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St Botolph, Beauchamp Roding

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The Dunmow to Ongar road heads through some pleasantly rolling countryside, and this church is a dramatic sight about a quarter of a mile to the east of it. You leave the busy road along a narrow track which climbs up to a car park, presumably in regular use by walkers, and the church sits on the rise above it in a tree-shrouded churchyard, looking all of its 14th and 15th Century construction, as so many are around here. The setting makes it seem more remote than it actually is. There were a couple of restorations in the 19th Century, but when I first came here in 2014 I thought it was in a poor state. It was obviously still in use and lovingly cared for, but with missing roof tiles and a few broken panes. There's obviously been a patching-up campaign if not a proper restoration, and coming back in 2019 it seemed in better shape. The church is open every day, you enter through the elegant 1870s porch into a time capsule of the decade, with pretty much all the glass from that date and the twenty years that preceded it. There are at least three workshops here, perhaps four. The earliest is from the 1850s by Thomas Baillie, depicting the Good Shepherd and Christ at Gethsemane. The three archangels look as if they might be by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake, but the most animated glass is in the south side, especially the Raising of Lazarus and of Jairus's Daughter. I wonder who it is by,early Clayton & Bell perhaps? I liked it, but Pevsner pronounced none of it very good. Simon Knott, December 2021 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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