Birdbrook

Having set off home from Wixoe I detoured via Birdbrook - more varied my route home than detoured but you catch my drift. The exterior of St Augustine was nothing exciting and seemed to promise a dreary interior but on entering the church there was an overwhelming, pleasantly so, smell of linseed oil.

The smell is explained in the sanctuary and chancel; in the mid 1960s, the sanctuary was panelled throughout with carvings, by Ken Mabbitt (sadly Googling him is remarkably uninformative which is odd given the quality of this work), of the arms of the patrons of the church, and the shield of St Augustine on the north wall. From north to south they are of the Peche family, Edward I, Westminster Abbey, the Tyrrell family, Elizabeth I, Gent family, Alleyn family, Thompson family, Howard family, Rushe family and finally, Clare college, Cambridge. The communion table is decorated with a frieze of foliage incorporating such creatures as a mouse and birds, while the arms of the sedilia, on the south wall, has perching owls. The carving on the linen chest reflects the rural life of the parish, a woodman, reaper, fruit picker and a shepherd.

The chancel panelling matches the sanctuary, but with badges of the regiments of Birdbrook men killed in the First and Second World wars and the Korean war together with the names of the fallen. The arms of the choir stalls are carved with different animals or birds. To match the linen chest, the front of these stalls are carved with a frieze of oak leaves and acorns (significant, as all Mabbitt’s work was constructed in oak), nuts, vine leaves and grapes, amongst which there are birds, a butterfly, a bee, a squirrel and harvest mice. At the south west end of the choir stalls are tiny carvings of humorous faces in a medieval style. All this work dates to the late 1960s.

The stained glass of the east window was put in to commemorate the generosity of Mrs Edith Clara Young. The two stained glass windows on either side of the chancel depict, on the south, Inguar the Saxon thegne who was known as holding the land on which the church was built; hence the view of the church being constructed and Richard FitzGilbert, Earl of Clare, patron after the conquest; hence the scenes from the Bayeux tapestry. On the other side of the chancel are Walter de Wenlok, Abbott of Westminster Abbey and Dr. William Webb master of Clare Hall, Cambridge. Both of the portraits are authentic, taken from true likenesses. These two windows were executed by Rupert Moore.

The Joy here is in the thoroughly modern fittings and furnishings – I never thought I’d be so bowled over by refurbishments dating to the 60’s, 70’s and later but this has been so lovingly, and sympathetically, undertaken that St Augustine is a church to remember.

ST AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY. Nave, chancel, and belfry. Nave and chancel have herringbone masonry in the N walls, an indication of Early Norman date. Inside the nave one blocked Norman window in the N and one in the S wall. The other windows chiefly C13 lancets belonging partly to a lengthening of the chancel to the E and the nave to the W. At the E end a group of three with individual hood-moulds and two blank quatrefoils above and between them. At the W end also three lancets, the middle one being placed much higher up. In the C15 an arch was struck across the nave to carry the belfry. - FONT. Thin octagonal piece with neatly decorated stem and bowl - a Gothic imitation dating from 1793. In the E panel a circular medallion 4 ins. across with a miniature painting of the Baptism of Christ said to be by Samuel Cooper. - COMMUNION RAIL, with twisted balusters; c. 1700. - SCREEN. Bits of the former screen used in the front of the chancel stalls. - PLATE. Paten of 1561; Cup of 1562; Flagon and Paten given in 1722. - MONUMENTS. To Martha Blewitt and Robert Hogan. He had seven wives, she nine husbands. - James Walford d. 1743 and family, put up c. 1790. By King of Bath. - Thomas Walford d. 1833. By G. Lufkin of Colchester. So as late as that the lord of the manor might use a local sculptor for a church monument.

BIRDBROOK. Some of its old houses have been here about 500 years with overhanging storeys resting on curved brackets. The church has something much older still, for in its walls are Roman tiles used by the 13th century builders. There are three striking lancet windows at the east, with stone heads keeping watch outside, and on the tracery of a 14th century window of the chancel is scratched the name of Thomas Cersey in ancient lettering. The lofty roof of the nave is 500 years old, and there is woodwork of the same time in the choir-stalls. The graceful altar rails are 18th century. In the sanctuary is a medieval coffin lid, and by the altar is something we have not seen before by any altar - a fireplace.

