THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

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St Andrew, Heybridge

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 left the lovely quayside and headed up into Maldon town centre, and then across the Chelmer and the Blackwater into Heybridge, the industrial and commercial quarter of Maldon (and, incidentally, home to successful non-league side Heybridge Swifts). Amongst the warehouses and tyre garages is St Andrew. Open. I have never seen a church that looked so unlikely to be open as this, which just goes to show. In fact, I knew it would be open, as it says it is on the parish website. This had a Norman tower and clerestories too, but the tower fell into the church in the late 16th Century and was never rebuilt, just capped at nave roof level. The effect is rather pleasing. Internally, I thought immediately that here was a church seemly and fitting for Anglican worship. The smell of candles from that morning's Holy Communion added to the atmosphere. The truncated clerestory windows are just visible under the roofline. There is a good 16th century memorial, and some fragments of medieval glass, and an excellent window of 2002 by local artist Benjamin Finn. The east end is prayerful in character, reducing to an anonymous Victorianism to the west thanks to Ewan Christian's dumbing down of a restoration. But overall, I admired it. A real surprise. Simon Knott, October 2012

 

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home - index - latest - e-mail
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Norfolk churches - Suffolk churches
www.simonknott.co.uk