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St Nicholas, Little Wigborough

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This is a tale of two churches really, for during the gap between my visits in August 2013 and August 2021 there was a dramatic downturn in the fortunes of this little building. It is a memorable setting, the church forming a group with Copt Hall Farm and looking out across the National Trust's marshes towards Salcott Creek and the mouth of the Blackwater. You reach it at the end of a long lane from the village, and there are no other buildings nearby. I'd remembered it as a very attractive situation, and so it proved again. As often in this part of Essex this was a simple 14th Century church, but after the 1884 earthquake It underwent substantial repairs by Joseph Clarke, including the top part of the tower. James Bettley in the revised Buildings of England volume for Essex reports ominously that Clarke used much septaria, the older fabric mostly Kentish rag. Neither of these are terribly reliable materials on soft ground, and so it has proved. On my second visit there was a warning sign on the gate into the little churchyard telling me that St Nicholas Church is closed permanently, the building is unsafe and cannot be visited. Around the south side which faces the marshes I found that the buttresses were cracking and crumbling, the tower too. Photographs from both visits are at the top of the page. There was no way of seeing inside of course, but on my first visit eight years earlier I had found a pleasingly simple interior, nicely kept with a devotional feel, the furnishings presumably those of Clarke's restoration. The only memorable detail was a plaque on the west wall to Zeppelina Williams 1916-2004, with, as if by way of an explanation, in brackets underneath (L33 Little Wigborough 24 September 1916). L33 was a German Zeppelin airship which crashed into a field across from the church on the night that Zeppelina was born. It was quite the fashion at the time to give children names associated with the War. My great-grandfather's brother had a posthumous daughter who was christened St Eloi after where he was killed, and I also had a great-aunt named Salonika after where her father, another one of my great-grandfathers, had safely spent the War. In churchyards I have come across headstones of people born during the War who were christened Verdun, Souvenir, Douglas Haig, Jack Cornwell and so on. Perhaps calling a child after a weapon is more unusual, though. And outside in the churchyard there is another reminder of that traumatic night. On the south side of the church is a headstone to Alfred John Wright, who died from injuries received whilst on his way to inform military guard of the fall of Zeppelin L33 in this parish. Alfred had been on his motorbike, but had crashed in the dark. Simon Knott, December 2021 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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Norfolk churches - Suffolk churches
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