On a stone in the tower is recorded the remarkable experience of Martha Blewit who died in 1681 at the Swan Inn, which is still in the village. She married nine husbands, but the ninth outlived her, whereupon the parson of Birdbrook chose as his text at her funeral the words, "Last of all the woman died also." This same stone also records that in the next century Robert Hogan married seven wives, so that there were between these two people 16 marriages. A less exciting monument is to the antiquarian Thomas Walford, who went about England a hundred years ago and wrote a book called The Scientific Tourist.

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Ashen

St Augustine was locked but with keyholders listed however I had neither the time, inclination or top up credit to track down the key so did exteriors and left.

ST AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY. One small lance window in the nave indicates a C13 origin. The W tower with diagonal buttresses and battlements was added about 1400, the brick stair-turret with the battlements on a trefoiled corbel-frieze about 1525. The chancel dates from 1857. - DOOR in S doorway, with damaged C13 ironwork. - BENCHES. A few fragments in the nave. Also an inscription in Roman capitals, dated 1620, which reads : ‘This hath bin the churching the mearring stool and so it shall be still’. - PLATE. Cup and Paten of c.1570. - MONUMENTS. Brass to a Knight of c. 1440, the figure 21 in. long (nave, E end). - Luce Tallakarne d. 1610, an odd design with termini caryatids and between them decoration with panels, a shield, and the inscription plates.

ASHEN. From the street of this upland village we look over the Stour into Suffolk. Its flint tower was built about 1400, and the brick turret was new about 1520; but two of the bells (called Thomas and Alice) were made 600 years ago, and the third is 15th century. The church is small, but very old, the nave having been built by the Normans and the 13th century men. A porch of Shakespeare’s day covers a doorway 200 years older, making a frame for a door with 13th century hinges.

There are two little pews 500 years old, a nave roof about the same age, a carved chair of the 18th century, and a curious panel of 1620 which tells us it has been the marrying stool and "so it shall be still." In the nave are brass portraits thought to be John and Frances Hunt, who would be alive when the victory of Agincourt was the talk of the land. John, in armour, stands on a lion; and looking up at Frances is a little dog with bells on its collar.

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Simon K.

A portaloo and some stacked fencing outside made me think that they'd just finished some work, but when I rang the churchwarden she told me no, they'd just started! If I still wanted to see inside she would come and unlock, and I did, so she did. All the furnishings are stacked and covered with dust sheets, the chancel is cordoned off by plastic sheets. Very dusty! I was able to photograph the memorial and one of the brasses, and then step through into Pearson's fabulous chancel - remarkable to see such a great Victorian architect on such a small scale, and in East Anglia too. The glass is all by William Wailes, and must have been a complete commission. It must have cost a fabulous amount of money. Well worth seeing, but the church is now out of use until May, when the nave walls will all have been replastered and repainted.

Pentlow

This was my third attempt at finding SS Gregory & George (success was due to making a note of the address before departure) and, despite it being locked with no keyholder listed, I was blown away - regular readers will know I'm a sucker for a round tower and an apse.

Having read Mee and Googled the church I do really wish it was left open - it sounds fascinating.

The Church (St. Gregory,) is an interesting structure of great antiquity, having a semicircular east end, and a round tower, containing five bells. The architecture is a mixture of the pure Norman and pointed styles, and the large stone font has a wooden covering, ornamented in the florid style of the time of Henry VII. The walls of the tower are of flint, 4 feet thick. On the north side of the chancel is Kemp’s Chapel, in which is a very fine tomb, on which are recumbent effigies of Judge Kemp, his lady, and his son John, who died in the early part of the 17th century. Round the tomb are 14 kneeling figures of children. The Chapel window is filled with stained glass, and the roof is divided into compartments, with Gothic quartrefoils. In the chancel is a curious old tomb of the Feltons, who were connected by marriage with the noble family of Hervey.

