THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

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St Thomas, Navestock

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Down a long track with only a farmhouse for company, this big church sprawls in its wide churchyard. Essex is not short of timber bell towers (does any other county have so many?) but Navestock's is surely among the most attractive, and it is notable too, for it rises up with a tall spire and is aisled as at Blackmore and Mundon. The Buildings of England: Essex points to dendrochronological evidence of the end of the 14th Century for a construction date. They were clearly good with wood in this part of the county, because you step inside to something really rather remarkable, for the roof is supported on timber arcades, cruck beams looping above the capitals of elegant 13th Century columns. It is not something you see every day, but as the aforementioned BoE wonders, how many other Essex arcades are actually timber (ie merely encased in stone)? The interior is full of light, a good setting for a fine collection of post-Reformation memorials to the Waldegrave family of Navestock Hall. All in all, a memorable church. Simon Knott, May 2020 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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