TWO CHURCHES IN ONE CHURCHYARD: THE SISTER CHURCHES OF WILLINGALE SPAIN AND WILLINGALE DOE.
There is a curious epitaph in Willingale Spain churchyard to one Charles Davis, who was killed in his thirty-eighth year "by a fall from the elm tree near which he is buried," as the inscription says. He lies, indeed, under the shadow of it.
But this is not the only thing worth note, for, just within the little doorway that leads into the chancel of Willingale Spain Church, may be noticed on the floor a curious monumental brass to Isaac Kello, who died, aged nine years, in 1614, “son to Mr. Bartholomew Kello, Minister of Christ’s Evangell”—
“This godly child knew his Originall
And though right young, did scorn base cells of earth,
His soule doth Flourish in Heaven’s Glistering Hall
Because it is a divine plant by birth.”
It is not very easy to discover precisely what Mr. Bartholomew Kello, who presumably wrote this, meant by it, but its general tone sounds pathetic enough.
From here a winding lane leads to Fyfield, whose rector has earned some notice by holding cyclists’ parades and by entertaining passing wheelmen. Thence to Chipping Ongar it is an excellent road. From here it will be convenient to take train back to London; first, however, paying a visit to Greenstead Church, a short distance beyond the town, to the right of the road. It lies at the end of a long avenue, and is remarkable for the walls of its nave being constructed of the trunks of oak trees, set upright. The exterior still exhibits the rude rounded surface of the original trunks, worn and furrowed by time; while the adze-marks by which the inner sides have been planed down to something like a flat surface are still visible, although the work dates back to Saxon times. When the church was restored in 1848 the decayed lower portions of these trunks were cut off—five inches of those forming the south wall, and one inch from those on the north side—and the rest preserved by being placed on a brick sill built to the ground level. At the same time the logs were tongued together with strips of oak to prevent dampness penetrating to the church.
The chancel is of late Perpendicular date, and is of red brick; but the body of the church remains an eloquent survival of the ancient steading in a clearing of the green woods that once spread densely over old-world Essex.
The church is dedicated to that most famous of all East Anglian saints, St. Edmund the King and Martyr, who was seized by the Danes in the year 871 at Hoxne, and on his refusing to renounce Christianity, bound by them to an oak, and shot to death with arrows. And not only is it so dedicated, but it owes its very existence, in a curious way, to him; having been originally built as a temporary shrine of logs for his body to lie in on the journey, when it was transferred to London from its gorgeous shrine at Bury St. Edmunds during the troubled years immediately preceding the Conquest. A fragment of stained glass, with a crowned head pictured on it, is let into a little window in the weather-boarded tower, and a portion of the ancient Hoxne oak is preserved at the Rectory, where there is an old painting representing him. It is a singular coincidence that the oak—St. Edmund’s Oak, as it was named—fell at the very time in 1848 when the little church was being restored. The absolute truth of the legend was proved by an ancient arrowhead being discovered almost in the heart of the famous tree.