ST GEORGE. Nave and chancel are Norman. The apse is completely preserved, with its three windows. As for the nave the W doorway survives. It now leads into the tower, one of the round towers of Essex, and a late one, C14 according to the E windows. It may replace an earlier one, but when the nave was built, there obviously was no tower yet in the W, or else the doorway would not have been enriched by columns (one order with decorated scalloped capitals) and the little animal’s head above the arch. The N chapel was added to the chancel in the C16. It has stepped brick gables to the W and E and Late Perp windows. The E window seems C15 and may be re-used. The chapel has a charming panelled tunnel-vault. It houses the MONUMENT to George Kempe d. 1606, John Kempe d. 1609, and his wife, three recumbent effigies on a tomb-chest with kneeling children against the front of the chest. The Royal Commission assumes that the chapel was built for this monument. But can that really be the case? Another MONUMENT in the chancel. Edmund Felton d. 1542 and wife. Tomb-chest with shields on cusped panels; no figures. - FONT. Square, with angle colonnettes, Norman. The sides decorated with a cross and interlace and leaves, a star, branches etc. - all very stylized. - FONT COVER. Square with muted front. Niches with nodding ogee arches. The canopy with buttresses, canopies etc., crocketed and ending in a finial. - PLATE. Cup and Cover of 1724; Paten also of 1724; Flagon of 1722.

Among the old houses of Pentlow are Paine’s Manor with a carved beam of Shakespeare’s day; Bower Hall of about 1600 with original chimneys and a 15th century barn; and Pentlow Hall of about 1500, with much old woodwork, a line bay window of Elizabeth’s day, and an oriel with 16th century glass showing a hawking scene and shields. It is charming from the churchyard, looking under a great cedar and across the moat still wet. The fine church tower is remarkable as being one of the six round towers of Essex, with walls four feet thick. It was probably added in the 14th century to the nave and apsidal chancel built by the Normans, and protects the Norman west doorway, which is carved at the top with a muzzled bear. The 15th century chancel arch is wide and very high, and a flat arch leads to a chapel of about 1600. There is a 16th century chest, a 17th century table, twisted altar rails a little younger, and scraps of 14th century glass in the east window. But finer than anything is a huge Norman font elaborately ornamented on its four sides, the cover a rich piece of 15th century work with canopies and pinnacles. A Tudor altar tomb in the chancel is the sleeping-place of Edmund and Frances Felton, and a great tomb in the chapel has figures of George Kempe of 1606, his son John who died three years later, and John’s wife Elinor in an elaborate headdress and tight-waisted gown. The men are carved in their furred robes, and on the front of the tomb are kneeling figures of the children of John and Elinor, eight daughters with their hair brushed back, and four curly headed sons in cloaks. It is an impressive monument to three generations of an Essex family in the days when Shakespeare was writing his plays.

A window of St Gregory and St George is in memory of Felix Edward Bull who began his ministry in 1877 and preached for 50 years; and a testimonial hanging on the organ tells of Sarah Clark, who played her first voluntary in the year the Crimean War began, and her last two years after the shadow of the Great War was lifted from Europe. For 66 years she was organist, and for 43 she was at the organ while Felix Bull was in the pulpit, a wonderful fellowship of prayer and praise in this small place.

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Margaretting

Having driven round in circles I finally stumbled across St Margaret down a tiny lane and stranded across the other side of a mainline rail crossing - the crossing gates seemed to close every two minutes.

After doing exteriors I was somewhat underwhelmed but decided I had time to collect keys and do interiors, and thank goodness I did.

There is a bit of everything here from a Flemish east window to old corbels via the remains of the rood screen passing by John Tanfield's monument of 1625 with a sprinkle of an unknown brass and a dash of hatchments.

As a whole St Margaret left me feeling a bit cold but, as they say (or perhaps not in this case) the Devil is in the detail and the details here are wonderful - and that includes the railway crossing.

