LONELY ESSEX CHURCH

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 230, 17 December 1927, Page 10

LONELY ESSEX CHURCH

ONE SERVICE YEARLY MYSTERY BUILDING Standing forlorn amid lonely fields near Hockley, Essex, is one of the strangest churches in the Home Counties. It lias no officials, no income, scarcely any population in its neighbourhood, and only one service a. year. It Is the Fambridge Parish Church of All Saints, and has no congregation. How it ever came to be built is a mystery. A still greater puzzle is why such an ugly, grey-brick monstrosity should have been inflicted on this corner of Essex renowned for its picturesque and historic churches. For Fambridge has never boasted even a hamlet, let alone a village. Five scattered farms provide the basis of its population. Yet 100 years ago a church was deemed necessary, although just over a mil© away is the beautiful parish church of Ashingdon, which has 900 years of history in its hallowed stones and the patches and repairs of eight centuries in its old grey walls and ivy- clad tower. Ashingdon, if the antiquarians are correct, looms large in English history, l’or it was there in 1016, when the place was known as Assandun, that Canute, by defeating Edmund Ironside, son of King Ethelred, paved the way to ascending the throne of all England.

In gratitude for liis victory and for the repose of the souls of those who fell in the battle, Canute had a stone church erected on the site, and this was consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1020. The present church dates from the 13th century, and was erected (it is believed) on the site of Canute’s edifice. For centuries Fambridge and Ashingdon had been joint parishes, with the one church, and when the new one was built the few parishioners there were had no use for it. Naturally, they preferred to walk the extra mile to the little wooded hilltop that has boasted a church since before the Norman Conquest. Up till 1911 a tiny, half-hearted congregation maintained a precarious fortnightly service in the building, but then it had to be closed for lack of support, and soon fell into disrepair. The vicar of Ashingdon, the Rev. R. H. Williams, raised a fund for its restoration, and, having made the place wind and water-tight again, has instituted an annual service. “There was never any need for it,” said Mr. Williams. “There are practically no houses in the immediate neighbourhood. “At each of the annual services we have a crowded congregation, but that is due to the novelty of the idea. “However, I intend to continue these annual services to retain the idea of it being a sacred building. The time may come when it will have a congregation of its own, for fields around the church are being marked out for building plots.”