Nazeing

Approached from the south east All Saints is hidden by trees so my first sighting - having realised I'd overshot and performed a perilous 8 point turn in a very narrow lane - was of the, I assumed, Tudor brick tower looming  out of what seemed to be a wood atop the hill I'd just driven down.

I knew, because of its hidden location, that it would be locked but was delighted when I, after I'd taken exteriors (difficult because of the trees), entered the porch to find a note explaining how to open the door. After struggling for a while with the latch, without success, I noticed a sign apologising that the church was locked during the week.

This was disappointing since the exterior was good and the porch floor promised an interesting interior but having expected it to be locked I was mentally prepared for disappointment, also it was entirely possible that the floor was the highlight, however, Mee suggests otherwise.

Slightly exasperated I enjoyed the view towards Broxbourne, this is after all a lovely part of Essex, and left in pursuit of my original main target of the day, Thundingbridgebury.

ALL SAINTS. Norman nave with rear-arch of one window. C15 N aisle with arcade piers of the familiar four-shaft-four hollow type where capitals are introduced only for the shafts. The arches are wave-moulded. The timber S porch is also of the C15. The floor is made of tiles set closely on end. W tower of red brick with blue diapers, diagonal buttresses, battlements and a higher stair-turret: early C16. - FONT. Perp, octagonal with quatrefoils carrying shields. - FONT COVER. Plain, ogee-shaped with a finial; C17. - CHEST. Oblong, with flat lid, heavily iron-bound; ascribed to the C14. - PLATE. Paten of 1817; Almsdish given in 1818. - MONUMENT of 1823, by T. Hurling (the usual female figure by an urn).

NAZEING. Spread over the low hills above the valley of the Lea, it has many lovely scenes to show us. There is a breezy common of 400 acres, groups of pretty cottages, and, away on a bluff, the church lying in a sacred spot with noble views of Hertfordshire. A bold tower dominates the scene, and high up its turret is a sundial oddly inscribed with its exact position on the map of England: Latitude 51 degrees 32 minutes[1]. The tower is 16th century, the sundial 18th.

A 16th century wooden porch shelters a 700-year-old doorway cut through the thick wall of Norman masonry. The Norman arches of two of the original windows are by the door, and facing them is the arcade of four bays and an aisle added in the 15th century, when the chancel was made new. About this time the steps were cut in the wall up to the rood beam, whose sawn-off end is clearly visible. The old nail-studded door to the steps is still here.

One or two panels from the old screen have been fixed to two bench-ends remarkable for the carving of the gruff and humorous faces springing out from them; and there are other bench-ends with poppyheads behind the font, which came here with them in the 15th century. An extraordinary ironbound chest is 600 years old; it has a great lockplate, and it is thrilling to think that it may have held documents sealed by our last Saxon king, for Harold owned Nazeing and gave it to the monks of the abbey of Waltham.

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[1] This no longer there having been replaced in 2010 and on which is stated Lat 51 degrees, 45 minutes – presumably GPS added the 13 minutes. Also the new sundial is not very accurate showing the time as about 5 to 12 when the picture had been taken at 11.26.

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Waltham Abbey

I haven't looked at Mee's entry yet but am sure it will be fulsome, so I will be brief. Holy Cross & St Lawrence, which I visited yesterday, is one of most complete Norman churches that I've seen outside of cathedrals and, as well as a wealth of fittings, it contains a very good Doom.

I know I use superlatives, or is it hyperbole, too much in this blog but in this case the use of the word extraordinary is not an exaggeration.

PEVSNER.

Mee does not disappoint:

WALTHAM ABBEY. Every Scout knows it, for here is Gilwell Park, the 70 acres in which Scoutmasters are trained; and every English boy should know it, for it has sometimes been called Harold’s Town, because the last of the Saxon kings founded a church and was long believed to have been buried here.

