THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

home - index - latest - e-mail
links - small print - about this site
Norfolk churches - Suffolk churches
www.simonknott.co.uk

St Peter and St Paul, St Osyth

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. It was a relief at last to escape the miles of dull Clacton suburbia. I saw a brief flicker of fields, and then I was cycling down into St Osyth, a chocolate box village of jaw-droppingly lovely buildings, the high street with its interesting-looking pubs and independent shops, and the most famous building here, of course, the gatehouse to the priory, which appears on the front of the BoE volume for Essex. Across the road and down a little lane was the church. This is a vast church. The great nave with its two aisles is joined to a long chancel. The south aisle extends right to the end of the chancel, the north aisle about half way along it. After urban Clacton it was a pleasure to find sheep grazing the churchyard. You step into a vast nave with the surprise of a red brick arcade and piers on both aisles. The rest of this splendidly maintained church is painted white inside, so the effect is dramatic. The chancel is offset to the north, because they started rebuilding the east end of the church but then the Reformation intervened. The oddest feature is the sheepfold altar rail - the communicants go inside the U and the minister goes around the outside. The church has a great feeling of civic confidence, a lovely church in a lovely village. Simon Knott, September 2014

 

Amazon commission helps cover the running costs of this site

 

home - index - latest - e-mail
links - small print - about this site
Norfolk churches - Suffolk churches
www.simonknott.co.uk