THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

home - index - latest - e-mail
links - small print - about this site
Norfolk churches - Suffolk churches
www.simonknott.co.uk

St Margaret, Aldham

Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

Aldham is a pleasing little village in the quiet lanes to the west of Colchester. The parish is bordered by the River Colne which is just getting into its stride by this point, scenting the sea beyond the large town ahead of it perhaps. The church sits right in the centre of the village, but until the mid-19th Century it sat nearly a mile away, where the Marks Tey to Sudbury railway line runs now, the name of Church House Farm there remaining to tell of it. In 1855 the old church was demolished, and the Ipswich-based architect Edward Hakewill used the materials to build the new one. It must be said that Hakewill was better at designing churches from scratch than he was at restoring them, for his greatest enthusiasm seems to have been to add on a gloomy north aisle. But Aldham church looks crisp and perky, the porch leading into a tall south aisle with a matching nave and chancel beyond. The rood stairway turret where the three meet is a nice touch. James Bettley, revising the Buildings of England volume for Essex, thought it very Victorian in the picturesque grouping, especially from the outside, and the wild overdoing of flint as the surfacing material. As well as flint and stone, a fair amount of timber was reused from the old church, the most striking of which is the 14th Century ogee-arched porch roof (did the beams come from a porch originally, I wonder?) but the church you step into is entirely Hakewill's in character, a typical example of the new High Church enthusiasm of the decade. A couple of other details survive from the old church, including the doors, although all the glass is by Ward & Nixon and was installed as part of the rebuild. James Bettley thought that the glass provided good examples of bad Victorian designs, which may be so but they are an important part of a building which has an overall effect of being frozen in time, and which is worth seeing for that alone. Simon Knott, December 2021 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

The Churches of East Anglia websites are non-profit-making, in fact they are run at a loss. But if you enjoy using them and find them useful, a small contribution towards the costs of web space, train fares and the like would be most gratefully received. You can donate via Paypal.

 

home - index - latest - e-mail
links - small print - about this site
Norfolk churches - Suffolk churches
www.simonknott.co.uk