Tilbury juxta Clare

St Margaret was locked, appears to be have been clad in concrete and is an absolute gem of a church - it should be awful but it's not. It's situated in the middle of fields away from the village and has an assortment of interesting features not the least the 16th century brick built tower funded by Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford, in 1519.

By the tower in the north west wall is a niche with a strange statue/carving of a figure - possibly a Bishop - and in the porch a board with a poem for God's Blessing.

ST MARGARET. In the fields under a few large trees. C15 nave and chancel and early C16 brick tower with blue brick diapering, diagonal buttresses, battlements and a higher stair turret. Perp windows in nave and chancel. - PULPIT with two tiers of arches with plaited ornament in each panel; Elizabethan.- PAINTINGS. Fragments of wall paintings of the late C15, with late C16 over-painting, on N and S walls. Chiefly ornamental, but also a scene with a man holding a white horse and standing in front of a half-timbered house which exhibits clearly its brick-nogging between the timber studs. In the chancel, in imitation of the ornamental parts of the old work, very rustic wall decoration. - PLATE. Cup and Paten c. 1600.

TILBURY-JUXTA-CLARE. We come to its lonely little church at the end of a narrow lane. It has a tower of Tudor brick, with the badge of the proud De Veres who were probably its benefactors. Much of what we see is 500 years old, the nave and chancel and porch all with their original roofs, the glass canopy-work in the east window, and the fragments of wall-painting, which include a picture of a timbered house with a man and a horse in the foreground. It is partly painted over with 16th century ornament, and there are traces of black-letter texts from the same time. There is a pulpit with Jacobean woodwork, and a fine old chest heavily bound with iron. Grotesque heads look down from the roof, and above the 17th century panelling in the tower is a crude winged beast in plaster.

I wish I could have gained access, it sounds fascinating.

Simon K -

I bet nobody actually calls it Tilbury-juxta-Clare. The church is alone in the fields near to some woods, half a mile from the village (which is really a suburb of Great Yeldham - why not Tilbury-juxta-Yeldham, I wonder?) and a quarter mile track runs up beside a field to reach it. The restoration here was very quirky, under the eye of the vicar. His wife set all sorts of ecclesiological junk in the outer walls, I've seen nothing quite like it before. The interior is supposed to be very good - wall paintings as at Belchamp Walter, and also some medieval glass. The keyholder notice is friendly enough, and there are two keyholders. Their house numbers suggest they are neighbours, but there was no phone number. I went back to the village and headed down the main street where they were supposed to be, but most houses had names rather than numbers, and by the time I got to where I thought they should be I was in Great Yeldham. I decided to give up rather than waste more time.

Flickr set.