WARLEY BARRACKS (Essex Regiment). Built for the East India Company in 1805. The style is that of such early C19 military establishments (cf. especially Woolwich). Yellow brick, with a minimum of adornment, but dignified in composition. The main front is to the E: seven-bay centre of two-and-a-half storeys, one storeyed stretch of wall l. and r., and then two-storeyed nine-bay wings with three-bay pediments. Regular row of buildings behind. A little further W Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt in 1857 built a chapel in that Early Christian style which his brother Thomas Henry had made famous (Wilton, Woolwich). The campanile was never built. So the chapel from the outside is a rather mean piece of architecture, yellow and a little red brick with coupled round-arched windows. The interior is much more dignified. Columns with imitation Early Christian capitals. Apse. In the last twenty years or so much furnishing has been done to Sir Charles Nicholson’s designs: screen, chancel seats, pews, pulpit, W gallery.
LITTLE WARLEY. The woods about it rise and fall with the hills, and a row of pretty cottages lines the edge of a breezy common from which are fine views, while the old church stands by the hall on the arterial road to Southend. Built entirely of brick in the 16th century, the hall has great charm, especially the side facing the church, with black bricks making a rich pattern and a two-storeyed porch with a crow-stepped gable. Rising above the high-pitched roof are twin chimney shafts with spirals. The small church is a patchwork of materials, a 16th century chancel and 18th century tower of brick having been added to a nave of grey and white stone. We come in by a 15th century door, and are charmed with two cherubs holding back a canopy over the striking tomb of Sir Denner Strutt, who lies in armour below the figure of his first wife, with his second wife close by. Sir Denner sat in the first Parliament of Charles Stuart. On the wall is the brass portrait of a lady in Elizabethan dress, wife in turn to Davye Hamner and John Terrell. In a niche is a quaint alabaster figure of Father Time.
On the hilltop is the regimental chapel of the Essex Regiment, with Essex saints in the windows and the arms of Essex towns. Attached to the pillars of the nave are carved wooden lecterns preserving the roll of a battalion in the Great War. Flags adorn the church, but the flag most treasured is a faded fragment with Badajos on it, enclosed in a frame on the chancel wall.
It is a fragment with a thrilling tale to tell, the tale of the appalling Retreat from Kabul in the middle of last century. Thomas Alexander Souter was a lieutenant of the Essex Regiment, one of the 700 men who marched with Indian and Afghan troops in 1841 to restore a ruler driven from his throne by Dost Mahommed. They did their work, and 4500 British troops were settled in Kabul, with 12,000 civilians. Then rose Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mahommed, who led a revolt, murdered the British officials, but promised a safe passage out of the country to the troops and civilians. It was a trick; the whole 16,000 soldiers and camp-followers were massacred except for one man who arrived to tell the tale at the gate of Jellalabad, and a small remnant of fewer than a hundred, with whom was Lieutenant Souter. The remnant made a final stand, and the lieutenant tore the tattered flag from its staff and wound it round his body while a little force of 80 men held the Afghans at bay till their last cartridges were spent. Souter was captured, and was allowed to write home a letter to his wife, in which he said:
In the conflict my posteen (sheepskin coat) flew open and exposed the colour. They thought I was some great man, looking so flash. I was seized by two fellows after my sword had dropped from my hand by a severe cut in the shoulder, and the pistol I had in my left hand missed fire. I threw it then upon the ground, and gave myself up to be butchered.
It happened that one of his captors had found a telescope among the lieutenant’s possessions, and on Souter explaining its use to him the captor became friendly and allowed the lieutenant to keep the flag. He was still waiting for death, however, when a relief expedition arrived, and he came home and brought this flag with him.
On the hilltop is the regimental chapel of the Essex Regiment, with Essex saints in the windows and the arms of Essex towns. Attached to the pillars of the nave are carved wooden lecterns preserving the roll of a battalion in the Great War. Flags adorn the church, but the flag most treasured is a faded fragment with Badajos on it, enclosed in a frame on the chancel wall.
It is a fragment with a thrilling tale to tell, the tale of the appalling Retreat from Kabul in the middle of last century. Thomas Alexander Souter was a lieutenant of the Essex Regiment, one of the 700 men who marched with Indian and Afghan troops in 1841 to restore a ruler driven from his throne by Dost Mahommed. They did their work, and 4500 British troops were settled in Kabul, with 12,000 civilians. Then rose Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mahommed, who led a revolt, murdered the British officials, but promised a safe passage out of the country to the troops and civilians. It was a trick; the whole 16,000 soldiers and camp-followers were massacred except for one man who arrived to tell the tale at the gate of Jellalabad, and a small remnant of fewer than a hundred, with whom was Lieutenant Souter. The remnant made a final stand, and the lieutenant tore the tattered flag from its staff and wound it round his body while a little force of 80 men held the Afghans at bay till their last cartridges were spent. Souter was captured, and was allowed to write home a letter to his wife, in which he said:
In the conflict my posteen (sheepskin coat) flew open and exposed the colour. They thought I was some great man, looking so flash. I was seized by two fellows after my sword had dropped from my hand by a severe cut in the shoulder, and the pistol I had in my left hand missed fire. I threw it then upon the ground, and gave myself up to be butchered.
It happened that one of his captors had found a telescope among the lieutenant’s possessions, and on Souter explaining its use to him the captor became friendly and allowed the lieutenant to keep the flag. He was still waiting for death, however, when a relief expedition arrived, and he came home and brought this flag with him.
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