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St Andrew, Barnston

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Barnston is a large village to the south of Great Dunmow, not far from the busy road to Stansted Airport, but its little church is away from all this, about half a mile to the south-east on a quiet back road beside the Hall. It seemed quieter still the first time I came here in February 2012 after a week of persistent snow. It wasn't deep, but it cloaked the ground and killed all noise apart from the rooks cawing in the bare trees. It could have been any time. The building is a familiar story of small Essex churches, a Norman nave with a chancel added in the 13th Century, late medieval money then bringing some replacement window tracery which looks more impressive than perhaps it is on such a small church. The west tower was struck by lightning in the 1660s and then replaced with the current wooden belfry in the early 18th Century. Altogether, this makes for an interesting and rather quirky building, a theme which will be repeated within. The Norman south doorway survives, and you enter the church through it into a quiet, pleasing interior. A 19th Century font sits under the west gallery, but most of the furnishings are from a mid-20th Century refurbishment. The first surprise is a large window on the south side of the chancel with late glass by Morris & Co, a design by Edward Burne-Jones depicting Christ welcoming the children. James Bettley notes that it was brought here after the Second World War from the chapel of St Cyprian's School in Eastbourne. It may be that the inscription was added at this time, remembering a brother and sister who died at sea aged two and a half in 1912 and died in Santiago, Chile in 1946 at the age of thirty-five respectively. Other glass includes ER Frampton's 1880s Christ the Good Shepherd (an unusually good depiction of the subject) flanked by the Adoration of the Magi and the Supper at Emmaus. The east window by the O'Connor workshop includes a rather jolly Elijah being brought bread by ravens. And it is up in the sanctuary that comes the biggest surprise of all, for this little church is home to one of Essex's most splendid 13th Century double piscinas, a riot of intricate foliage without and within. A modern plaque reminds us that this backwater was in 1686 the final place of exile for the 17th Century Puritan Divine Thomas Watson. He was the minister in charge of St Stephen Walbrook in the City of London throughout the Commonwealth period, after which he was inevitably ejected when the Church of England was re-established. The plaque tells us that he continued his faithful ministry in the city until ill-health forced his retirement to Barnston where he died and was buried in this church. Although a strongly vocal Presbyterian, Watson was not an archetypal Puritan hothead, even being briefly imprisoned on one occasion in 1652 when he expressed sympathies for the return of Charles II to England. After living in poverty for a few years he seems to have made a decent living as a preacher after the 1672 Declaration of Indulgence which gave licences to non-conformists, supplementing his income with dozens of devotional works, many of which are still in print. His famous aphorism that God loves a broken heart, not a divided heart must have had a particular poignancy for him in those years of disappointment. Simon Knott, January 2022 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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