ST MARGARET. The church should be visited by all for its splendid C15 timber W tower, on ten posts (like Blackmore). The free-standing posts are connected from N and S by three pairs of arched braces. From E to W between posts two and three and posts three and four on both sides there are also arched braces, but lower and smaller. Cross-strutting above these. Outside, the tower has a vertically weather-boarded ground floor, the roof is hipped on N, S, and W, but straight on the E and higher than the nave roof. The bell-stage is straight on again and on it sits a broach spire. Bell-stage and broach spire are shingled. The two-light W window with a little tracery is original, the N and S windows renewed. The N porch also is of timber and contemporary. Four-centred doorway with traceried spandrels, cusped barge-boarding and one-light side openings. The rest of the church is also essentially C15 and early C16, but all windows are renewed. The S arcade has first one bay, then piece of wall and then another three. The piers are of four shafts with deep hollows between them, and the arches four-centred with double-hollow-chamfered moulding. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with quatrefoils carrying flowers, a crown, a mitre, a head with tongue put out. - SCREEN. Only the dado remains, with elaborate blank tracery. - STAINED GLASS. In the three-light E window the Tree of Jesse, much restored, but yet impressive as a complete C15 composition: four medallions with two figures each in the side lights, Jesse, three medallions and the seated Virgin in the centre light. - PLATE. Large Cup and Paten of 1563. - BRASS. Knight and Lady, mid C15, the figures c. 22 in. long.

MARGARETTING. The timber belfry with four bells four centuries old, and a rare Jesse window, give renown to this little village on the Roman road. No lover of beauty passes it by. The church is surrounded by trees. The thick wall of the nave is Norman, but most of it is 15th century. The timber walls of the porch have lovely open tracery and the door has its original wood and iron. The medieval masons rivalled the woodcarvers; every corbel in the nave is their work, the lion of Mark, the angel of Matthew, the eagle of John, and the ox of Luke, sharing their task with grotesque heads. More delicate are the symbols they carved round the font, rose, crown, mitre, acorns, leaves, square and compass, and a face with a protruding tongue.

The wooden screen must have been very beautiful; the few panels left have five-leaf traceried heads and spandrels with owls and leopards and roses. The two doors still hang on their old hinges, bringing us into the chancel with an east window brilliant with colour and human appeal. It represents the Tree of Jesse, and there runs up through three divisions a vine-stem encircling 12 round panels with 24 figures. Flying freely above Jesse is an angel, in the middle division all wear golden crowns, in the bottom panel are David with a harp and Solomon with his temple, and at the top are the Madonna and the Child. In the side panels are Old Testament figures, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph and the rest, all with their names.

But the most interesting thing about this group is the record it gives of the life of the time. It was the work of Flemish artists 500 years ago and the men of Jesse’s line might very well be burghers of Antwerp or any other town in the Low Countries. Cloak and hat and every detail reflect the life the artists knew, and in pose and colour remind us of the lovely paintings of the golden age of Art.

There is a hint of the rich costume women wore in the 15th century in a brass on the chancel wall, where, resplendent in jewelled headdress, with a pomander box hanging from her girdle, a lady stands by a man in armour, with their seven children below. Farther along the wall in the nave is a family group of 1600, kneeling figures of the Tanfields painted on a small tablet of alabaster.

A door in a 16th century brick arch at the end of the nave leads us to the belfry, with its gigantic timbers. Three posts to right and three to left are linked by arches and made firm by slanting beams, and above go great braces to support the bell-chamber and the shingled spire. In the tower are four bells which rang at all the weddings of our royal Bluebeard.

Simon K -

I'd come down into south Essex on what they quaintly call round here 'Ride and Stride Day', to explore churches normally kept locked without a keyholder. It had been raining since midnight, and when I got off the train in Chelmsford at about 8am there was a gloomy, penetrating drizzle, giving something of the effect of cycling underwater. I headed south down the lanes to the outskirts of Ingatestone, where I found Margaretting parish church locked, but with a keyholder notice. I had arrived an hour before the open churches event was due to start, so I suppose that it was no surprise to discover that the church was not open. Mind you, they didn't seem particularly geared up for it.

