Thundersley

St Peter, locked no keyholder; the tower and nave are typically southern Essex and spoilt by a barn like 1966 eastern extension. The extension is, apparently, award winning but for what and why I couldn't say. Pre-extension it was, though not particularly to my taste, a good example of its genre, post extension it's not, both the tower and nave are diminished by the oversized modernist style.

The graveyard - falling down the hill - is excellent.

ST PETER. On a hill with wide views around. Small. Nave and aisles under one big steep roof. The eaves no more than nine feet from the ground. Chancel of 1885. Belfry, shingled, with broach spire. Immediately behind the large three-light Perp W window with panel tracery the timber sub-structure of the bell-turret, not one of the more impressive ones. The arcades of N and S aisles are of the first half of the C13. Circular piers with stiff-leaf capitals of upright leaves and slightly double-hollow-chamfered arches. - FONT. Small, octagonal, Perp with quatrefoil panels. - HELM and SWORD, probably funerary. - PLATE. Cup with band of ornament and Paten, both of 1569.

THUNDERSLEY. Swinging in the wind as a weathervane on the spire of its church are gleaming figures of St Peter and the Archangel Michael. They preside over a church with a 15th century roof and a nave and narrow aisles 700 years old. Four great upright beams fill the end of the nave, set here in medieval days to support the bell-turret. On a wall hangs the helmet of some unknown squire buried here about the time the Stuarts came down from Scotland, and by the helmet hangs a sword; but much more beautiful is the Elizabethan chalice with its band of engraved ornament.

Flickr.