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St Nicholas, Fyfield

Fyfield

Fyfield Fyfield Fyfield

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  This loveable church sits in its wide churchyard with room to breathe away from other buildings, only the Hall to the north making its presence felt. And what a curious sight this church is! The central Norman tower is battered and repatched, and the top stage was rebuilt in 1817, and so is pre-ecclesiological in detail. The 13th Century brought the aisles and arcades, but there is no clerestory, and the crispness of the chancel by comparison with all this might lead us to think it a 19th Century reconstruction, but in fact it is of the early 14th Century, suggestive of a single building campaign around the Norman tower over a century or so. The Victorians renewed the tracery of the east window, but plenty of evidence of the original structure survives within. All in all Pevsner thought it an interesting but unattractive exterior, which in terms of architectural harmony may be so, but there is certainly something pleasingly rough and ready about it, to my eyes anyway.

Even if you do find the exterior less than pleasing, you step into an interior which is harmonious. James Bettley in the revised Buildings of England volume for Essex points to two 19th Century restorations, one in the 1850s which reseated the nave, and then a more major one by CHM Mileham in the early 1890s. He rebuilt the tower arches and fitted out the chancel with seats and a reredos with wood from St Paul's, Knightsbridge. The chancel is the setting for the best features of the church, one of which is the east window of 1901, a memorial window to Queen Victoria which Peter Cormack identified as a design by Alfred Garth Jones for Abbott & Co of Lancaster. It is fully in the Arts and Crafts style with Art Nouveau details. The central crucifixion is flanked by the Nativity and the Resurrection, all looking fresh and lively more than a century on.

east window, 1901 nativity crucified angel and christ

The 14th Century piscina and sedilia survive, although the piscina is cut into by later wooden panelling. To make up for this, the arcading on the sedilia is punctuated by jolly lifelike heads, one of which appears to be wearing a dunce's cap.

The Rector of Fyfield for almost the whole of the second half of the 17th Century was the remarkable Dr Anthony Walker. His parents came from families fully immersed in the religious and political whirlpool of the earlier part of the century, one grandfather being one of the translators of the King James Bible and Walker himself was involved with the writing of Eikon Basiliké, the Portraicture of His Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings, a publication which did much to establish Charles I's reputation as a martyr saint. He was an unswerving supporter of the legitmacy of the Crown, and yet there was a puritan streak in him. He published a sermon against the scenes of drunkenness that accompanied the restoration of King Charles II to the throne, and he had his doubts about the re-establishment of the Church of England that followed. In his later life, when the dust had settled, Walker would recall these times in his own writings.

When he died, he left a number of bequests to the parish of Fyfield which are detailed on what must be one of the most memorable of Essex's charity boards. It begins That atheism, ignorance, profaneness and sin may be rooted out of the parish, as much as may be, that the poorer sort may have some refreshment, and all the inhabitants cause of thanksgiving to our God for some benefit, which they and theirs may reap thereby. Walker owned 56 acres of land in the parish of High Ongar, and he asked that the rents from the land might be applied to a number of bequests, including to a Schoolmaster who shall teach the poor children of this parish, one from High Ongar and one from the Willingales, to read, write, cast accompts (ie, do arithmetic) and to say their catechism, £8 per annum. To be laid out to buy books, paper, etc for the poorest sort of children, £1 per annum. To be laid out in good English bibles or other good books for the use of the poor of this parish, £1 per annum. And so it continues, an exhaustive list concluding at last with the gift of a silver chalice cup and patine to be used at the administration of the sacrament of Our Lord's most holy supper.

A brass memorial plaque remembers William Frith Horner, beloved only son of Leonard and Marion Annie Horner, drowned at sea while undertaking a hazardous night flight during the Great War December 21st 1917. Horner was 22 years old and a flight commander in the Royal Naval Air Service. He was piloting Airship SSP4 on a night patrol submarine hunting mission from Caldale in the Orkneys, but the airship developed a fault and went down after crossing the Skea Skerries with the loss of all crew. In late December it must have been a bleak place to die. The parish war memorial window depicts St Martin and St George flanking a version of James Clark's painting The Great Sacrifice, a dead soldier lying at the foot of the crucifixion. I assume it is by Ward & Hughes, and of course it seems terribly mawkish to us now, but it was the very thing at the time.

Simon Knott, December 2021

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looking east

font sanctuary image niche (14th Century) to the glory of god
agnus dei Fyfield crucified
sedilia head (early 14th Century) sedilia head (early 14th Century) sedilia head (early 14th Century) sedilia head (early 14th Century)
repewing that atheism, ignorance, profaneness and sin may be rooted out of the parish, as much as may be
whilst undertaking a hazardous night flight during the Great War

 
               
                 

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