In a field at the back of the church is a primitive bridge with a single arch which the boys call Harold’s Bridge, though it is younger than it looks, being only 600 years old. Of the old monastic buildings of the Normans there is little to see except a vaulted passage; there is also a 14th century gateway. The 15th century inn has an overhanging storey making a lychgate into the churchyard, and a shop in the market square has timbers carved by medieval artists showing a crouching woman with a jug and a man with his tongue out. There are many 16th century buildings in the town, and a square near the abbey is still known as Romeland because the rents from its houses supplied the papal dues. It was in a long-fronted house of this square that the seed was sown of one of the decisive movements of the world, for in it Cranmer met Bishop Gardiner on that day when he "struck the keynote of the Reformation and claimed for the Word of God that supremacy which had been usurped by the popes for centuries." It was a hundred years after this that Thomas Fuller was vicar here, and he never ceased to be proud because Waltham itself "gave Rome the first deadly blow in England."

One more link with the Reformation Waltham has, for behind an ivied wall in Sewardstone Street we may see a 16th century chimney of a house which has in it the walls within which John Foxe wrote his immortal book of martyrs, the poignant story of hundreds of the bravest men and women ever living in these islands, who walked into the fire to be burned rather than surrender their faith in God.

But it is, of course, the church and the cross that the traveller comes to see. They stand a mile or so apart, the church a fragment of its former self but without an equal in the county. It has the noblest Norman nave in the south of England. One arch of the great Norman tower remains, having been filled in to form the east wall, and standing at the east end of the churchyard we may see the herring-bone masonry of the transept wall which Harold must have seen; it has a blocked up Norman window above it. The south doorway is magnificent with the rich carving of a Norman craftsman. When King John signed the Charter at Runnymede there was rising here a church as long as Norwich Cathedral, being built as part of the penance John’s father performed after the murder of Becket. Waltham Abbey was one of the three monasteries Henry the Second then founded, and it has only been realised in our time how magnificently he carried out his vow. For on this abbey alone he spent over £1000, a huge sum in his time, when a labourer’s wage was a penny a day. The spade has revealed that Henry’s church was at least 400 feet long, and had two central towers linked by a nave as long as the nave still standing. Beyond the eastern tower stood the choir before whose high altar it was long believed that Harold’s body lay. Each tower had its transepts, those next to the choir being 140 feet across.

The ten acres under which the foundations of this great church and many monastic buildings lie were market gardens until a few years ago, when they were bought and divided between the Office of Works and the church authorities, who have laid out five acres as a Garden of Rest. Fragments from forest and mine far across England must lie below this quiet plot, for national records have been searched and we know the story of the stupendous task the repentant king put in hand. In the roofs 265 cartloads of lead were used, brought from the Peak and the Pennines to Boston and to Yorkshire ports, and thence by sea to London, where it was shipped on to the River Lea. The timber came, not from Epping Forest hard by, but from Brimpsfield in Gloucestershire and Bromley in Kent. We learn that William of Gant was the builder, and first abbot of the new foundation. Waltham Abbey remained the pride of our kings for three centuries, and even Henry the Eighth must have felt some reluctance about spoiling it, for he left it to the last. Then the vast building became a quarry for all, the only glory left being the western nave, which was used as the parish church.

We approach this great place through a deeply recessed doorway 600 years old, which was refashioned when the west tower was rebuilt in 1558, and we pass in through another beautiful 14th century doorway which was the west entrance to the abbey. It has vaulting rising from beautiful capitals, a running pattern of flowers, and carved niches on both sides. If we come at service time we shall hear the bells in the tower which inspired Tennyson to write his famous New Year verses, "Ring out the old, Ring in the new." He was living at High Beech close by when he heard the bells of Waltham Abbey and sat down to write these stanzas of In Memoriam:

The time draws near the birth of Christ;

The moon is hid, the night is still;

A single church below the hill

Is pealing, folded in the mist;

and then these more familiar verses of Old and New Year:

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

A place of great splendour is the nave, its Norman pillars impressing the eye with equal grace and strength. Above them runs the triforium, and above that the clerestory, with its array of columns supporting the round arches through which the light floods in. So thick is the wall up there that a vaulted passage runs through it all the way. All these arches are adorned with zigzag and some of the columns have zigzag and spirals cut into them, once filled with gilt metal, as we see from the rivets still here. All this great work is Norman except for a few piers at the west end, where the 14th century architects adapted the Norman work to their pointed style.

