The Essex Churches Site

 

THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

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St Augustine, Birdbrook

Birdbrook

Birdbrook Winston Churchill headstop

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  Birdbrook is an attractive, surprisingly large and fairly remote village not far from the Suffolk and Cambridgeshire borders. St Augustine sits beside the pub, and is a bright, welcoming building entirely in the Essex style, a mostly 12th Century church greatly extended in the 13th Century, although there is some evidence of an earlier church in the form of herringbone masonry. The church was extensively restored by Frederic Chancellor in the 19th Century which doesn't always leave a happy result, but in the 20th Century it benefited from considerable patronage and an artistic flowering which has more or less completely renewed the interior. The most striking aspects are a grand scheme of glass by Powell & Sons from the 1940s to the 1960s, rather thrilling in such a small church, and the complete refurnishing of the church in the 1960s by H & K Mabbitt in elegant though serious bleached wood. Theirs are the nave and chancel seating, the choir stalls, the chancel panelling and the altar. The overall effect is similar to that of one of the restored City of London churches, but on a gentle, intimate scale. There is more of their work on the other side of Colchester at Copford.

Nothing ancient survives, but there are a number of curiosities. The font is a slender, gothicky work of the 1760s, not dissimilar in style to that at nearby Debden. Set into it behind glass is a coloured miniature of the Baptism of Christ, said to be by the 17th Century artist Samuel Cooper. On the west wall, behind an excellent little local museum, a plaque remembers Martha Blewit of the Swan Inn who was the wife of nine husbands successively, but the ninth outlived her, and also Robert Hogan, who was the husband of seven wives successively. The millennium window is by Auravisions, and to my mind is more successful than their glass at Marks Tey, one of those occasions when less is more. Outside on the south doorway, one of the headstops has been carved in a likeness to Winston Churchill.

Simon Knott, December 2021

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looking east font
Baptism of Christ Birdbrook Birdbrook having completed seventy active and fruitful years as churchwarden
was the wife of nine husbands successively, but the ninth outlived her Hanover Royal Arms
Winged lion of St Mark Eagle of St John Angel of St Matthew Winged Bull of St Luke
Saxon patron, Norman patron St Augustine St John Dr William Webb and Walter de Wenlock
Blessed Virgin and Child Christ the Saviour of the World churchwarden's accounts and churchwardens' staves vivat rex - Henry VIII
Baythorne Manor Birdbrook church Birdbrook village school
sack of grain, flail, flax and vines parish chest Seal of the Birdbrook School Board 1872
Westminster Abbey 'Clare Hall', Cambridge (actually Clare College!)
St Albans Henry VIII Patron 1539-47 Chelmsford
ring-a-ring-a-roses by Susan Macarthy, 2000 The Way, the Truth and the Life by Susan Macarthy, 2000 butterfly and dragonfly over wheatfield and river by Susan Macarthy, 2000

 
               
                 

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