shafts in the diagonals (cf. Thaxted) and double-chamfered, two-centred arches. The S arcade is characteristically later. The piers are octagonal, and the arches start with short vertical pieces dying into them. Nice arch from the S aisle into the S chapel. The capitals have bossy leaves, and there is one horrified face among them, bitten by a dragon. In the chapel at the foot of the S wall a C14 recess with a crocketed gable and deep niches to the l. and r., also with crocketed gables. The roofs of the church are all original. The best is that of the S aisle. - FONT. Elaborately traceried stem, plain bowl; C14. - PLATE. Cup and Paten of 1562; Dish of 1630, secular, with repoussé decoration.

 

GREAT SAMPFORD. It has a 14th century church built by the Knights Hospitallers, its great attraction being the chancel, which has two splendid features: the beautiful tracery of the great window, nearly filling the wall above the altar; and the series of arches on the side walls, each with a seat for one of the old knights. On the north are 11 of them, divided by a handsome priest's doorway; on the south are 15, one for the piscina and one pierced for a doorway into the oldest part of the church, a 13th century chapel. With their carved arches and clustered columns these chancel arcades have great beauty. One old treasure may have gone, for the rough stone­work at the base of the chancel arch suggests that one of the rare stone screens such as are still seen at Great Bardfield and Stebbing once stood here.

There is much to see as we walk about the church, inside and out. We notice two fierce goats standing out from the chapel gable, the niches in the buttresses, and the consecration crosses, formed of dark cut flint. The 14th century tower has a stair turret of Tudor brick, and the nave has six fine columns supporting a 14th century clerestory, in which a window was cut in the 15th century to light the rood loft. There are roof beams, a porch, and a fine tomb recess all 600 years old; and on an archway of the same time are some of the best stone carvings in Essex. One of the capitals has two monkey heads and rich foliage; the other shows a cowled head, pigs with lolling tongues, and the head of an owl with its feathers delicately suggested.

The handsome stem of the font is 14th century, but its plain bowl is 15th. There is a panelled Tudor cupboard, a 17th century chest bound with iron, and a beautiful six-sided table. The best modern craftsmanship is in the wooden lectern, a splendid eagle on rocks, with a pillar resting on lions. It is in memory of Robert Eustace who died in 1905 after 55 years as vicar; we read his name again on a tiny cross in the shadow of the tower, the grave of his little child. 

Great Sampford has a three-cornered green, a big pond, and many houses 300 years old. One, The How, has kept its moat complete. White House has old fireplaces and a handsome staircase. Tindon End, some way off, has a panel with the date 1684, and some carved Tudor stones lying in the garden; but it is famous for another reason: it was the home for many years of John McAdam, the Scotsman who re-made our English roads.

Flickr set.

Great Saling

St James is located in the grounds of Saling Hall - if you are into gardening this in its own right is worth a visit - and was heavily restored by the Victorians leaving a rather austere interior but a nice exterior. It's a pleasant enough church but even Mee struggled to find much to say about Great Saling!

ST JAMES THE GREAT. Late C14 W tower narrow, with one thin diagonal buttress and battlements. The chancel is of 1857-64, and the nave too much renewed to deserve notice. - FONT. Octagonal, with tracery panels.

 

 

GREAT SALING. Its church is a 14th century building much restored, with a traceried font and some roof beams of the 15th century, a panelled chest 200 years younger, and a monument with the kneeling figure of Bartlet Sheddon who died in 1823 (no longer extant). Shining in the tower window is a red robed St James, to whom the church belongs. Among the elms stand Saling Hall, a noble building of 250 years ago, with two gabled wings.

Flickr set.

Great Hallingbury

St Giles was locked when I visited in March, which is a pity as it contains some brasses to the Morley family - one of whom, Sir William Parker (d. 1622) was complicit in revealing the gunpowder plot and most of whom appear in my family tree.

St. Giles’ Church has a great deal of Roman brick and mortar in its walls and the obvious re-use of the material already there shows that there was probably a Roman building on the site. The chancel arch, which is built entirely of Roman brick, is probably the church’s most splendid feature.

With the coming of the Morleys began a long succession of over-lords closely in touch with the Crown and its ministers, serving their sovereign at home and abroad for more than 300 years and giving the name Hallingbury Morley to the village. The Hall was their manor house until in Tudor times their large red-brick mansion was built in the park. A number of the Morleys lie buried in the church but their tomb stone was removed during the church’s restoration in 1874. Their memorials in the tower and the helms on the chancel wall remind us of this once great family. The impact they made must have been enormous, related as some of them were to the royal families of their time. Their Hallingbury hunting ground was, in the 16th century, transformed by the building of the mansion and the making of the park around it, which enabled the Morley family to live in a life-style more in keeping with their status than the five rooms of The Hall allowed. The pond in the parkland is the last remaining relic of that era.