Columns fifty feet high run up to the ceiling of this wondrous nave, and we are brought at once from the 12th century to the 20th, for the painted roof is a mass of colour by one of our own famous artists, and the light by which we see it comes in through Burne-Jones windows. On the ceiling are painted the signs of the Zodiac, the labours of the months, and other symbolical subjects, all the work of Sir Edward Poynter before his days of fame - and the roof is lit by a rose window below which are three windows designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones before fame came to him. The rose window shows Creation, and below is a Jesse Tree with the patriarchs on one side and the prophets on the other.

The oldest tomb here is the imposing wall-monument of Sir Edward Denny, resting on a shelf in his armour, with his wife in her Elizabethan ruff and hood below him, and their six sons and four daughters round the tomb; the last little girl is holding her sister’s arm. Standing by the wall is the alabaster figure of Lady Elizabeth Greville, cousin of Lady Jane Grey. Two 16th century families are in brass, Edward Stacey with his wife and son, and Thomas Colt with his wife and their ten children. On a realistic altar tomb of white marble is a sculptured panel of a ship at sea and mourning angels with tears on their cheeks; the tomb is to Captain Robert Smith of 1697, but resting on it is a bust of Henry Wollaston, a 17th century magistrate in Roman dress.

Out of an aisle we mount up to a beautiful chapel 600 years old; it has a crypt beneath it with fine vaulting. The chapel is lit by great windows with exquisite tracery, and has low stone seats round the walls divided by stone columns. It may be reached from outside through a beautiful doorway carved with flowers, and is charming without and within. Two of its windows have in them the Archangel

Gabriel bringing the good news to the Madonna, and three lovely figures at the Presentation in the Temple, one of the windows being in memory of Francis Johnson, who was curate and vicar 56 years. Above the altar are scenes at least 500 years older, a 14th century painting of Judgment Day: Christ is seated in majesty with outstretched hands, and Peter stands with other figures in front of a group of medieval buildings, while on the other side are angels receiving the good and the fires of hell receiving the wicked.

In this chapel are such memories of old Waltham as the stocks and whipping-post and pillory, the works of a clock which ran in this church for 260 years, a portrait of Thomas Tallis who was organist in the last days of the abbey, two Jacobean chairs, Roman remains, and casts of the abbey seals. Two other odd things we found in this museum; one a 16th century waterspout wrongly claiming to be part of Harold’s tomb, the other a grim relic of the days when suicides were buried at the crossroads, for it is a stake which was found piercing the skeleton of a man buried there.

Such is Waltham Abbey as we see it. It lives in history and in legend, for legend tells us of one Tovi, standard-bearer to Canute, who found a piece of the Holy Cross at Montacute in Somerset and built a church here to preserve it; to this day this Waltham church is dedicated to St Lawrence and the Holy Cross. It was given its name in the presence of Edward the Confessor, who was here in 1060. Here on its way to Westminster Abbey rested the body of Queen Eleanor for one night, and 17 years after lay the body of her King Edward, waiting in this abbey for three months during the preparations for his funeral at Westminster.

It is in memory of Queen Eleanor’s last ride that Waltham Cross was built. It is perhaps the best of all the crosses that bear her name, and was set up to mark the place where the body of the queen rested on that sad procession from the Notts village in which she died to Westminster Abbey where she lies. Twelve crosses were set up to mark her resting-places, the first at Lincoln, the last at Charing, and this, the one outside Northampton and a third at Geddington, are the only remains.

Waltham Cross stands actually in Hertfordshire where the road from the abbey joins the Roman Ermine Street, at the spot where the abbot and his monks met the sad procession from St Albans on a dark December day in 1290. Today it is in a busy street ; then it stood with nothing but a chantry and a wayside inn to keep it company. Of the chantry not a stone remains, but the inn is still close by; it was probably the abbey guest house, and has as its sign four swans which recall the swans on King Harold’s shield at Hastings.

It is believed that this cross was designed by William Torel, the goldsmith who made Queen Eleanor’s tomb in the Abbey. Much of his cross has survived the ages, though it has been twice refashioned from his materials. It has six sides and three tiers all richly adorned. The lower tier is solid, and each of its six faces is decorated like a window, with two trefoil panels under a quatrefoil, shields hanging from knots of foliage in the panels. Round the top of this tier runs a richly carved cornice, battlemented and pierced with crosses, and above this rise eight pinnacles supporting the lovely canopies of the second stage. In these canopies are three statues of Queen Eleanor holding her sceptre, all three original except for one head. Above the canopies rises the third tier of the cross, solid like the ground tier, carved like a lancet window and with rich finials on the six corner shafts. In the centre of these finials rises a daintily carved crown, from the heart of which springs a pinnacle topped with a stone cross.

