Monday 19 November 2012

Doddinghurst, Essex

All Saints contains little of interest but I liked the rood figures (German or Italian and C16 or C17 respectively according to Pevsner and Mee) and there's some good C19 glass.

ALL SAINTS. Nave, chancel, and belfry. The bell-stage of the belfry has vertical boarding. It ends in a small, shingled spire. It stands on six posts with rather shallow arched braces and much diagonal trellis-strutting. Uncommonly large timber porch. The sides have each ten arched openings. The chancel is C19, the nave C13, see the s doorway with one order of colonnettes and a moulded arch with dog-tooth ornament. Nave roof C15, with tie-beams, king-posts, and four-way struts. - ROOD. The figures of Christ, the Virgin, and St John cannot be seen clearly from below; but seem to be German, early c16. - PLATE. Cup of 1562; Paten of 1567.

St George & the dragon (2)

West window (3)

East window detail

DODDINGHURST. Its church, which keeps some 13th century work, has a little spire on a weather-boarded turret, inserted 400 years ago through the roof of the nave; and the wooden porch, one of the best in Essex, with 20 lights in the sides and original tiebeams in its roof, is also 16th century. There is a 13th century doorway with some of the delightful ornament of its time, a 15th century nave roof, a Jacobean chair, and some 300-year-old panels in a modern chest. The painted figures of Our Lord and Mary and John on the roodbeam are thought to be Italian work of the 17th century. A parson of some note here was Nehemiah Rogers, fervent Royalist and friend of Archbishop Laud, and remembered today chiefly for his writings on the parables. He was buried here in 1660. The old stocks stand at a corner of the Common, and by the church is a tiny Tudor house in which the priest lived.

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