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St Mary, Tilty
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A particular favourite of mine among Essex churches, Tilty is always a pleasure to revisit. The church is set at as remote a spot as any you'll find in the lonely north Essex lanes, but half a millennium ago this place was the home of a great Cistercian Abbey, the sad remains of which lie in a field to the north of the church.
You reach St Mary up a narrow road through the fields and then down a short lane beside its neighbours, the former rectory and a couple of cottages. Otherwise, there is no village, and no other building for half a mile or more. The position of the church beside the ruins is explained by the fact that it was the Capella extra portas of the abbey, the chapel outside the gate for pilgrims and visitors to make their devotions and hear mass.
The most striking aspect of the church is the apparent mismatch between the sweetly rendered-in-pink Early English nave, looking rather like a cottage, and the grand statement in flint and glass of the chancel, with its remarkable five light window. Added thanks to a wealthy bequest in 1330, it is, as Pevsner observed, in the sumptuous style of the moment.
You step into light and simplicity, the only jarring note being the blue plastic chairs. To the west of them, the raised platform gallery is the work of that traditionalist Essex architect Stephen Dykes Bower, as are many of the other furnishings including the pulpit and the birdbath font. All the coloured glass is similarly from the second half of the 20th Century, all of it heraldic and none of it intrusive.
Try to visit in the morning, and more than any furnishings or architecture your overwhelming impression will be of the great rush of light across stone and wood from the east.
Simon Knott, April 2018
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