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Holy Trinity, Pleshey

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Pleshey is one of the quiet villages in the gentle hills to the west of Chelmsford, and so it comes as some surprise to find this great lump of a 19th Century church at its heart. In fact, there is rather more going on here than meets the eye. What we see today is pretty much all the work of Frederic Chancellor, and the overall mass of the squat cruciform building is one of his more successful moments. The shortness of the nave causes the tower to appear more powerful than it is, and the stair turret with its conical cap is a nice touch. In fact, he was working with the remains of a much earlier building, for this was the site of Pleshy College, of which more in a moment. You step into a building that is inevitably a bit gloomy, the slightness of the chancel beyond the crossing accentuating the size of one of the best late 18th Century memorials in Essex, to Samuel Tufnell. His bust (excellent - Pevsner) fronts an imposing obelisk above a sarcophagus with a long inscription. Pevsner thought the sculptor was likely to be Henry Cheere. Stepping back into the crossing, the arches leading into the nave and transepts are the only survivals of a much larger late 14th Century church which served the college of priests. At the Reformation the college buildings were demolished, and so was the chancel of the church. The parishioners bought the nave to serve as their parish church, and the Samuel Tufnell we have met in the chancel was responsible for rebuilding the chancel in the 1750s. The nave, inevitably, fell into decay and so this was the state that Frederic Chancellor found it all in when he tipped up in the 1860s. He rebuilt the nave and transepts, gave the chancel a new east end and placed the tower above it all. The glass, all by O'Connor, came as part of Chancellor's restoration, and really not much has happened since. A real period piece, then. Simon Knott, June 2020 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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