Uniquely in England, you reach Margaretting churchyard across a level crossing, and as this is on the busy Liverpool Street to Essex/Ipswich/Norwich line, there are trains every few minutes. The keyholder is on the opposite side of the tracks to the church, which led to a certain amount of fiddling about as I waited in each direction several times for the barriers to open. The tower, like Blackmore, is an aisled wooden structure, splendid even in the drizzle, but the interior is almost entirely late 19th Century in character. However, the star of the show, and a surprising one, is a 14th Century stained glass tree of Jesse, reset in the east window. It put me in mind of Ste-Chapelle in Paris. Most unusual in such a cosy setting.

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Galleywood

St Michael was locked with no keyholder listed and is nearly impossible to decently photograph surrounded as it is by trees and cables - I did my best and went for a walk through the lovely wooded common.

Mee is circumspect, so I suspect I didn't miss anything of interest here.

ST MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS. 1873 by St Aubyn (GR). In the Dec style, with a stone spire.

GALLEYWOOD COMMON. A scattered village on the high ground south of Chelmsford, its glory is in its wild common, which we found a mass of living gold. The modern church stands on this wonderful gorse carpet, and its spire rises 127 feet high. A racecourse encircles the common and the church as well - an odd assemblage, though races were held at Galleywood long before the church came. Eight bells ring merrily in the steeple, which looks down on a churchyard beautiful with trees and flowers.

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West Hanningfield

If I thought nearby Woodham Ferrers was a hotchpotch, SS Mary & Edward is a veritable smorgasbord of restoration  but I loved the porch and tower, particularly the tower which has a New England feel to it.

However my faith in humanity was restored by finding it open and welcoming. Whilst it's not overly exciting I did find some relations, in the shape of Clovilles and an Alington, here.

ST MARY AND ST EDWARD. The timber W tower is built on a Greek cross plan with the square upper part provided with an odd W oriel. Broach spire. On the ground floor to the S two Gothick windows. The construction inside is specially interesting, with arched braces in all four directions, buttressing struts in the arms of the cross, and on the upper floor of the centre arched braces diagonally across like ribs and meeting in a centre key-block with a grotesque face. The church itself has a Norman nave, as witnessed by the rear-arch of a N window, the remains of a C13 chancel (see the traces of E windows) a C14 S arcade and S aisle, a C15 timber porch, and an early C16 chancel. Most of the windows are probably of c. 1800: Gothick. The S arcade of five bays stands on octagonal piers and has double-chamfered arches. The chancel has two- and three-light N windows of brick, probably C17. - FONT. Perp, octagonal, small. - COMMUNION RAIL. Late C17 with alternatingly heavily twisted and turned balusters. - CHEST. Of the dug-out type, 8 ft long, heavily iron-bound. - PLATE. Cup of 1709; Paten on foot of 1709. - BRASS to Isabell Clouvill d. 1381, demi-figure.

WEST HANNINGFIELD. The long grass of the churchyard was aglow with primroses when we called to see the treasure of the village, the amazing dug-out chest which has been here 600 years. It is bound with iron and has two lids, both very hard to lift, and is over eight feet long. It would come here about the time the new font was set on the Norman base, the carvers giving it trellis work and roundels on the stem and ballflowers and quaint heads round the bowl. There is a charming portrait in brass of 1361, the oldest brass but one of a lady in all Essex. It shows the head and shoulders of Isabel Clouville in the delightful veiled headdress of her time. There is a shield of the family arms in 15th century glass and an altar tomb in which lie a 16th century John Clouville and his wife. In the window above the tomb are two little heads of women with a Tudor rose between them.

A very curious feature here is the 15th century wooden belfry at the end of the nave; it is planned like a cross, each arm two stages high, the centre rising a stage higher and crowned with a spire. The interior is a medley of old beams and, mounting a rough 16th century ladder, we find the curved braces meeting at a grotesque face. It is all a little like some goblin barn rather than a belfry.

(I very often wish I could have Mee's untrammelled access after reading his entries.)

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Woodham Ferrers

The graveyard at St Mary the Virgin has a commanding view across the Crouch valley and, since the church was locked with no keyholder listed, is what I admired most here.

St Mary itself looks like a converted grain barn and is a hotch-potch affair but I would have liked to have seen Cecilie Sandys' monument and Pevsner's Doom.