ST GILES. C15 W tower with thin diagonal buttresses and a tall shingled spire. The rest externally all Victorian, of 1874. Internally however, to one’s surprise, one finds a complete Early Norman chancel-arch built up entirely of Roman bricks, with the imposts of unmoulded  stepped bricks. The arcade of 1874 is of circular piers with very richly and naturalistically carved capitals. An original motif the screen-like stone arches to the l. and r. of the chancel arch. Another reminder of the Norman church is one S window close to the W end. Ecclesiologists will be interested in the extremely rare feature of a Piscina high up apparently to serve the rood-loft. - PLATE Cup of 1661; Paten dated 1675.

GREAT HALLINGBURY. It was the home of a man very anxious to die and of one who saved Parliament from a sudden end. In a wooded countryside near Bishop's Stortford, it has an ancient camp called Wallbury above the River Stort. Protected by a double rampart, it covers about 30 acres and must have been here before the Saxons came. Near Latchmore Common is a charming thatched cottage 300 years old, and in the walls of Hallingbury Place is good 16th century brickwork. Here for centuries lived the Parkers, who sprang into fame 600 years ago. One was admiral of the fleet which won our first naval victory, the Battle of Sluys; another was Henry, the eighth Baron Morley, who served Henry the Eighth at his court, was a student of the New Learning, and an authority on Italian literature. But the most famous of all the family was William Parker, Baron Morley and Lord Monteagle, who has been sleeping here since 1622 and is remembered for bringing Gunpowder Plot to light.

The Morley tombs have perished, and all we see is a collection of brass inscriptions brought together with a quaint figure of Death inside the 15th century tower. It is the only part of the church not rebuilt, except for a very remarkable chancel arch made almost entirely of Roman bricks. It was made about the time the Normans came, and there is a window as old. A doorway older than Agincourt is still in the porch, and a piscina unusually high in the nave shows that in the old days there was an altar in the rood loft. The head of the piscina is also of Roman brick.

Kept in the church are two Tudor helmets, one of them inlaid, and an ancient British burial urn, about a foot wide, dug up from the floor where it had lain almost since history began. Among the modern possessions is a beautiful mosaic of the Walk to Emmaus.

Both tower and chancel must have been familiar to old John Brand in Queen Elizabeth's reign, one of the queerest characters a village ever had. So queer was his story that it came to be written in the church archives, and there it is told how his troubles began one Christmas Eve, when an angel of the devil appeared before him in a vision and showed him plainly where he would find Mother Pryor's money. He found it, £7 18s; but that was not the end, for three months later the same angel came and told him it were better to kill himself than to marry the widow he had in mind. Determined to take this advice, John Brand began on a Monday by taking a dagger, and was only saved by his friends. On Wednesday he put a sack over his head and plunged headlong into John Pryor's pond, seven feet deep. The next Sunday he "took rat's-bayne and drank it in a messe of potage at his dinner, which pained him so, and could not die. So he took a hay halter and hanged himself upon an oak beside his house, and lieth buried at Hangman's Oak."

It is one of the oddest village stories we have come upon, handed down from the days when people everywhere were superstitious.

The Man Who Surprised Guy Fawkes

COINCIDENCE as strange as any novel was responsible for the way in which the Gunpowder Plot was revealed and prevented from taking effect by William Parker, fourth Baron Monteagle and eleventh Baron Morley, who sleeps in this old church.

Bred a Roman Catholic, he was imprisoned for complicity in
rebellion, but was active in bringing Jesuits to London to disturb the Protestant peace. But he changed his religious views, and wrote to King James stating his desire to be admitted into the Church of England. James marked his approval by summoning him to sit in the Parliament which was due to meet on November 5, 1605. In doing so the King unconsciously saved himself and his two sons.

An entirely new situation was now created in the mind of one of the chief conspirators, Tresham, who was Monteagle's brother-in-law. At all costs Monteagle must be preserved against the impending massacre. Catesby would not hear of Tresham warning Monteagle, but it is supposed that, without positive breach of confidence, Monteagle was warned to take serious notice of information that he would receive. At any rate, Monteagle ostentatiously gave a supper party, and there, in the presence of all the guests, a note, mysteriously brought, was conspicuously delivered into his hand at the supper table.