This last bit seems to me to be a bit of a cheat on Mees part as Waltham Abbey and Waltham Cross are two distinct entities and the latter should, anyway, be properly covered in Hertfordshire (which it isn’t).

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Theydon Mount

St Michael is locked with no keyholder listed. The church really does sit on a mount above the Roding valley and has commanding views. It is brick built and dates to 1611/14. I thought it was a fine building but would have loved to have gained access (but then whatever the merits of a church I always want to gain access).

ST MICHAEL. Small brick church of 1611-14, built in the grounds of Hill Hall by the Smith family, owners of the mansion. The W tower is not high. It has diagonal buttresses and battlements and a (later?) recessed shingled spire. The W window has intersected tracery. So has  the E window. The other windows are of two lights under straight hood-moulds. The details do not seem to differ between W parts and chancel. Yet the bricks and the building are too different to allow for the same date. The stair turret adjoins the tower on the S and ends in a segmental gable. The windows are double slits of very odd forms. The S porch has a more elaborately shaped gable and a four-centred doorway and above it an uneasily balanced aedicule of Tuscan pilasters with pediment. The nave roof  has collar-beams on arched braces which form semicircles. - FONT. Unusually small, of stone, attached to the wall like a stoup; it stands on a pillar, and the bowl is as elegant as a hand-washing fountain in a Hall. - REREDOS. Late C17, with coupled Corinthian pilasters l. and r. of the E window. - BENCHES. Plain, late C16. - HELMS. One, C17, in the chancel, probably belonging to the monument of 1631. - PLATE. Cup and Paten of 1587; Cup with bands of ornament and Paten of 1614; large Dish on foot inscribed 1698. - MONUMENTS. All to the Smith family, an impressive series, crowding the small chancel. Sir Thomas, d. 1577. Standing wall monument. Figure stiffly reclining, head propped up on elbow. Shallow coffered arch behind the figure, flanked by two black Ionic columns with an entablature carrying two obelisks and a large achievement. Fine inscription plate with bold strapwork and fruit surround under the arch. - Sir William d. 1626 and wife. Standing wall monument with the two effigies both stiffly reclining with head on elbow; he a little higher and behind her. The background more or less as before and very little stylistic change. Kneeling figures of children against the front of the tomb-chest. - Sir William d. 1631 and two wives. Standing wall monument with recumbent effigy. Three big kneeling figures behind and above. - Sir Thomas d. 1668. Standing wall monument, of black and white marble, with no superstructure. The effigy again semi-reclining, head propped up on elbow. Thick angle volutes ending in cherubs’ heads. - Sir Edward d. 1713, simple white marble tablet, with a cherub’s head at the foot. By Edward Stanton. - The Rev. Sir Edward Bowyer Smith d. 1850. Large Perp Gothic tablet by ‘Osmond, Sarum’.

THEYDON MOUNT. It has a park on a hill, one of the most delightful hilltop parks that could be imagined, with a great house coming down from the age of the Tudors and a church from the days of Shakespeare.

The glory of the church is in the splendid tombs of those people who lived in the great house, two Thomas Smiths and two Williams. The first Thomas was the great Protestant Secretary of Queen Elizabeth, and we see him a stately bearded man in the mantle of the Garter, looking the scholar he was, lying on his side under an arch round which we read that "What the earth or seas or sky contain, what creatures in them be, his mind did seek to know." His nephew William lies on another tomb with his wife, two sons in armour, three daughters in veils, and two babies kneeling at a prayer desk as high as themselves. This man’s son William is gazing upward with his hands on a book and his two wives dominating the tomb. They are kneeling with a plump child in a grown-up dress between them. On the fourth tomb is his brother Thomas, his head on his hand, and cherubs guarding his altar tomb. On the wall above hangs a helmet.