ST MARY THE VIRGIN. Nave and aisle, chancel, belfry. With the exception of the latter essentially built between c. 1250 and c. 1330. The N and S arcades come first, three bays with alternating circular and octagonal piers, alternating also in a N-S direction across the nave. Moulded capitals and double chamfered arches. Niches in the last pier and E respond on the S side. Clerestory C19, but with C13 splays. The chancel arch is of the same style, but the chancel in one way noticeably later. The windows have bar-tracery with quatrefoils in circles. That can hardly be earlier than c. 1275. The aisle windows have usual two-light Dec tracery. There was originally an early C16 W tower, but it has been demolished, and the tower arch bricked up. Patches of flint and stone flushwork on the l. and r. remain to indicate the character of the tower. The S porch is of timber, with six cusped arched openings on each side and a pargetted gable. The belfry rests on a big tiebeam, not on posts, as usual. - FONT COVER, ogee-shaped of thin ribs. - PAINTING. Doom above the chancel arch, C15, with Christ seated in the centre, angels on the l. and r, souls below, and the mouth of Hell in the r. corner. Hardly recognizable. - PLATE. Large Cup and Paten of 1668. - MONUMENTS. Cecilie Sandys, wife of the Archbishop of York d. 1610, erected 1619. The usual alabaster design with a kneeling figure in profile, but in addition Father Time on the left, a missing figure on the r., and Victories on the semicircular pediment. What will be remembered as exceptional and enchanting is the background behind the figure and the whole area of the pediment, all carved into an arbour of roses.

Mee explains the mystery of Bicknacre.

WOODHAM FERRERS. Its houses line a winding uphill street, and the church stands behind with a good view of the valley of the Crouch. It is a wide open building of the 13th and 14th centuries, having lost its tower. It has a 14th century font and four l5th century benches. The wall over the high chancel arch shows in a faint pink all that remains of a medieval Doom painting, in which Christ sits on a rainbow; and there are bright yellows and blues in the 14th century shields of France and England in a window. A delightful monument is a son’s tribute to his mother; it shows Cecilie Sandys, who survived her husband, Archbishop of York, living in the Elizabethan house he had built a mile away, still standing. She kneels in painted alabaster, a lady of Jacobean days, below a graceful trellis covered with flowers, Father Time with an hourglass in his hand lurking in the shadow of a column behind her.

Along the road is Bicknacre, where a solitary arch stands like a shadow of the priory which stood here from the 12th century until 1507, when its last canon died in it.

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East Hanningfield

Disappointingly, and for no apparent reason, All Saints is kept locked although a contact number is noted if you wish to arrange a tour - I didn't. Architecturally uninspiring and Victorian built (1885), I took externals and headed onwards. On my way to Woodham Ferrers I noticed Old Church Road and spent a while trying to spot the old church but to no avail; it was standing in Pevsner and Mee's day but I couldn't find it. Unlike at Thundridge a quick Google only shows that the original church burnt down in 1883; I suspect nothing remains.

ALL SAINTS. In ruins and at the time of writing completely neglected, with bushes and weeds growing rank inside the nave and aisle. Brick chancel of the early C16, with two-Light brick-windows in the S wall. Nave with two-bay N arcade. The pier is of brick, octagonal and heavy. In the nave S wall is one four-light window of brick.*

* Wall paintings removed to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

EAST HANNINGFIELD. Far from any town it stands, on a ridge with long views every way. Wide grass borders to the highway give a charm to its neat cottages and the modern church has a prosperous look. The vicar’s garden boasts the oldest well in the county, 480 feet deep. Close to the village are two Elizabethan farms with diagonal chimneys, but the church of medieval days is a ruin down the hill. It has given to South Kensington a wall-painting of great value, a treasure 600 years old showing Adam with his spade, Eve with her spindle, and Catherine with her wheel. For many years this painting was exposed to the open sky in the ivied ruins of the nave by the old chancel, now only used for funerals.

Simon K -

Leaving Sandon, it was a good ten miles to the next church I wanted to visit, so I had selected a few things to entertain me along the way. The first of these was actually a church! This was All Saints, East Hanningfield.

