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St Nicholas, Tolleshunt Major

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The first time I came this way I had been pottering about amongst the open churches around the Blackwater Estuary, but at last the road left the great grey river behind and turned north into the Tolleshunt villages, the first of which was Tolleshunt Major. Despite the name this is the smallest of the Tolleshunts, and the church sits away from the village on a lonely bluff overlooking the Hall. As you'd expect in this part of east Essex this is a fairly small and simple church of the 14th Century with some 15th Century additions and revisions, the nave and chancel under a single roof. However, right on the eve of the Reformation an imposing and rather graceless red brick tower was plonked down at the west end of the nave. The effect is ameliorated somewhat by Ernest Geldart's pretty litle south porch of the 1880s. Every time I've visited this church I've found it locked, and as usual in Essex there is no keyholder notice. With a few exceptions, Essex churches are either open or locked in my experience. Revising the Buildings of England volume for Essex, the meticulous James Bettley found little to say about the interior, other than that there is a survival of a 15th Century wall painting on the south wall, which I would like to have seen, but it was not to be. Simon Knott, December 2021 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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