The old house, built by the first Sir Thomas, has changed much down the centuries, but has on both fronts the original windows and the soft red bricks of Elizabethan days. Three gabled dormers looking down on the lawn are original, but the north front has an 18th century portico with four columns. In the windows are many heraldic devices of Tudor times, one glass panel showing a sea fight with ships of Drake’s day, and the oldest glass of all having on it the head of a girl of the 14th century.

Sir Thomas Smith was born at Saffron Walden in 1513, his family tracing its descent from the Black Prince. He went to Cambridge at 11, establishing there a reputation as a staunch Protestant. So brilliant was his scholarship that he became Provost of Eton, and reformed the pronunciation of Greek. His scholarship helped Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer in their reforms, while his tact and judgment were used by Protector Somerset who sent him as ambassador to foreign courts.

When Mary Tudor came to the throne he surrendered all his posts and went into retirement, settling down in marriage and rebuilding the hall here. Elizabeth, who knew his sterling worth, sent him as ambassador to Paris and afterwards made him Secretary. He died in 1577, leaving his lovely home to his nephew, and leaving behind his great work on The English State, an authoritative exposition on government which was not given to the world till six years after his death. The book ran through ten editions in a century and was translated into Latin, Dutch, and German, so that it must be regarded as one of the best-sellers of its time.

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Stapleford Tawney

In all honesty I can't bring myself to say anything complimentary about St Mary and when I look at the nave picture I actually think oh no, so I'll leave it to Mee.

ST MARY. Nave and chancel assigned to the C13, on the strength of renewed lancet windows and the blocked N doorway. Belfry on four posts; low E-W braces, higher N-S braces. Above the beams carried by the braces is cross-strutting in all four directions. - COMMUNION RAILS, C17 with square tapering openwork balusters. - PLATE. Almsdish of 1685; Large Cup and Paten inscribed 1698.

STAPLEFORD TAWNEY. It is on a hill which runs down to the River Roding. One of the farms has the dry moat of the vanished hall round its walled garden, and a line of huge chestnut trees screening it from the church. The wooden bell-turret, springing from the 13th century nave, has a shingled medieval spire seen from far and wide. There is a splendidly preserved coffin over 700 years old, a perfect little tomb with a lid on which the weather has not yet succeeded in obliterating the rare crosses. There is also an open coffin shaped for the head. On a wall is a tablet in memory of Henry Soames, a rector of last century, a shoemaker’s son who became famous as a historian, his chief works being histories of the Reformation and of the Anglo Saxon Church.

Even he struggled.

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Roydon

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again but I really shouldn't go on visits with preconceptions. The first was that Roydon is in Hertfordshire, it isn't it's in Essex, and the second was that St Peter wouldn't be up to much - but it is.

The chancel has been changed to the Colte Chapel and the altar moved to the north wall of the nave which is a decidedly odd arrangement but one that works. There are several brasses to the Coltes (Thomas More married Jane Colte who is depicted in a group on her father's brass) and others but the brass for John Colte d. 1471 is hidden under carpeting.

Other items include six hatchments, assorted monuments and a rather good font dating from 1300 with four heads wearing what look like bowler hats.

ST PETER. C13 nave, see one renewed lancet window on the S side. Next to it one of Dec and one of Perp style. The N aisle dates from c. 1330, see the windows (E and W of three lights with ogee-reticulated tracery) and the arcade (short octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches). W tower with angle buttresses and battlements. - FONT. An interesting piece of c. 1300. Octagonal with, in the four diagonals, four heads, men who are neither saints nor clerics, but look like workmen. They wear hats with rolled-up brims. - SCREEN. The side parts of five lights each with plain broad ogee arches and no tracery above them - C14, no doubt. - PLATE. Cup and Paten of 1564. - BRASSES. Thomas Colte d. 1471 and wife, the figures 3 ft long. - John Colte d. 1521 and two wives, smaller figures (2 ft 3 in.). - John Swifte d. 1570, 21/2 ft figure. - In the churchyard a fine TOMBSTONE for R. Crowe d. 1779, with Rococo decoration (F. Burgess).

