THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

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

All Saints, Little Totham

Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

These straggling lanes seem to weave purposelessly through the rolling landscape north of Maldon, the wide parishes home to scatterings of settlements in a way familiar in Essex. Little Totham is a small village, but its parish church is nowhere near, at least a mile away to the south by the Hall. This is recognisable at once as a Norman church, which must have seen out the ages pretty much unchanged. But in the early 16th Century someone came along with big plans. The brickwork windows are a pleasing addition, but what is this stuck on the west end of the building? It looks as if a large, square tower was begun, quite out of scale with the rest of the building, but when the Reformation intervened and bequests dried up it was completed as a timber bell tower in the more familiar Essex style. And yet it is out of proportion, and with the honey-coloured rendered walls of the nave and chancel the effect is of a child's model of a church, to which the parent might say that it looked a lot like a church without being quite right. A remarkable number of cast iron grave markers have been collected to lean together against the wall of the tower, likely produced by a Maldon foundry. The shed-like south porch is presumably contemporary with the tower, but it conceals a terrific Norman doorway, one that would not be out of place in south-east Norfolk. You step through it into a delightfully rough and ready interior. Ernest Geldart, whose parish was nearby, led an 1880s restoration that James Bettley accurately describes as unobtrusive. From the wooden wall posts 13th Century faces look down. The early 17th Century Sammes memorial, the pair looking at each other frankly over the prayer desk, is movingly intimate here in such a small space. Simon Knott, December 2021 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

The Churches of East Anglia websites are non-profit-making, in fact they are run at a loss. But if you enjoy using them and find them useful, a small contribution towards the costs of web space, train fares and the like would be most gratefully received. You can donate via Paypal.

 

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