Greensted Church - Part 2; photographs

Two things made me think yesterday, the one was a blog from Canada with its beautiful snowy photos, which I often go to see, firstly for its quiet meditative philosophy, and also for the words Beyond the Fields we Know  so beautifully described by Kerradune. The shocks in the news pass us by, there is nothing we can do except not hate, we live in a world filled with religious dissent, yet I love churches and the quiet peace that resides around them.  I approach them as an atheist, but with due respect for the centuries that have passed through them.

The other thing was that I had come across a blog on Greensted Church which had plenty of written words but only two photos though 1200 visits, which somewhat shocked me, I am hardly an expert on churches just like to record them though I have to say words are all very well but photos capture the essence of place, and this is what I like to dwell on, not human folly.

So in this church, the earliest wooden church in Europe, a marriage between Saxon and Victorian has taken place, a continuity over time, just as the graceful old yews in the grave yards unite us with the past, so the peace of largely forgotten churches lying lost in the countryside as their congregations slowly disappear is something we must capture......

Taken from Greensted Church History


The 51 timber planks you see here today date from about 1060, although excavations undertaken in the chancel in 1960 revealed the existence of two earlier timber structures dating from the 6th, and 7th centuries, around the time that St. Cedd began his work of converting the Saxons to Christianity. The church bears witness to the work of Saxon, Norman, Tudor and Victorian builders who variously extended, repaired and restored the building over the ages. In 1848/9 the church underwent severe restoration works, and in 1990 works were undertaken to stabilise the church as it stands today, whilst in 2005 the spire was completely re-shingled in Oak.