ROYDON. It knew the first Englishman of his day 400 years ago, Sir Thomas More; he fell in love with one of the daughters of the moated house whose ruins are still an indication of the grandeur that has passed away. Its streets slope down to the River Stort, some of its shops and houses still looking medieval, the stocks and whipping-post on the green, with the little wooden lock-up close by, reminding us of the rough justice of not so very long ago.

It was to Nether Hall that Sir Thomas More came courting. The towers of its gatehouse still stand above the water of the moat; they were the first defence of a dwelling-house built when the houses of the red and white roses were fighting for the crown. There are still ancient corbels and trefoil arches round the towers.

The hall was the home of the Coltes. A Privy Councillor of Edward the Fourth, Thomas Colte was laid here to rest in 1471, and we see him in his splendid armour engraved in brass, his wife Joan beside him in a collar of suns and roses. In the sanctuary are the brass portraits of his son John with two wives, all in heraldic robes, their sons and daughters in groups below. It was one of these daughters Sir Thomas More came courting - two of them perhaps we should say, for there is a strange little story told of it.

Sir Thomas More’s affection was set on the second daughter, yet when he considered that it would be a grief and shame to the elder one to see her younger sister preferred before her in marriage, he turned with a certain pity to Jane the elder, and married her four years before Henry the Eighth came to the throne. The purity of their home life is one of the redeeming features of the pitiless reign of Henry the Eighth, and it is difficult to forget the little story of that dramatic day when Jane Colte sat in church at Chelsea and received a whisper from the Lord Chancellor. Sir Thomas used to carry the cross at the head of processions round Chelsea church and sing in the choir, wearing a surplice like other choristers, and when service was over, and More had left the vestry, a footman would go to his wife’s pew and say, "His Lordship is gone." Jane was ambitious and liked such attention, and it is said that after his fall from office the Englishman did not know how to tell his proud wife that he had resigned the Great Seal of England, but in the end he broke the news by going to the pew and saying: "May it please your ladyship, my lordship is gone."

There are two other Tudor brasses in the church, one with John Swift in a fur-lined cloak, and one with the portrait of Elizabeth Stanley who died just after the Armada. There are little panes of medieval glass round a fine figure of Peter gazing across the sanctuary; three elaborately carved chairs three centuries old; and a fine screen carved with the simple tracery of 14th century windows, so that its ten bays look like the windows of a cathedral. The screen is still held together by its original oak pins. The font has been here since the church was new 700 years ago; it is remarkable for having been fashioned out of a square into an octagon by clever sculptors who carved four portraits of their friends at the corners, all four wearing hats with rolled brims, their faces full of character.

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North Weald Bassett

Because of the nearby airfield St Andrew's churchyard is packed with CWC headstones commemorating, mostly, members of the RAF who fell in World War II but also to nine members of C Company, The Essex Regt who were killed on 24 August 1940.

The 7th Battalion of the Essex Regiment had the task of guarding the aerodrome against ground attack, their quarters being the MT hangar on the eastern end of the technical site. When the air raid warning sounded, the tannoy ordered: ‘All army and air force personnel man your aerodrome action stations!’

The soldiers of ‘C’ Company, all young recruits aged between 17 and 19 years old, ran out of the hangar towards the shelter which stood near the end of the nearest H-block barrack. A stick of bombs began falling parallel to the main road, the thundering explosions rocking the ground. Just as the last man reached the shelter, a bomb scored a direct hit, blowing Private Nathaniel Miles into the overhanging oak tree, killing him and eight of his mates.

The nine dead soldiers were buried on August 28, eight in St Andrew’s Churchyard and Private Stephen Shuster in the Jewish cemetery at Rainham.

St Andrew was locked with no keyholder listed which is annoying as it sounds interesting.

ST ANDREW. A church mainly in the Dec style, see the arcade of octagonal piers with double-chamfered arches and the flowing tracery of the S chapel windows. The E window has the unmistakable hall-mark of ogee reticulation. The W tower is Early Tudor, of brick, with diagonal buttresses and battlements and W window of brick with Perp panel tracery. The N windows are C19. - SCREEN. The dado has linenfold panelling, an uncommon motif. The tracery was altered in the late C17 or the C18. The coving of the loft with rib-panelled underside is preserved - the only case in Essex. The screen is inscribed: ‘Orate pro bono statu Thome Wyher, diacon’. - STAINED GLASS. In the S chapel SE window C14 tabernacles. - In the S chapel E window glass by Tower, 1909. - PLATE. Cup of 1563; Plate of 1682. - BRASS. W. Larder D. 1606, wife and children (N wall).

