Chappel

St Barnabas (sic) was a chapel and was upgraded to a church in 1968, why I don't know. Remove the spire and porch and you'd have a really charming chapel of ease much like the Chapel of St John in Whittlesford. I suspect that the spire and porch are Victorian additions - more's the pity.

CHURCH. Nave and chancel in one, and belfry with very pointed little spire. The church was consecrated in 1352 and yet the window tracery is still of a type usually connected with the fashion for a Norman Revival, specially ill-advised, where, as here, the material is white brick. Tall round-headed lancet windows. Angle turrets to the facade. Elaborate decoration. No aisles, no galleries.

CHAPEL. A viaduct over 100 feet high and with about 30 arches here crosses the valley of the Colne, and a handsome little Georgian house with plaster panels is a neighbour for the church. Above the red roof of the church rises a wooden belfry with a short spire, and its ancient door, swinging on the old hinges, brings us to a nave with 14th century walls. The pulpit and reading desk, about 300 years old, were used by Timothy Rogers, a great-grandson of John Rogers, the first victim of Mary Tudor’s persecution. Timothy was a famous Puritan of Cromwell’s time, and wrote the Jewel of Faith, a book widely read in his day.

Simon K - 

I headed south from the Stour Valley just a couple of miles to the Colne Valley. Colne is pronounced 'cone', incidentally. You can feel a change as you approach the village of Chappel and Wakes Colne, a village dominated by one of the largest railway viaducts in the east of England and divided into two parishes by the River Colne. There are two churches. South of the river there is just a pub, a school, a row of cottages and St Barnabas.

Open. A sweet little church in the mid-Essex style, low walls with a little bell turret. It is actually a chapel of ease to Great Tey, in which parish this side of the river is, hence the name of the village and also the reuse of the otherwise unusual dedication of the mother church. More like a non-conformist chapel than a parish church inside, but simple and pleasing, and with an atmosphere of sorts of its own.


Flickr set.