Locked with a keyholder notice. This is one of the numerous little Victorian churches rebuilt or planted by the then-Diocese of Rochester in the hamlets around Chelmsford and Brentwood in the later years of the 19th Century. Some are now private houses, some are still in use - this one is. What makes it attractive is that it is entirely in the vernacular Essex rural style, with a little bellcote at the east end. 

The sign says the churchwarden will be happy to come and show you around - show you around what?, I wondered, since there really wasn't much to it.

I found a Japanese POW memorial in the churchyard, and some good cast iron gravemarkers, presumably from Maldon, and then headed on.


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Danbury

I've been busy elsewhere so it's taken me almost a week to process the photos of my last trip which was planned to run as follows: Danbury, Bicknacre, East Hanningfield, Woodham Ferrers, West Hanningfield, Galleywood and Highwood. I couldn't find Bicknacre church nor Highwood (the SatNav, and road map, refused to acknowledge the existence of Highwood in Essex) so I had time, just, to add Margaretting to the trip.

All of these villages being south of Chelmsford I was expecting to be disappointed with both the architecture and the locked status of these churches but St John the Baptist, Danbury, surprised me on both counts.

The overwhelming feature of interest are the Gilbert Scott designed pews each with a set of poppyheads. These were based on a block of three surviving medieval pews and are very good replicas - the workmanship is outstanding.

On top of this are three wooden effigies of knights, two dating from between 1272 and 1307 and the other a little later, and some nice brasses to members of the Mildmay family.

All in all a promising start to the day!

ST JOHN THE BAPTIST. The church and its churchyard lie within a roughly oval, poorly preserved Earthwork. The church is remarkably roomy. Nave and aisles together are wider than they are long. Chancel, S chancel chapel and N Vestry form one straight E end. The oldest part is the N aisle wall with cusped two-light windows with a quatrefoil in the spandrel. This must be c. 1300. The rest is essentially C14, the arcades of three bays with the typical quatrefoil piers and double-hollow-chamfered arches (on the N side dying into a  vertical continuation of the pier), and the W tower with diagonal buttresses, a W door with niches to the l. and r., a W window with two ogee lights and a quatrefoil in the spandrel, and a later recessed, rather tall, shingled spire. In the tower arch towards the nave is a pretty GALLERY of c. 1600. The N aisle has its original early C14 trussed-rafter roof, boarded over later in the E parts with ribs resting on oak head-corbels. The S aisle and S chancel chapel were rebuilt by Gilbert Scott in 1866. Squint from N aisle to chancel, and small squint-like window from Vestry to chancel. - BENCHES. Four in the nave with poppy-heads and various beasts on the shoulders. - PAINTING. At the E end of the N aisle remains of the original ornamental painting, a frieze of scrolls with little leaves, red, black, grey and yellow, c. 1300. - HELM in N aisle, late C16. - PLATE. Paten of 1667; foreign; Cup of 1771; Spoon of 1774; Paten of 1808. - MONUMENTS. In low recesses in the N and S aisles three oak effigies of Knights. All these are cross-legged, the N aisle ones earlier than that of the S aisle, late C13 and very early C14. They are all three remarkably different in attitude and mood; not at all shopwork. The earlier ones have their hand on the sword, but one of the two is bent more lyrically than the other. The younger one is in an attitude of prayer.

DANBURY. It is over 600 years since the funeral processions of the three knights of St Clere drew all the neighbourhood up the deep fern-lined lanes to the hilltop church. It is over 600 years since the medieval craftsmen laid on their tombs these oak sculptures which are the admiration of all Essex.

Each of the three knights lies with his legs crossed and his feet resting on a lion, his face peeping out from the close-woven meshes of chain mail. Each wears a tabard with its folds realistically carved. But each knight has a different aspect, an attitude which may have some forgotten meaning. One is drawing his sword, the second is vigorously thrusting his sword back into a sheath which a little dragon is biting, the third has his hands folded at prayer.

The story of the embalmed knight of Danbury begins in 1779, when a lady of the manor, Mrs Frances Ffytche, died and a grave was dug for her near a recess containing one of the wooden figures. At about 30 inches below the pavement the workmen laid bare a huge flat stone under which was a lead coffin. There was no name on the coffin and the workmen hurried for the rector, who called a conference with his churchwarden and a Mr White, who has left a record of this discovery.