 

NORTH WEALD BASSETT. Dominated by the bold tower of its church, it lies scattered between Ongar and Epping, named after that Norman Ralph Bassett who was Chief Justiciar to Henry the First, the king who gave us good laws. The tower, 66 feet high, is an excellent example of early brickwork, built in 1500 with a corbel table of tiny arches. The lofty brick tower arch inside frames the west window effectively. Though Roman tiles are dotted about the walls, the church, except for the chancel, belongs to the 14th century. The chief pride of the church is its 16th century screen of five bays. It has moulded posts supporting a fine canopy with traceried heads divided by pendants. The rail has running ornament and a prayer "for the good state of Thomas Wyher, deacon." The door has ornamental hinges 600 years old, and there is some 14th century glass, a 15th century bracket carved with oak leaves and a face, a huge wooden lock, 15th and 17th century carving on chairs, and a curious candlestick.

Engraved on brass are the portraits of Walter Larder, who was laid to rest here in 1606, and his wife and their five children. There are memorials to the Cockerells who lived in the vicarage for nearly a hundred years. The east window is in memory of Henry Cockerell, vicar for 52 years last century; and the glowing glass in the tower window showing the Presentation in the Temple is in memory of his son Louis, who succeeded him.

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Layer Marney

I first visited Layer Marney in March last year when the tower was closed for the off-season and, not realising you can visit the church independently of the tower, left with a few shots of the tower. It took a over year to re-visit but last week I returned with my youngest and visited both church and tower.

No one will ever quite forget their first view of Layer Marney Tower, reached at the end of a quiet lane some six miles south of Colchester. The enormous gatehouse is one of the most astonishing of Tudor buildings. There are several of these brick gatehouses in East Anglia - at Oxburgh, East Barsham, Hadleigh, Tolleshunt Major and Cambridge - but none on quite this scale.

It was built by Henry, 1st Lord Marney in the early years of Henry VIII’s reign, to whom, as previously to Henry VII, he was Captain of the Bodyguard. He died in 1523, leaving the Tower much as we see it today, with East and West wings to the gatehouse and an isolated South range, but no completed courtyard.

Castles were out of fashion but the medieval tradition still dominated in tower and in plan; yet the detail of window and parapet in terracotta was startlingly new and Italian, and unique in contemporary building. Very soon this early Renaissance was checked in its infancy by the breach with Rome.

St Mary the Virgin was rebuilt by Henry, Lord Marney, and John, second Lord Marney, as part of the ambitious Tudor Mansion started in the first quarter of the 16th century, and left unfinished in 1525 on the death of the second and last Lord. Their wills made provision for the Church to be finished.

It consists of nave and chancel with west tower and two south porches; and north chapel, aisle, and priests’ chamber as chantries for the two lords. It is all in the Perpendicular style and built in

Tudor brick (reputed to be locally made), and with lavish use of Essex oak in the roof, bell-frame, stairs, doors, and furnishings.

Interesting external features are the Tudor chimney to the priests’ chamber, the embattled parapets, and the diapering in the brick work. It is reputed that the lead roof on the north aisle was stripped off and sold during the Civil War.

