THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

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St Etheldreda, White Notley

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 got on my bike and headed down Black Notley's main street, heading south and leaving Braintree's urban area behind at last, perhaps forever. I came back out into fields at last, and about a mile down the road I came to the large village of White Notley, with some pleasant houses but rather spoilt by the traffic hurtling through on the Witham road. At the southern end of the village, beside the enormous former rectory, was the last of what I think of as the 'Braintree churches', St Etheldreda. Locked without a keyholder. Another small, typically Essex church in fairly poor condition, the sign of a dimishing congregation, or perhaps they've simply given up hope. Apparently, there are faded wall paintings, but you couldn't see much through the glass. Like Stisted and Cressing there seemed no reason at all for this church not to be open. As it is, this locked, forgotten building, for which locals can feel no sense of ownership, is easy prey to vandalism and burglary. No doubt they will shake their heads and wonder why. So, that was that. Now, I felt free to escape from Brantree's torpid orbit, and I set out westwards through the intensely rural lattice of narrow country lanes that thread through the oilseed rape fields. Simon Knott, April 2014

 

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