Monteagle gave it to an attendant, who was in the confidence of all the conspirators, and bade him read it aloud. The material part of the letter ran as follows:

I would advise you, as you tender your life, to devise some excuse to shift your attendance at this Parliament, for God and man hath con­curred to punish the wickedness of this time. And think not slightly of this advertisement, but retire yourself into the country, where you may expect the event in safety, for, though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament, and they shall not see who hurts them.

There was neither address nor signature. The man who had read the letter aloud to the company was now free to go and warn the conspirators that the plot had been published, while Monteagle took the letter to the Lord Treasurer as he sat at supper with other lords at Whitehall.

Accompanied by the Lord Chamberlain, Monteagle proceeded to the cellars of the Parliament House, where they saw a man standing by a heap of faggots. It was the unshakable Guy Fawkes.

Monteagle became a national hero as the saviour of the dynasty and of Parliament itself. He was rewarded with a grant of land worth £200 a year and a pension of £500 which he lived 17 years to enjoy.

Flickr set. 

Great Chesterford

All Saints sits resplendent in the heart of the village, the earliest part of the church being the 13th century chancel. The church dominates its setting but has been much restored and altered over the years.The church is built of clunch, flint and pebble with the south chapel and tower plastered. There is evidence of re-used Roman bricks near the bottom of the south aisle wall which may indicate the presence of an earlier Norman church.

Amongst various monuments is a brass in the south aisle of a young woman circa 1530 thought to be Agnes Holden, one of a similar group found only in this area, the peculiarity being in the costumes; beret like headgear, 'mannish' fur collar and knotted girdle, perhaps the product of a Cambridge firm.

ALL SAINTS. W tower of the C15, rebuilt in 1792, altered in 1842. The W parts of nave and aisles also C15. The whole church is over restored. Material: flint-rubble. In the chancel on the N side one original Lancet, proof of a C13 date. Arcades with circular piers, also originally probably of the C13; but re-cut. Indications of former transepts. - BRASS. Woman, early C16, S chapel floor. - Baby in swaddling clothes (John Howard d. 1600, aged 12 days), under arch into S chapel. 

 

GREAT CHESTERFORD. It was an important Roman village before it was an English one, and has sent Roman coins and pottery to Saffron Walden's museum. Every traveller from London to Cambridge knows it, for here the road and railway come together by the River Cam. Its embattled tower is modern, but the church is ancient and has some weird heads on its walls, a winged dragon sprawling over one of the buttresses. The interior is impressive with stately arcades of the 13th century, aisles and a chapel a little younger, and a south chapel of the 16th century. Many quaint carvings in wood and stone are on the corbels in the roofs. We see angels and crowned heads in the chancel, and grotesques in the nave and south chapel; but the best roof of all is the Tudor one in the south aisle, one of its corbels a long haired head with a collar round its neck. There is a 15th century font, a 16th century chest, and two chairs and a communion table from the 17th century. The attractive modern woodwork includes neat screens, choir-stalls carved with kneeling angels, and a lectern formed by an angel with a sword. A lovely Madonna and Child shine from a 700-year-old window in the chancel. Here in brass is Agnes Holden, who founded a chantry not long before chantries were swept away. Her dress with its big cuffs is in the fashion of Henry the Eighth's time. Another little brass figure is full of pathos, showing a son of Lord Howard de Walden in swaddling clothes. He is described as Mr John Howard of 1600, and we read that his time on earth was 12 days.

Sycamores and pines give beauty to the churchyard, which has by its entrance one of Great Chesterford's charming houses. Timbered and plastered, with a gabled storey overhanging, it is thought to have been built in the 15th century, though a 17th century date appears on the plaster. A little way along the lane is another over­hanging house of about 1600, and a quarter of a mile off is Manor Farm, built about 1500, with a wing added a generation or two later. On its beams inside are bosses carved with a rose and a pelican.

Flickr set.

Great Canfield

St Mary the Virgin is locked but with this sign on the notice board:

Despite the number I didn't phone having had a frustrating day of locked churches wherever I went and so settled for exterior shots only. I'm not sure that I would have been able to gain access on the day anyway, the note sort of implies that you have to book an appointment rather than collect a key and I didn't particularly care for the tone of the note! For all that this is a charming church and an internet search reveals an interesting interior with a nice double headed monument to Sir William Wyseman and his wife (according to Mee there are two further Wyseman monuments - see below), a 13th century fresco of the Madonna and child and several columns carved with pagan symbols and swastikas, so it's probably worth arranging a visit at a later date.

