THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

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All Saints, Cressing

Click on the 'play' symbol in the second image to see all my photographs of this church as a slide show, then click on any image in the slideshow to see it large in a new page. Alternatively, if you don't have flash enabled, you can go straight to the set for this church on flickr. I headed off down the little lanes from Stisted, swooping down into the horror of the A120 which I crossed as quickly as possible and then up, up into pleasant rolling fields of oilseed rape coming into full flower which, despite the fact I knew I was heading towards Braintree's southern suburbia, lifted the spirits. Before long I came to Cressing. The village is fairly anonymous, the church set at its southern end. Locked without a keyholder. A small church, typically Essex with small flint nave and chancel and a wooden bell turret. The churchyard was pleasantly overgrown and I pushed my bike up to the porch. I couldn't help noticing what a poor condition the building was in, the gutters sagging and the windows dirty. There were considerably more woodpecker holes in the spire here than at Stisted - one was so big I could have put my head through it. A dying church, with a diminishing and elderly congregation no doubt. I didn't bother trying the door, but headed with my camera down to the south-eastern corner among the modern graves. As I turned to photograph the pretty scene I was amazed to see a rather grim-faced couple coming out of the church, the man locking the door behind him! I hurried up the path towards them, saying good morning, observing what a lovely day it was, waving and generally making myself seem as if I wasn't a dangerous lunatic. But the man just smiled an embarrassed smile as if he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't, and they hurried off up the path to the gate. It didn't seem worth pursuing. Instead, I made sure that if they looked back they'd seem me trying the door, looking through the windows and generally looking suspicious. Perhaps they'd even call the police, which would at least be interesting. I hung around for ten minutes or so, but nobody came, so I got back on my bike and headed down past Cressing railway station and up the other side of the valley into Black Notley and Braintree's long, dull stretch of southern suburbia. I was struck as I had been several times already by the number of obviously busy and active non-conformist churches there were in this area - the one in the main street here was called Braintree Vine Church. Were they the cause of the moribund state of the Church of England in the Braintree area? Or were they a result of it? Simon Knott, April 2014

 

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