It is a small Norman and Early English building, restored in 1889 and rubbed up and carpeted in rather a drawing-room style of comfort, so that the monumental effigies look somewhat second-hand and apologetic. The battered, crusading, or, at any rate, cross-legged, effigy of one Roger de Lancaster looks even tenth-hand, and, shoved into a dimly lighted corner, with a bar of Windsor soap in his mouth, a mop and a pail and other housewifely things disposed negligently about his mailed person, is the picture of ancient dignity in reduced circumstances. The tomb, with recumbent effigy, in the south wall of the chancel, is that of Sir Thomas Middleton, 1631. With him lies his wife, killed by a stag in Stansted Park.
The alabaster tomb, with life-sized and coloured effigy of Esther Salusburye in the Lancaster Chapel, is found unexpectedly by the stranger, behind the organ. The full-length figure lying there, so naturally coloured and dressed in the height of fashion of that bygone year of 1604, when she died, is so extraordinarily lifelike that one almost shrieks with momentary fright; and indeed the work is so perfect, it rather resembles a human being masquerading as an effigy than a mere carved and painted mass of stone. Her high-heeled shoes, the black-painted Early Jacobean skirt and bodice, with the deep lace cuffs, generous ruff, and high-crowned hat, form a perfect picture of an English lady’s costume in the days when James I. was King.
THE “OLD BELL,” STANSTED.
From a drawing by P. Palfrey.
Stansted Street, skirting the main road with its old-fashioned but nondescript houses, has lost much of its picturesqueness of late years. The “White Bear,” kept in old times by Daniel Gilbey, and the “Old Bell” have disappeared, and it rejoices in a very new and ornate white brick house, designed in the snoburban style of architecture. A horse at full stretch is carved over the door, together with the inscription, “Galloping Villa.” If you ask any of the admiring villagers for information about this astonishing house, and why “Galloping,” they tell you “it belongs to Mr. ——, of the roundabouts.” Immediately opposite is a house and shop, whose builder or owner appears to have been extraordinarily proud of his building, for it bears not only the date of the year, but even the day of the particular month when it was finished: “L.S.T., July ye 25, 1759.”
The very handsome old red-brick house, standing high above the road on approaching Ugley, and attracting attention by its fine wrought-iron gates and general air of distinction, is Orford House, built by Admiral Edward Russell, who commanded the allied English and Dutch fleets in their victory over the French at La Hague in 1692. The Admiral was created Earl of Orford in 1727.
The country grows particularly pretty as we approach Ugley, fields giving place to dense plantations, with oak woods and almost impenetrable coverts, presenting a vivid picture to the mind’s eye of what the great Forest of Essex must have been like in the long ago. “What’s in a name?” asks Shakespeare. Not much here, if we take that of Ugley by its sound; but a good deal if we make due enquiry, for it is really “Oakley,” the “oak meadow,” and, as Oakley, we do actually now find certain upstart signposts and wayside parish marks naming it. Again, if we leave the road and take the footpath that leads across a meadow (? the original “oak lea”) to the church, we shall find in the little churchyard the tombstone of an incumbent, dead not long since, who is described as vicar of “Oakley.” He had probably been a lifelong sufferer from the old rhymed pleasantry:—
Ugly church, ugly steeple,
Ugly parson, ugly people.
In short, only the handsomest of men with the most amiable of natures can possibly afford to take the living of Ugly, for should the parson be plain, the obvious remarks as to his peculiar fitness for the place would become a burden to him, and unless of an angelic disposition, his “ugly temper” might be commented upon. Fortunately Ugley is among the smallest of places, and therefore the Ugley girls with feelings to be scarified by such a description are few. But, on the other hand, how easy the way to a most ingratiating compliment, in the exclamation of surprise:—