UPDATE: I took advantage of Ride & Stride in 2012 and got interiors - it's fantastic and should be permanently open.

ST MARY. Nave and chancel and belfry with recessed shingled spire. This is of the C15, as is the embattled stone S porch. Otherwise the church is essentially Norman. Norman nave and chancel N and S windows, as in many village churches. In addition a plain N doorway with columns with carved zigzag pattern and a more ornate S doorway with ornamented capitals (the l. one with a bearded face and two birds pecking at it), a tympanum with flat concentric zigzag decoration probably meaning the Sun, roll mouldings and a billet moulding. The remarkable feature of the church is the Norman chancel arch (one order of columns with scalloped capitals and arch with an outer  billet moulding) behind which, at the E end of the straightheaded chancel, appear three round arches. Those to the l. and r. contain small windows, that in the middle must always have been connected with some form of reredos. It now enshrines a WALL PAINTING of the Virgin and Child seated which is one of the best C13 representations of the subject in the whole country, full of tenderness. It is drawn in red, with some yellow. Other colours have disappeared. The ornamental borders and other decoration around, also in the adjoining windows, is mostly of the stiff-leaf type. The date must be c. 1250 (cf. the Matthew Paris manuscripts). - PLATE. Cup and Paten of 1577. - MONUMENTS. Brass to John Wyseman and wife d. 1558, both figures kneeling, and children behind (chancel, floor). - Brass to Thomas Fytche, wife d. 1588 and children (chancel, floor). - Monument to Sir William Wyseman d. 1684 and wife with demi-figures holding hands, below a segmental pediment. Good. - Also Floor Slab to Lady Wiseman in the chancel floor. Black marble with no words but Anne/Lady Wiseman/1662.

 

GREAT CANFIELD. Behind the church and cottages of this quiet and charming place is a dense clump of trees. They spring from a mound 50 feet high and 280 feet wide, over which the walls of the castle keep of the De Veres rose high in the days of the Normans. Beyond it are the ramparts of the outer defences, which covered seven acres, and all round this great fortress we can walk in a dry moat 45 feet wide at its base and filled in ancient days by water from the River Roding. Aubrey de Vere, Great Chamberlain of England 800 years ago, dwelt here in a castle, probably built of wood, of which nothing remains. But the church by the moat has lost little of the beauty he gave it.

This little shrine is one of the most perfect Norman buildings in Essex. Save for the extension for the bell-turret added in the 13th century its walls stand as the Normans built them. Both the door­ways are richly carved, and in one the mason surpassed himself, the tympanum being filled with zigzags converging in circles, as if flashes of lightning had been transfixed in stone. So hard a stone did he choose that the tiny eyes still peep from the faces he carved on the capitals of the shafts. Two birds peck the bushy beard on one face and rolls of ribbon flow from the mouth of the other. On one of the posts are five fylfot crosses, one of the earliest of Christian symbols, and known to early man, carved on prehistoric monuments found in Italy, and something like the swastika.

The interior of the church is designed in a masterly way, the chancel arch perfect as a frame for a group of arches over the altar. A nearer view reveals a wall-painting as rare as it is lovely, a primitive masterpiece as old as any in our National Gallery and the work of an English artist. The painting shows a Madonna in a yellow robe nursing an infant Jesus; she sits serene on a throne raised on a dais, and experts declare that she was seated quietly here when Robert de Vere set out from the castle hard by to go to Runnymede.

The preservation of this painting is due to an act of vanity. On a side wall is an elaborate monument of Sir William Wyseman, holding the hand of his wife. When the monasteries were dissolved this family became all powerful in Great Canfield, so that there was no one to say nay when they decided to use the niche as a background for this monument. It was not till recent tunes that it was removed and the wall-painting found.

John Wyseman with his wife and their ten children are kneeling at prayer. He had grown grey in the hard business of auditing the accounts of Henry the Eighth, though he seems to have made a fortune for himself. Here, too, is his daughter Agnes with her husband John Fytche, who stands proudly with his head high and the date of Armada year on his tomb.

Flickr set.

Great Bardfield

St Mary the Virgin makes it into Simon Jenkins' 'England's Thousand Best Churches' largely due to its Rood screen. Bardfield and nearby Stebbing possess the only two complete stone screens in the county and both are fine examples.

The church stands on raised ground, somewhat isolated from the heart of the village, on the south east edge of Great Bardfield and is recognisable from any other church in the area by its copper roof which was relaid in 1950. The site was first used for a church in 1174 but the earliest part of the present building is the tower which dates from the 14th century. The exterior is dominated by an enormous diamond shaped clock on the north wall of the tower which has inspired the description "the clock with a church on it".

