THE ESSEX CHURCHES SITE

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All Saints, Great Horkesley

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. Next, it was across the A134 to Great Horkesley. On the map, this appears remote from the road behind a vast greenhouse, but there is a little sliproad to it almost immediately on leaving the A134. The car park was full of a shooting party which had just ended, about 40 people, drinking beer and whiskey as their spoils were divided by beaters and gamekeepers. I'm always pleased that little bits of old England survive like this, but they weren't terribly friendly when I smiled and said hello, I fear. Perhaps they thought that, being on a bike, I was some Green Vegetarian Animal Rights protester. Be that as it may, I threaded through them to the church. Open, but there was a churchwarden inside. He told me that the church is normally kept locked ('it's so remote' - not as remote as Langham, I wanted to say). There is a keyholder notice, and he said he was always happy to come out and open up for anyone who wanted to see inside. I'm sure this was true, he was very nice. It seems odd to find a locked church out here, but Great Horkesely is in the same benefice as West Bergholt (the new church there, that is - the old one is CCT and open) and Fordham, both of which I had also found locked. The north arcade is extraordinary, intricately carved with fleurons, crowns and ladies heads. Otherwise, a rather shabby 19th Century interior I fear, which I quite liked in a way, it was rather endearing. The big surprise was finding a memorial to Lieutenant Arthur Page of the Suffolk Regiment, whom I had previously read lots about, but had forgotten he was from here. He was killed at Longueval in the Battle of the Somme on 19th August 1916. What makes him significant to me is that my great Grandfather was also called Arthur Page, was a Sergeant in the Suffolk Regiment, and was killed in the same place the following day. In research I have found the two often confused, and even conflated, and have had to disentangle them from each other. It was odd to come across him again in a different context. Simon Knott, October 2012

 

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