Church Heritage Record 608418

A simple two-cell building of nave and chancel with west bell-cote, the nave with a south porch and the chancel with a north organ chamber and vestry. 

By Henry Woodyer (1816-1896), the foundation stone laid on 24 August 1859. Woodyer was Butterfield's most notable pupil. Although according to one account he was only in Butterfield's office for a few months in 1844, he did subsequently set up his office in the same building. The builder was Elliston; Jones and Willis, Hardinan, Minton and Harland and Fisher provided the fittings. 

The two details which charcterise the exterior most strongly are the wilful fenestration and the striking variegated brickwork. A simple arcading encompasses all the walls at half-way up the windows instead of below sill level; it is executed in black with the arches filled with grey bricks. Throughout it is flush with the wall surface. There is in addition a cross in black brick on the porch gable surrounded by cusping in the same colour, and a simple diaper on the bell-cote.

The west wall faces the former Rectory, and perhaps for that reason it is the most elaborate architectural concept of the building. The lower part of the wall is strengthened by a thick plinth which is wrapped round the north and south corners only to stop abruptly. Dividing the wall roughly into three equal parts are two massive buttresses with Woodyer's favourite steeply sloping shoulders and on these stand pairs of colonettes with moulded capitals. These support an arch which frames the west window and carries a disproportionately massive bell-cote with a sharply pointed gablet above an arch with a single bell. The west window is a spherical triangle enclosing a spiky cusped sexfoil.

The basic fenestration of the nave consists of two large four light windows in the south wall with sharply pointed main lights and Geometrical tracery and a complementary pair in the north wall. In addition there is a small single lancet towards the east end of the north wall which lights the pulpit. The south wall has a buttress at the eastern angle and another midway between the windows but the north wall has three buttresses less regularly spaced. The chancel has much more unusual windows. The design of the east window may be paralleled at Butterfield's church of St. Faith, Stoke Newington (1851-3) but is especially typical of Woodyer's hard and spiky tracery, of three short main lights with a big quatrefoil above which is virtually a square lozenge-wise. In the south wall reading from left to right are first two lancets with triangles in the head and then, to light the sanctuary, a large window related to the west window, in the form of a triangle with two curved sides and a horizontal base. The effect is odd, like the tracery of a much taller window bereft of its main lights. The chacel has diagonal buttresses at the corners, the offsets with the added decoration of a small trefoiled gablet. On the north side the roof slope continues down at a slightly shallower pitch to cover the vestry, a small room lit by a two-light east window with cupsed Y tracery three quatrefoils within roundels along the north wall. Out of this roof breaks the transeptal roof of the organ chamber lit by a window in the gable. A secondary doorway in the vestry wall has a Caernarvon head.

Although static in form, the interior of the church is restless in detail. Structurally it may be simply described; the two parts of the building are separated by a stone screen of three tall arches of equal height with two orders of mouldings. The quatrefoil piers which support them stand on a low stone wall, and the upper parts of the arches are screened with arches of ironwork. Not only are stone screens a peculiarity of this part of Essex (neither Stebbing nor Great Bardfield is far away), but they are also not uncommon in Butterfield's work. It is doubtful, however, whether Butterfield would ever have introduced the small figures of angels which form the label stops between the arches. The nave is roofed with an open timber roof in five bays, each spanned by a tie-beam carrying a king post and struts. The tie-beams each have braces forming a complete semi-circle beneath. The chancel roof is boarded to form a pointed barrel vault, the wall-plate decorated with attached shields (all unpainted) and is awkwardly chamfered to accomodate the screen. On the floor in the nave alley, at the west end and in the chancel are tiles by Minton and the timber furnishings are quite simple. The furnishing of the chancel is precisely arranged but simple, with choirstalls just inside the screen, then one step before the vestry door and another at the communion rails. The footpace forms the third step up to the level of the altar. The sill of the unusual south sanctuary window comes down low as sedilia and in the corner beyond is a piscina; in the similar position of the north is a stone shelf.

The walls throughout the church are decorated with a trollis like pattern of red and back bricks. On the nave walls are two-centred arches above the dado, the space within them filled with cream coloured plasterwork and the space above them with a uniform lozenge pattern of red bricks with black squares at the intersections The west wall has a similar series of arches with a smaller register of the same above. The east wall, which is pierced by the chancel screen, is entirely plain. Therefore by contrast the increased richness of the chancel is exaggerated. The side walls also have similar two-centred arches but with strips of red and black bricks above separated by bands of grey-white tiles set diagonally. The arch to the organ chamber on the north and the rere arch of the bove the sedilia on the south has bands of red and black bricks separated by bands of Bath stone. The east wall, the centre piece of which is the Hardman Crucifixion in the east window, has a row of two-centred arches up to dado level and above that a pair of arches each side of the window which are filled with red tiles set diagonally. The window itself is outlined with red and black voussoirs.