The tracery design of the Rood screen is truly elegant particularly the central arch and it is thought that the corbel faces on either side represent Edward III and his Queen. The structure would originally have been painted and from certain angles light is reflected from fragments of glass or stones set in the screen. A previous Incumbent believes that originally there were more of these but that many were lost when the screen was damaged during the Reformation. According to the church guide book the screen is one of three in the world (although Jenkins disputes this listing examples in Totnes and Westwell), being built in the 14th century, this particular one together with the nave was erected by Edmund Mortimer 3rd Earl of March in memory of his wife Philippa granddaughter of Edward III and Queen Philippa. The Crucifix and the statues of Our Lady and St John were added by G F Bodley in 1896.

ST MARY THE VIRGIN. Early C14 W tower without buttresses. Small lancet windows and a small, pretty, recessed lead spire of the C18. The rest is all later C14, with the surprising feature of large straightheaded three-light windows with curiously High Gothic tracery, i.e. no specifically Dec or Perp motifs, but a development from the classic moment of Geometrical tracery. Such windows fill the walls of the N and S aisles and also appear in the chancel (many are renewed). The S porch has in addition very pretty side openings on the E side. They look earlier than the larger windows, and it is quite possible that the porch as well as the S aisle and chancel masonry are earlier than the straightheaded windows. The openings in the porch consist of one two-light Dec window flanked by small quatrefoil windows (cf. Stebbing). Four-bay arcades inside with late C14 piers of four polygonal shafts connected by deep hollows with four slim circular shafts in the diagonals. Moulded arches; head-label-stops. Flat-pitched roofs on stone corbels in nave and aisles. Also late C14 is the most prominent and famous feature of the church, the stone SCREEN between nave and chancel. It is tripartite and, with its openings and tracery, fills the chancel arch completely. The idea came to Great Bardfield from Stebbing, but how it came to Stebbing we do not know. That Bardfield is later than Stebbing is obvious. Both, it is true, share the luxuriance of design, the rich cusping and crocketing and the delight in ogee arches. But at Bardfield the two main dividing shafts or mullions run straight up into the arch, an unmistakable sign of the Perp style. Also the arch responds are decidedly first half of the century at Stebbing, second half of the century at Bardfield. The figures of the rood above the main central ogee arch are a reconstruction of 1892 and due to Bodley.  S DOOR. Late C14, with much tracery. -  ORGAN CASE. Said to be by Pugin. - Two HELMS. Early C17. - STAINED GLASS. Many late C14 fragments in the N aisle windows, including complete figures. - MONUMENT. Low Purbeck tomb-chest with frieze of small quatrefoils. On it brass to the wife of William Bendlowes d. 1584. The tombchest is no doubt older. It also served as a Sedilia.

 
GREAT BARDFIELD. It has been a little town with a market, and is lovely still with old cottages and shops, a tower windmill known as Gibraltar, and a fine church, with the hall on the hill above the Pant valley. The hall is mainly from Cromwell's time, but has a Tudor wing. Two 17th century buildings in the grounds are a splendid barn and a timbered dovecot, the dovecot having a pole with a revolving frame and ladder to give access to any one of the 14 tiers of clay nests.

Place House, at the top of High Street, is another old house, with an overhanging storey and a bracket carved to tell us it was built in 1564. In a window are the arms of the Bendlowes family, and an inscription saying that William Bendlowes was a lawyer in the days of our two Tudor Queens. His altar tomb is in the church, with a brass portrait of his wife, his own having gone; and above is the remarkable chancel roof the Bendlowes family gave in 1618. Its two heavy tie-beams are richly ornamented, and the grotesque carv­ings of the corbels include a curious centaur. The chancel has two stone grotesques which have been 600 years at the corners of the gable outside. The lowest part of the tower was built a few years before Magna Carta, and its small lead spire was added about the time of Queen Anne. The rest of the church is a very good example of 14th century building, with handsome windows outside, a wonder­ful old door to let us in, an impressive array of columns in the nave, and a rare treasure at the entrance to the chancel.

The old door is a double one, and has been swinging on its hinges since the church was built. Grey with age, it shows in strong relief the trefoil panels and traceried borders cut into its solid oak. Thril­ling it is to think of village people passing through it every day while the greater part of English history was being written. But rarer still is the stone screen built into the moulded chancel arch, a vivid example of the way the 14th century craftsmen loved to beautify their churches. The screen has a splendid central arch rising to a finial with a crucifix of stone, the carving on the underside of the chancel arch completing the frame in which the crucifix is set. Smaller arches rise to support statues of John and the Madonna; and in all this rich beauty everything but the statues themselves is the work of the old craftsmen.

