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Holy Trinity, Littlebury

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Here we are on the edge of Essex, not far from the Audley End estate and the fine little town of Saffron Walden. The Cambridgeshire border is a couple of miles to the north, Hertfordshire not much further to the west. The name Littlebury, and the Chesterfords just to the north, suggest that these were significant places in Roman times, and perhaps not surprisingly so for the village sits on the old road between London and Newmarket. The River Cam meanders through on its way to Cambridge twelve miles to the north, the M11 taking a somewhat less circuitous route to the same city. All this suggests that Littlebury might be a very busy place, but in fact it is peaceful and lovely. Holy Trinity is a 14th Century church at heart, but from whichever way you approach it you can see that it underwent an opulent and overwhelming restoration in the 1870s. The architect was Edward Barr, and James Bettley in the revised Buildings of England: Essex tells us that the work was bankrolled by the wealthy Lord Braybrooke of Audley End. The windows and roofs were replaced, and the chancel was rebuilt. It is all work of the highest quality. The old west window survives, showing that the tower and the nave were rebuilt together, but the south doorway is late 12th Century and must be reused from an earlier church. In any case, the most striking features of the exterior are not 14th or 19th Century, but the extravagant vaulted porches to south and north which went up in the early 16th Century on the eve of the Reformation. Unsurprisingly the interior you step into is crisp and clean. The glass is mostly typical work of the decade by Clayton & Bell except for the west window which is signed by Mayer & Co of Munich. Curiously, it gives their English address in the continental form as 'London Holles Street 19'. The furnishings are pretty much all of the 1870s, but Barr retained the 13th Century font and, more interestingly, the tall 16th Century font case which completely boxes it in and is reminiscent of the one not so very far off at Thaxted. There are other survivals. The faint remains of a doom painting can just about be made out above the chancel arch, and several brasses depict the figures of 15th and 16th Century Littleburians, a priest and civilians, ghosts of the parish, of the long generations. Simon Knott, October 2020 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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