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St Mary and St Christopher, Panfield

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A sleepy church and churchyard in a sleepy village, but close enough to Braintree I'm afraid to be kept locked without a keyholder notice, as so many seem to be around here, quite out of keeping with most of the rest of north Essex. And yet the setting is very pretty, on a bluff looking eastwards, the churchyard largely converted into a nature reserve with signs everywhere telling you interesting things. This is a typically small 15th Century Essex church, substantially rebuilt in the 1850s by RJ Withers. I would very much like to see inside, for James Bettley reports saints in 15th Century glass that were probably installed when the church was rebuilt at that time, an 1890s Anglo-Catholic reordering of the chancel by Ernest Geldart, and a 1940s east window by Farrar Bell, but on several visits I have never been able to gain access. It did occur to me, standing in the lovely churchyard, that if this church is ever declared redundant it might be turned into a visitor centre for all the nature, and we'll all be able to see inside. Just a thought. Simon Knott, December 2021 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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home - index - latest - e-mail
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Norfolk churches - Suffolk churches
www.simonknott.co.uk