A little 14th century glass still left in the windows shows canopied heads and figures of St Stephen in blue and purple, St Laurence with his gridiron, and a Crucifixion. The west window has shields of the Mortimers, the famous Earls of March; and a beautiful modern window shows St Helena with her cross, St Anne teaching Mary to read, and two scenes from the life of St Augustine of Hippo. It is in memory of Rose Helen Kirwan, who gave the church its handsome font and cover.

High up in one of the aisles hang two funeral helmets which belonged in the 17th century to the Lumley family from Great Lodge, a great brick house, with a cupola rising from its long tiled roof.

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Cressing

All Saints is locked but with a keyholder listed (albeit every time I've visited they've been out), the earliest written reference to All Saints is from the Evereux Charter of 1136 in which a land grant to the vicars of Witham allowed for maintenance of a capella (probably a chapel of ease) together with a demesne of twenty acres at Cressing.

It appears, however, that the the 1136 capella was not the first church on the site. Archaeological excavations in the 1970s, during the re-flooring of the nave, revealed a number of post-holes dating to the early ninth century. The foundations of a Saxon or early Norman apsidal building were also visible. It is of interest that the church is located in the same area as the earlier Roman burials, suggesting that it was built on an area which already had a particular significance to the local community.

The lower walls of the church are early twelfth century and Norman in style. They are built of flint and rubble bonded with fragments of Roman brick and tile and the building is capped with a shingled spire on a wooden turret. The interior holds a monument to Henry Smyth (later Neville) and his wife, Anne, dated 1607, and a fine brass to Dorcas Musgrave, who died in childbirth, along with her child, in 1610.

Cressing is perhaps better known for the Templar Barns but the church is definitely worth including if visiting.

I gained access today [07/03/18]and, truth be told, it's not the most exciting of interiors but still good to see inside.

ALL SAINTS. Nave, short chancel and stunted belfry. The nave must be Norman or replace a Norman nave - see one re-set bit of zigzag-work visible on the N wall above the N doorway. The chancel is of the early C13 and has two lancet windows in the N wall. In addition some C14 and C15 windows. Those of the C14 have a characteristic Essex motif of tracery. - HELM. Early C17, crested. - MONUMENT. Anne Smith d. 1607, with the usual two kneeling figures. In the ‘predella’ kneeling daughter and baby in a cradle.
 

CRESSING. It is in delightful countryside not far from Braintree, and its history begins with the Knights Templars, the manor having been given to them 800 years ago. They lived at Cressing Temple until they were suppressed. The place was sacked during the Peasants Revolt in 1381, and in 1540 came the end with the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

While Elizabeth was still on the throne a great house was built on the site, and something of this Tudor manor remains in the Cressing Temple of today. There are two vast barns, one of brick and timber 40 feet high and 160 feet long, with a porch and five bays. This was for the wheat, and the smaller barn, 110 feet long, was for the barley. The church lies a mile away and has a Norman doorway with a stone above it carved by a medieval craftsman. The little gate into the churchyard is a memorial to a boy who gave his life in trying to save his sister from drowning; he was Clive Reginald Moss, aged 14.

An avenue of limes brings us to the church, which has a neat shingled spire on a wooden turret 400 years old. About us as we come in is a group of gravestones bearing a name famous in our history, one of them belonging to a General born in the delightful vicarage near by, Sir Evelyn Wood. He went from this vicarage to join the navy at 14, fought in the Crimea when he was 15, won the VC in India when he was 20, and altogether saw 50 years of fighting, during which he signed peace with the Boers after the defeat at Majuba Hill. Here with him lies his father Sir John Page Wood, who was chaplain to Queen Caroline, whose cause his own father gallantly defended. On a granite stone we read of one of these Woods those words of Browning that would do for all of them, "One who never turned his back, but marched breastforward," and inside the church hangs Sir Evelyn Wood's banner of the Order of St Michael and St George.

The 14th century church is small with no aisles. It has the original doorways and the original tracery in the windows. The nave has a fine roof, built in 1440, and huge timbers set up 80 years later support the bell-turret. There are a few fragments of medieval glass in the windows, and on a windowsill we found three heads carved in stone. A sad little tale lies behind the brass of Dorcas Musgrave, who sits pointing to her baby, which died with her at its birth in 1610. Both child and mother have huge ruffs round their necks, and the mother's hand rests on an hourglass; her sands had run out, though she was but 23. In a recess in the wall is a splendid monument to Henry Smith and his wife, who kneel at a prayer desk, he in Jacobean armour; their little girl is at prayer and their infant is in swaddling clothes. There are helmets on each side of the wall probably be­longing to the Smiths, who lived in the magnificent Elizabethan house which succeeded that of the Knights Templars.

