THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

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All Saints, Rickling

Click on the 'play' symbol in the second image to see all my photographs of this church as a slide show, then click on any image in the slideshow to see it large in a new page. Alternatively, if you don't have flash enabled, you can go straight to the set for this church on flickr. I turned off on to a steep, steep narrow lane which climbed to the top of the ridge and I was the highest I had been all day. I could see the planes landing and taking off at Stanstead in the valley, some six miles away. The lane spiralled down and there, in the middle of nowhere, was Rickling parish church.Open. The outer gates latched back, the inner door wedged open. Sometimes you see a church and you just know it is a special place. Here, the pretty little church was in a small graveyard absolutely overcome with daffodils and narcissus - from a distance, it looked like a white and yellow mist. I stepped inside. It is such a pleasing, harmonious interior, everything small but in place - the layout is rather like Lindsell. Like Meesden, it felt as if the CCT might be looking after it. A notice by the desk says "If you have visited before, you might notice some things are missing. We had a burglary, and they took all the candelabras from the pulpit. But we are determined to stay open every day.' God bless them. I don't often put money in the box, but I did here. I cycled over the next ridge, and after five minutes turned back to look at the church. It was splendid across the rape fields. Rickling is a joint parish with Quendon. Rickling village is about a mile further on, and on the large village green there was a cricket match in progress, the pub doing good business. It looked idyllic. One of the residents of the village is celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who grew up in neighbouring Clavering. The road leads down to the A11, the old Norwich and Newmarket to London road, and Rickling becomes Quendon, with bigger houses but much, much more traffic, despite the fact that the M11 also passes through, going under the high street to the north. Madness. Simon Knott, May 2013

 

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