The New Look South Wall

The walls of our ancient medieval church are built of an unusual stone called “SEPTARIA” and it is probably the only church in Essex to have complete walls of this stone. Septaria is formed from clay dredged from the bottom of rivers.

In late Victorian times the walls were rendered with a hard impermeable cement, the idea being to protect them.

This resulted however in chronic problems of damp as well
as looking increasingly dismal.

Twenty years ago we took off the bottom two feet and pointed
the original stone with permeable mortar which did help a little.

We have now completed the process to remove the rest
of the cement from both walls
and repointed them under the supervision of the church architect Mr. Tony Venn and the Diocesan Advisory Council, the work being carried out by the expert firm of Bakers of Danbury.

In the process of removing
the cement large areas of
the stonework came away
and this had to be rebuilt
at around £450.0 a square
yard. (We don’t deal in metric,
we like English measures.)
Also a stone pillar had to
be rebuilt and an ancient
window reconstructed to
prevent it falling out.

These factors added some £10,000.00 to the original estimate of £15,000.00 for the south wall alone but the end result everyone agrees is magnificent.

However although various organisations and individual
people have been generous
to us we do need your help,
for the church belongs to the
whole village, a living history
of village life over nine hundred
years where our forebears
have been brought up, married,
worshipped and eventually buried.