THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

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St Peter and St Paul, Foxearth

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. St Peter and St Paul is a fabulous church. It was almost entirely rebuilt in the second half of the 19th Century - only the chancel survives of the medieval church. The tower was surmounted by a 130ft spire, now taken down, making it the tallest church in Essex. Everything about it is atmospheric, the walk to it, the setting, the interior. It started to snow as we walked up to it, which helped of course. It was as if a church of the 1870s had lain mothballed for a century and a half before being rediscovered by accident, a kind of eccesiological equivalent of the lost gardens of Heligan. The walls are tiled and stenciled, the glass is jewel-like, the furnishings are solid: everything is of the very highest quality. It must have cost an absolute fortune. It was bankrolled by the Foster family as a memorial. John Foster, who was Rector, designed the glass himself. It turns out that for about a year now, the church has been open every day after years of being left locked. The locals seem to have been galvanised by the PCC sounding out the CCT as to the consequences of declaring it redundant. They are now raising money to install some kind of 'heritage centre', so do see it while you can. Extraordinary. Simon Knott, April 2013

 

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