ST MARY THE VIRGIN. Rebuilt to the W of the house, of brick with blue diapering throughout. W tower of a type frequent in Essex (cf. Ingatestone, Rochford, Stock, etc.) with diagonal stone-dressed buttresses, battlements and polygonal stair-turret. The W window of three lights with a depressed head and an odd variety of intersected tracery as favoured 200 years before. The two-light bell openings with a transome. Embattled S aisle. S porch and S chancel porch (a rare addition) with stepped battlements. The windows all with four-centred heads, and all of brick. The E window is of five lights with Perp panel tracery. At the W end of the N aisle a priest’s chamber with a chimney which adds to the W view of the church an element of surprise. The arcade piers inside as well as the tower arch have semi-octagonal shafts and hollows in the diagonals. The roof has tie-beams, but at the rood-place the tiebeam is enriched by braces and braces up to the collar-beam - a hammerbeam effect without hammerbeam. - PULPIT. Made up of various bits. The tester is c. mid C17. - SCREENS. The rood screen has one-light sections with ogee arches and a little panel tracery above. - The screen to the Marney Chapel is severely plain, only straight lines. The sections of two lights separated by iron mullions. - BENCHES in the nave with some linenfold and early C17 panelling. - CHEST. Very long, iron-bound, C14 or C15. - PAINTING. Large C15 figure of St Christopher, curiously rustic for a place so intimately connected with the taste of the court. It helps to date the church. - STAINED GLASS. Figure of St Peter, early C16, and several  heraldic medallions, N chapel, E window. MONUMENTS. Sir William Marney d. 1414, alabaster, on a tomb-chest with elaborately cusped quatrefoils and shields. The knight wears bascinet, camail, and hip-belt, as was the fashion. Round the tomb six original oak posts with zigzag carving. - Henry Lord Marney d. 1523. Between chancel and Marney chapel. The composition of tomb-chest, recumbent effigy and canopy above is in the Perp taste, but the detail is all of the Early Renaissance. What is more, it is executed in terracotta, a material favoured by the Italians at the Court (cf. below). The tomb-chest has panels with shields separated by balusters, the lid and the beautifully carved effigy are of black marble. The canopy has balusters and Renaissance foliage, but they are not used in a Renaissance spirit. The angle pilasters e. g. clearly suffer from a Gothic hangover, and the canopy has pendants for which the designer does not mind using Ionic capitals. On the canopy four semicircular pediments or gables or acroteria - a predominantly Venetian motif. - John Lord Marney d. 1525, clearly by the same hands. The effigy of the young man has all the characteristics of that of his father. The tomb-chest is simpler, but also terracotta and also with balusters. The monument is organically connected to the W with a chantry altar placed at r. angles to it. The decoration is again the same. - Robert Cammocke d. 1585, chancel S wall, tomb-chest on which stand two short Tuscan columns supporting an entablature. Brasses (without figures) against the back wall.

LAYER MARNEY. Who sees it once does not forget it ever. Here for 400 years has stood one of the most imposing buildings in England, the gatehouse of the home Sir Henry Marney planned for himself in the place where his ancestors had lived from Norman times. Alas, he had ancestors but no descendants. He died before his wonderful house was finished, and the next year died his only son without an heir.

Sir Henry Marney was one of the trusted friends of kings, Privy Councillor to Henry the Seventh, traveller to the Courts of France and Italy, Captain of the Guard and Keeper of the Privy Purse. So it was that he persuaded the king’s architect, Girolamo de Travizi, to design his new house. He made it one of the amazing sights of Essex. The gatehouse is of brick and terracotta, the black bricks forming a pattern among the red. It stands 80 feet high, turrets of eight storeys flanking two great windows above the archway. The lower turrets climb beside them, while two square turrets rise to the full height behind. There are transomed windows, Corinthian capitals, and Italian scroll work, and the parapets are richly decorated, those of the turrets with little dolphins. The two remaining fluted chimneys, equal in beauty to those at Hampton Court, are a fitting crown to this marvellous place.

On each side of the gatehouse are wings two storeys high with fine windows and doorways, and fitted with splendid fireplaces. But the place was never finished, for the dreamer of this magnificence, made a baron in 1522, was borne to rest in 1523 in the church he had built beside the house. He is on a splendid tomb by the tomb of his son John, his features chiselled in fine black Cornish marble by an Italian sculptor. Near them is the elaborate tomb and armoured figure of Sir William Marney who died in 1360, and round this tomb, silent watchers since Sir Henry refashioned the church, sit carved leopards on spiral posts, grasping shields with Marney badges.

There are two beautiful screens in the church, the chancel screen with rich tracery of the 15th century, the other with Tudor linenfold. The pulpit, too, is linenfold with a 17th century canopy, and a book-rest finely carved. On the wall is a painting of St Christopher carrying the Child, and in a window of the Marney Chapel is fine heraldic glass. Tower and turret, porch and walls, are all embattled, fitting well into this scene, and in front of it all the green slopes away toward the coast beyond a lovely garden.

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