The Essex Churches Site

 

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St Barnabas, Mayland

Mayland

south porch ceramic tile cross

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  I was cycling from Bradwell-on-Sea to Althorne, over the ripples and ridges of the Dengie Peninsula from the River Blackwater to the River Crouch. The large village of Maylandsea straddles the road from Bradwell to Maldon, but the parish of Mayland to which it belongs has its church far out in the fields to the south, roughly halfway between the two estuaries. It is a simple 19th Century church by that uninspiring local architect Frederic Chancellor, built half a mile from the site of its medieval predecessor, now completely lost to us.

But the setting of the new church is sublime, high on the ridge with just a farmhouse for company, and wonderful views to the north taking in the length of almost all the Blackwater, hazy and silver in the afternoon light. There was Maldon in the far distance, and I could make out Stansgate Abbey, the country home of the late Tony Benn, with the Bradwell nuclear power station beyond. A wind turbine turned lazily beside the churchyard, a surreal pile of white stone gleaming in the early spring light.

And yet, I was disappointed to find the church locked, because the church has glass by Henry Holiday. I rang the churchwarden, but there was no answer, and I don't suppose that I shall ever go back.

A curiosity in the churchyard is a cross picked out in ceramic tiles. By one of those odd coincidences that church exploring sometimes throws up, I had seen something similar twenty miles to the north in the Colchester suburbs at the parish church of Myland, the similarities in the names probably causing an occasional confusion to strangers tapping into their satnavs when in a hurry to attend a wedding or a funeral.

So I bought some honey and duck eggs from the farm and headed south down the other side of the ridge into the large village of Althorne on the busy Maldon to Burnham road.

Simon Knott, June 2020

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