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Coggeshall

I have visited St Peter ad Vincula twice now and on both occasions the church was in use - once for a Lenten service and the second time in preparation for an upcoming concert - so have no interior photos but can confirm that it contains many fine monuments, including a fine example in the vestry to Mary (Waters), wife of Robert Honywood, 1620, consisting of a painted figure of a woman kneeling at her prayer-desk, flanked by Ionic columns supporting a pediment, with a lozenge and 2 shields of arms, 2 skulls and an animal, in black and coloured marble (removed from Marks Hall parish church on its demolition in 1932), and brasses within.

The church dates back to the 15th century, built from thee wealth generated by the wool industry, and was bombed in 1940 and the tower, north wall and roof were subsequently rebuilt. St Peter ad Vincula was, along with St John the Baptist in Thaxted, a candidate for the cathedral of Essex, but both lost out to Chelmsford Cathedral.

One day I'll visit again, hopefully when it's quiet so that I can capture the interior! I gained entry a month after I wrote this post.

ST PETER-AD-VINCULA. A large church (c. 125 ft long) built to one plan in the C15; W tower, nave and wide aisles, chancel and equally wide chancel chapels. The chancel does not project at the E end; so the church is, except for the tower, just a parallelogram. There is however a chancel arch to separate nave from chancel, and there are short solid walls projecting from the E end to separate altar spaces from each other. Nave and tower are in ruins, due to the Second World War. W tower with diagonal buttresses and battlements. The rest of the church also embattled, including the two-storeyed S porch. Aisle walls flint-rubble, E parts ashlar-faced. On entering the church from the S the tierceron-vault of the porch with its bosses still exists. The nave and chancel N and S arcades are of tall slender piers with four attached shafts carrying capitals and four thin polygonal diagonal shafts with concave sides and running on into the arches without capitals. Four-centred arches. Clerestory windows of three lights. Aisle windows large and also of three lights. Renewed E window of seven lights, E windows of the chancel chapels of four lights - all with Perp panel tracery. At the E end a frieze of shields at the base and below the E window a cusped recess. - MONUMENTS. Brasses of John Paycocke d. 1533 and wife with indent of a brass of the Virgin above; in the floor of the N (Paycocke) Chapel. In the same chapel Thomas Paycocke d. 1580; two women of c. 1480. - In the S chapel Mary Honywood d. 1620, monument with kneeling figure. From Markshall, transferred to Coggeshall, at the demolition of Markshall church. The inscription says that Mrs Honywood left 367 children, grandchildren, great-grand-children, and great-great-grandchildren.

 

COGGESHALL. Who has not heard of Paycocke's House? It is ours for all time, still standing on the Roman road to Colchester. Look where you will in this quaint town and carved beams meet your eye; there are 99 monuments here scheduled by the Government. But among them all it is Paycocke's which stands supreme, a complete example of a richly ornamented merchant's house of Tudor days.

Its timbers overhang the road where all may see them, its upper storey with a frieze of running foliage on it and tiny heads, a shield with a merchant's mark of an ermine's tail, and the initials of Thomas Paycocke himself, who died in 1580. Both storeys are divided by buttresses into five bays. On the sideposts of an arch are moulded pedestals, and under canopies are two statues of a man with a shield and another man with a load on his shoulder. Indoors most of the rooms have elaborately carved ceiling beams, original doorways, linenfold panelling, and fireplaces carved with grotesque beasts.

Even older than Thomas Paycocke's House is the inn Thomas would pass on his way to church, called the Woolpack in compli­ment to the industry which brought wealth to this town. Its embattled beams have supported the gables 400 years, and one of its bedrooms has a handsome kingpost 500 years old.

The church was made new amid the great prosperity of the 15th century, and we know from the Roman bricks among the flint rubble of the walls that it was refashioned from an older church. A perfect whole in construction and design; its graceful columns and its great windows are delightful, especially the seven-panelled east window, which looks big even from the tower arch 40 yards away. The oak roof of the nave looks down from a height of 40 feet and its old and new timbers rest on canopied figures of the Apostles placed here last century. The font is 700 years old.

