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St Barnabas, Great Tey

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Great Tey is an attractive village to the south of the Halstead to Colchester road, a rolling landscape of fields and copses through which winding lanes thread. This is the area Betjeman regarded as the deepest Essex few explore where steepest thatch is sunk in flowers, and if you are one of those few then you'll be pleased to know that Great Tey has a fine country pub. It looks out over the parish church, which sits in a wide open churchyard in the middle of the village. It is worth the view, for this church is one of north Essex's most splendid and memorable Norman moments. Or, more precisely, its tower is, for this was a substantial cruciform church, but the nave was demolished in 1829 leaving only the transepts, which formed chapels to the aisles of the nave, and a long 14th Century chancel which is the modern church. James Bettley records that the curious truncated two-storey annex on the western side of the tower where the nave once was came at the hands of James Beadel of Witham, probably not long after the nave was demolished, hence its pre-ecclesiological flavour. Bettley thought that the three lower stages of the tower were likely to be pre-Conquest work, and as he observes, in Norman times this must have been a magnificent church, and one would like to know the reasons for this display in this particular place. Because of the arrangement you step into an interior which is a little unfamiliar, the transept chapel ahead of you once forming the east end of the south aisle (but of course the aisle has gone). Things get more familiar as you step into the former chancel. The east window is a surprisingly ambitious effort by Powell & Sons of 1902, Christ the Good Shepherd flanked by four angels each holding a shield depicting Instruments of the Passion. Simple furnishings sit quietly on brick floors, although perhaps the 15th Century font looks a little more uncomfortable and a bit lost in the south transept to where it was removed from the nave when it was demolished in 1829. A clock ticks in the ornately painted west gallery, part of James Beadel's restoration, the cast iron royal arms of George IV on the front familiar from a number of churches in the Colchester area. There is another royal arms, this time to Charles II, on canvas and hanging in the south transept. The east window of the south transept includes some unusual early 19th Century glass, also pre-ecclesiological in character, including a memorable figure of Christ at the Resurrection in a Glory that appears to be made of purple boulders. An even earlier survival is a bench end depicting a bagpipe player, presumably 17th Century. There are a fair number of memorials to local worthies compared with many churches in this part of Essex. Several are to members of the Lay family, including Major Tudor Lay who died in 1919 having served with the 15th Sikhs in the great march from Cabul to Kandahar, and was present at the Battle of Kandahar. A weeping willow branch drapes the memorial to John Bridges Storry, who was vicar and then rector here for almost the whole of the first half of the 19th Century, and oversaw the great changes that took place to make it a building suitable for worship again. the memorial was erected by his bereaved widow as a tribute of affection on quitting the scene of his labours. Outside in the churchyard there are a number of good early 20th Century cast iron grave markers to members of the Wiley family. Nearby, 63 year old William Henry Hull was accidentally killed by the falling of a tree in 1912. Simon Knott, December 2021 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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