It was decided to open the coffin, in the great expectation of seeing the bones of the knight whose statue in wood they knew so well. Inside the lead coffin they found an elm coffin, firm and entire, and inside this was a shell three-quarters of an inch thick and covered with cement. The lid of the shell was removed and to the great surprise of all there lay revealed, not his bones, but a man in the vigour of youth, his flesh firm and white. He was clad in a shirt of linen, round the top of which a narrow piece of crude lace had been sewn with bold stitches. The man was five feet long, his limbs were in excellent symmetry, his teeth were perfect. The preservation of his body was due to a curious liquid which half-filled the coffin. Flowers and herbs in abundance, perfect in form, were floating in the liquor.

After some of the villagers had been to see this ancient inhabitant of Danbury the coffins were replaced, soldered up in the leaden cover, and lowered once more into the grave. Those who had seen the coffin opened had looked upon the perfect figure of one of these three knights, 500 years old.

The knights rest by the foundations of the Norman church they may have seen taken down, to be rebuilt in the 13th century and re-fashioned in the 14th, when the nave arcades and the tower were added. From the battlements of this tower springs a spire cased in copper, wooden shingles, and lead, a landmark for miles, for the church stands on the summit of a hill 365 feet high, in an old encampment used by the marauding Danes and possibly furnished with its rampart by the Romans, or inhabitants long before then.

There is carving 500 years old on four benches with moulded rails, and three poppyheads with weird beasts. Modern lovers of this church have carried on the medieval craftsman’s idea, so that today all the pews are ornamented with lions and dragons. The gallery in the tower is a good example of 15th century woodwork; the balusters are Elizabethan. There is a 13th century piscina with quaint masks and neat 14th century niches on either side of the fine tower doorway. A helmet enriched with a lion rampant hangs in the aisle above the Mildmay tombs, and there is a brass alms dish of 1631 with Adam and Eve carved on it. In the lovely park at the foot of the hill the bishops of Rochester lived for 30 years, and the east window, with the Crucifixion, was Bishop Claughton’s gift when he celebrated his jubilee. Hanging here is a piece of the wooden walls of Old England, an oak tablet cut from the battleship Britannia and inscribed with the names of the 250 men from the village who did not come back from the war. It is a lovely village they laid down their lives for, with old houses which have stood for generations looking down on England over commons on which dwarf oaks and stunted holly trees brave the winds from the North Sea.

Simon K -

I sat in Chelmsford Cathedral for a while. What a lovely church it is. What has a town like Chelmsford done to deserve it? I wish it were in Ipswich. I'd arranged to meet my friend John near the cathedral at 10.30, although I fooled him at first by standing on the wrong corner. Eventually the conundrum was solved (how did we manage before mobile phones?) and we headed east as it began to rain, towards Danbury.

Open. Rather an austere exterior, set at the highest point of its little town, with a tall spire and a 19th Century south aisle remarkable for the fact that it is entirely built out of puddingstone, obviously dredged from the nearby Blackwater. The weeping rain did little to improve its aspect. But the signs were good: One at the gate, a full three feet high, says Church always open in daylight hours, and at the west doors, where you go in, a metal sign bolted to the door reads This Church is Open Every Day - Please Come in. inside the porch under the tower it said You are always welcome here. Okay, okay, I thought, I get the message. Don't overdo it!

The star here is the wide range of bench ends. There are good medieval ones in the East Anglian style, and (dare I say it?) even better ones from Scott's 19th Century restoration, and others made by villagers through into the 1930s, depicting the usual traditional subjects, but also local girl guides, owls, elephants, sphinxes and so on. All jolly good.

There are three wooden 13th century effigies of knights, though not as impressive as those at Little Horkesley, and a beautiful relief of the Annunciation from the 1920s. Carl Edwards' 1955 east window for Powell and Sons is full of sapphire and emerald light, and very successful, showing that the workshop could still produce the best after some dodgy moments between the wars.

The otherwise dull 19th century restoration is a bit overwhelming, but it does help these jewels stand out. I liked it a lot.

Flickr.