Engraved on brass is the portrait of Thomas Paycocke, and on other brasses are John Paycocke of 1533 with his wife, and William Goldwyre of 1514 with his wife. Two other civilians are shown in rich robes of the 15th century, and two unknown women in butterfly headdress. It was probably in their day that the pelicans and leopards and lions in the porch and at the priest's doorway were carved.

It has happened in our own time that the church of Markshall close by has been pulled down, many of its memorials being bricked up in the vaults, and the oak choir-stalls, the reading desk, and the brass lectern were brought to Coggeshall. Several memorials to members of the Honywood family have been taken to Colchester and can be seen in the garden by the Holly Trees Museum; they include one of Sir Thomas, who took a leading part in the siege of Colchester and was brother-in-law to Sir Harry Vane. Another of this family's monuments is now in the vestry here at Coggeshall; it is that of Mrs Mary Honywood, a well-known 16th century lady who lived to be 93 and died here, but was taken to Kent for burial at Lenham. A banquet was given to her by 200 of her descendants, and the gather­ing might have been much greater had transport been much easier, for she had a descendant for every day in the year and two over. She was a brave woman, with something of the spirit of Elizabeth Fry, for she visited prisons in Mary Tudor's time.

In a delightful pastoral scene on the other side of the Blackwater is a perfect little chapel of the 13th century; we come to it by a brick bridge which has been here 700 years, perhaps the oldest brick bridge in the country. Dedicated to St Nicholas, patron saint of travellers, the chapel stood at the gate of a monastery. It is of interest on its own account and also for the small pink bricks forming the arches of the windows, the piscina, and the sedilia; the bricks are also at the threshold of the doorway where they are cut and shaped into a pattern. These bricks are under two inches thick and are the earliest known in England since Roman days; it is believed that they were made at Tylkell * on the north boundary of the county.

Fading away at the back of the sedilia in this little chapel is a consecration cross marking the place where the bishop put his hand on the wall 700 years ago. It was because the chapel was used as a barn that it escaped the fate of the great church of the abbey at the Dissolution. Not a stone of that church remains to be seen, but its Norman foundations have been traced and found to measure 70 yards long with a width of 80 feet across the transepts.

A group of farm buildings here is of very great interest. One dates from about 1200 and has roof beams 400 years old; and there is a 13th century wing connected by a two-storeyed corridor to a 16th century house built from the ruins of the monastery. The columns and arches we come upon as we wander through this quaint rambling house suggest that the old monks were building for all time.

Long after the monks had passed away there were four brave men at Coggeshall who died for their faith. Thomas Hawkes told the cruel Bishop Bonner that if he had a hundred bodies he would suffer them all to be torn in pieces rather than deny his faith, and he was burned in the vicarage field, raising his hands and clapping them together. With him were burned Thomas Osmund, a fuller, and William Bamford and Nicholas Chamberlain, two weavers. Another story of cruelty is suggested by an entry in the parish register, which records the death, in 1699, of the "Widow Common that was counted a witch." Several times had she been put in the river to see if she would sink, and it is thought that this cruel treatment was the cause of her death.

* Tilkey, adjoining Coggeshall, seems not to be another case, though it lies between Robin's Brook and the Blackwater. Apparently, its name is a corruption of Tylkell, meaning Tile kiln (see Beaumont, Hist. of Coggeshall, p. 113: 1890).

Simon K -

The surprise of Coggeshall, a small and attractive town - imagine Great Bardfield or Wethersfield if they were much bigger, and ordinary people lived in them. In the heart of town, just off the high street is the parish church.

Open. The use of the dedication, 'St Peter in Chains', suggests a High Church enthusiasm, and that is absolutely right. This is a big, super church, my favourite big church in Essex so far after Thaxted. Full of light, full of colour. An aesthetic pleasure, although the Leonard Evetts windows I had looked forward to seeing were almost impossible to photograph, as they are in the north aisle and the building was so very full of light.

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Braintree - St Michael

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?
 
ST MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL. A disappointing church except for the C13 W tower with tall shingled broach spire. The exterior otherwise is almost entirely renewed or new (N aisle) - of 1864-6. The interior is decidedly spacious. It has three-bay arcades of the C13 with alternating circular and octagonal piers - alternating also across the nave. The arches have two slight quadrant hollows instead of chamfers. The N chancel chapel is only of one bay. The S chapel is of two with an early C16 pier. The section is of four main and four subsidiary shafts connected by deep hollows. Good early C16 roofs in the N and S chapels. - PLATE. Two decorated Cups of 1616. - MONUMENTS. Several by John Challis, all minor.

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.

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