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St Nicholas, Tolleshunt D'Arcy

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Tolleshunt D'Arcy is a fairly large village not far from the Blackwater estuary, an attractive place. The detective story writer Marjorie Allingham lived in the village for many years and is remembered by a road name. The church sits on the high street, not large perhaps but imposing thanks to the sheer castellated south wall. The church is built out of grey ragstone as several are around here, a bleak material even on a sunny day, and the tower is also battlemented, adding to the fortress-like appearance. The tower appears to sit at the west end of the south aisle, although it may be that a later new chancel was added to the east end of the north aisle. It is hard to say, because this church has always been locked without a keyholder notice on each occasion I've visited, and knocking at the rectory door on a couple of occasions failed to find anyone in. This is a shame, for James Bettley, revising the Buildings of England volume for Essex, mentions some medieval glass survivals as well as some good 20th Century glass, and the memorials in the D'Arcy chapel, added to the north side of the nave in the early 16th Century. Some of the glass is in the open porch however, including a simple depiction of St Nicholas with a boat and three children by Joseph Nuttgens of 1967 and roundels of grapes and a chalice and host by Alfred Wilkinson of three years earlier. Also in the porch is a clue to why the church may be kept locked, for a plaque tells us that the lantern outside this porch was given in memory of Neville and June Bamber, former churchwardens, died 1985. The Bambers were two of the five victims of the White House Farm Murders for which their son Jeremy is serving a life sentence. They are buried nearby in the churchyard. It may well be that the locking of the church is intended to dissuade ghoulish pleasure-seekers more interested in a frisson of murder than in entering a numinous space, but it must be said that the parish's other church at Tolleshunt Major is also kept locked, whilst others in the parishes round about are open daily. Simon Knott, December 2021 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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