About

A journey around Essex to visit and record, both digitally and with the use of Nicholas Pevsner's The Buildings of England and Arthur Mee's The King's England, 529 of 605 mainly CoE churches. I've excluded pretty much any built post c. 1920 but this varies if a new build catches my eye.

This is a spin off from my original challenge, begun in 2010, to visit all of the 718 churches within a 50 minute drive from home.

The visitation was completed on 27/11/13.

For the record the percentage of accessible churches - either open or keyholder listed (I've included ruined churches as accessible if they're not on private land) - stands at 77.75% which is pretty good until one considers that Suffolk churches, with only 119 visited, stand at almost 85%!

A league table of our three surrounding counties:

County	Visited	Accessible	% Accessible
Suffolk	119	100	84.03%
Essex	529	291	78.02%
Cambridgeshire	135	105	74.81%
Hertfordshire	200	117	58.50%

It should be noted that both Herts and Essex have many more urban, or near to urban areas, churches that almost necessitates them being kept locked (although that's no excuse not to list keyholders).

Simon Jenkins, in his England's Thousand Best Churches, gives Essex the following ratings:

Blackmore **
Bradwell-on-Sea **
Brightlingsea *
Castle Hedingham **
Chickney *
Copford ***
East Horndon *
Finchingfield **
Fryerning *
Great Bardfield *
Great Bromley **                
Great Warley ***               
Greensted **                        
Hatfield Broad Oak *         
Ingatestone *                        
Lambourne End *                
Lawford **                             
Layer Marney ***               
Little Dunmow **                    
Little Easton **
Maldon **
Margaretting *
Radwinter *
Rivenhall *
Saffron Walden ***
Stebbing *
Thaxted ***
Tilty **
Waltham Abbey ****