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St Mary, Hatfield Broad Oak

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It was one of those light early summer days, when the sun is strong but there's a freshness in the air, not much wind, perfect for cycling. I was crossing Essex from Bishops Stortford to Sudbury, and by the middle of the day I was in the Rodings. The landscape is rolling here, as if this was where the Chilterns come to dies,and as I cycled on towards the forest I saw ahead of me on a hill a dramatic church tower, the houses falling away below it, thickets of dark trees beyond. I climbed to a delightful village, its main street lined with grand 18th and 19th Century buildings, a pub at each end. Halfway between the pubs was the church. The De Veres were strong in late medieval Essex and Suffolk, and left their mark in the form of great churches which remind us of their power even today, which was exactly their intention. Hatfield Broad Oak church is just the surviving western arm of a vast cruciform Benedictine church, mostly of the late 14th Century, although probably the most memorable part of the exterior is the 15th Century south porch with its pinnacles decorated with grinning heads. You step into a splendid interior, and also an interesting one because the church was largely refurnished in the 18th century and then was subject to a very early 19th Century restoration in the 1830s, which also brought the very fine stalls and pulpit, by Robert Carpenter. This is all to say that the interior is Georgian rather than Victorian. The later glass of Faith, Hope and Charity by Henry Holiday adds rather than detracts. There is grandeur and gravitas, after which the most famous feature of the church, the early 14th Century stone effigy of Robert de Vere as a crusading knight reset in the chancel in the 1890s, comes as something of an anticlimax. This is the kind of church you can't be alone in, and a couple of people I spoke to were very friendly. This was the first church of the day that I thought I really must come back to. And then I veered eastwards from the forest entering the emptiest and most remote area of Essex. No villages for miles, just hamlets, fields and the occasional farmstead. Simon Knott, May 2020 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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