Mundon Church - old blog 3

Today I went out  for the first time.  My bruised face is slowly starting to recede and shopping was becoming a necessity..  I will continue  churches for the time being.  Again an Essex church, stranded in the middle of nowhere, but by a farm, a settlement that had died out because of the plague.  Yesterday I read a chapter up on bricks, in the Pattern of English Building by Clifton-Taylor.  It would seem only the big star houses and abbeys were able to use them.  Funnily enough there is no written evidence as such about them from the time, but Taylor thinks it started in the 12th century, with probably immigrant Flemish.  They would quarry the clay near the site and make the bricks which were very narrow.  One of the patterns of brickwork is of course the geometrical designs you see in Wayneflete's Tower in Surrey below.  18th century design, uniform colour of bricks was not achieved (fortunately) till the Age of the Industrial Revolution.

Before it all becomes boring on the subject of bricks, this garden also has an old brick wall bounding the church yard.  It crumbles occasionally, is differently coloured, has patches of white due to the salts in the clay?  But is similar to the pub next door, which would give the brick an age in which it was made.

By Jonathan Foyle, built.org.uk, Attribution, 

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Mundon Church  and an update

This was the second place we visited yesterday, the little village of Mundon lies just outside Maldon, and I had espied this church a few months back on my map, isolated and lying low in the landscape it intrigued me. Deserted medieval village was my first thought, and probably near to the mark, as the settlement was deserted due to the plague. This is a Tudor church, built on the foundations of a Norman church, and probably Saxon beginnings given its proximity to water and it being on the St.Peter's Way pilgrimage route to St.Peter's church on the Dengie Marsh.

It will be some while before I gather my thoughts on this church, it is redundant and derelict but has been taken under the wing by Friends of Friendless Churches, yes such an organisation does exist.

The church itself was built in the moat of the old manor there, and because it was set on marshy ground, great cracks started to appear and I think it was roofless by the 18th century. It was due for demolition in the 1970s but then rescued to a point, there is still plenty of work to carried out. It is totally unusual having an apsidal entrance of timber posts and plaster to the west front entrance. The grave yard is very neglected, and the church sits next to a large farmhouse (probably the site of the old manor). The wooden south porch is also rotting to pieces though there is some fine carvings.

Paul was very taken with the place, and yet I had a feeling of unease, you can't go into the church (too dangerous), but perhaps the white skeletons of dead trees in a field towards the estuary helped give me the impression of an unhealthy place, that and of course an imagination that tends to run rife. The fields in which these enormous oak trees stood was grazed by alpacas to add to the unreal effect the place had on me. Actually the trees are relict petrified oaks, and were recorded in the Domesday book, a history on Mundon Hall farm and its enterprises can be found here http://www.springstep-dairy.co.uk/farm.htm .