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Last Sunday, I rode my bike from my neighborhood to the new construction sites on Pooler Parkway. My first stop was where the new Goodwill store is being built. When I saw this building again, I noticed that the exterior walls were in the process of being coated with stucco and having exterior brickwork installed. I also saw that the doors and windows had been installed on the building, and the front entryway structure had stucco/brick walls built over the metal frames that are shown in my previous photos of this building from October of 2013.
May 2013: www.flickr.com/photos/32911630@N03/8953290787/
September 2013: www.flickr.com/photos/32911630@N03/10012792614/
October 2013: www.flickr.com/photos/32911630@N03/10662001594/ and www.flickr.com/photos/32911630@N03/10661995936/in/photost...
Berners Roding Church (dedication unknown but believed to be All Saints) is situated within the small hamlet of Berners Roding approximately 6 miles NE of Chipping Ongar. The church is adjacent to Berners Hall and surrounded by arable fields to be east and north, Berners Hall farm to the west and is accessed via a narrow track leading from the road to the south.
Whilst the exact origins of the church are unknown, elements of the building appear to date from the 14th century. The nave and chancel are of an unknown date but the east and west walls are believed to be 16th century. The church once had a weather-boarded belfry that housed a single bell dated 1594 (cast by John Dyer – bell foundry Chelmsford). A survey of the church by Nikolaus Pevsner for his book “The Buildings of England – Essex” published in 1954 shows the belfry was present and it was therefore removed after this date. The whereabouts of the bell is unknown.
The church was deconsecrated in 1985 and is now in a very sorry state.
Please visit www.flickr.com/photos/birchphotography/sets/7215762597178... for more photo's.
Nikon D300s || 10-20mm @ 20mm || ISO 640 || f/5.6 || 1/40s
St Mary, Aythorpe Roding, Essex
It was May 2014, the most beautiful spring of the century. I had taken my bike on the train from Ipswich to Bishops Stortford before heading off away from the hell of Stansted airport into the wilds of Essex. Now I veered eastwards from the forest, entering the emptiest and most remote area of the county. No villages for miles, just hamlets, fields and the occasional farmstead. The road to my next target would have meant a five mile ride, but I spotted a half-mile bridleway, of which there are lots in this part of Essex. It would cut three miles off the journey, so I took it. It was a farm track, deeply rutted, and it took me down the side of a barley field to copses in the distance, the hysterical yellow of acres of rapeseed in full flower beyond.
At first, it was just about cycleable, but then it wasn't, so I pushed my bike for about ten minutes or so. As I approached the country lane at the far end of it I thought there seemed something vaguely familiar about it, and then I realised what it was. Ah, I thought to myself, I'm entering East Anglia again. Now I was on hedged lanes through rolling fields of barley and rapeseed. Profound green, intense yellow. The road climbed, and over the rise I saw a spire. I headed down a track for half a mile or so and came to one of the most remote churches in all Essex.
It was locked, there was no keyholder notice. An inexpressibly lonely place. The church itself is a poor little thing, its wooden spire shot through with woodpecker holes. There were no notices of service in the porch, and so I expect it has fallen into disuse. Redundancy beckons, and perhaps it will be left to go quietly back to nature. It might just as well be left open, in which case it would at least serve some purpose to passing walkers, pilgrims and strangers.
And yet there was something very special about just standing in the churchyard, in the silence. It felt like nothing had happened here for a very long time. I looked down at the inscription on a memorial cross to Our Dear Son, Bertie George Emberson, who died at the Military Hospital, Caterham, Surrey, September 7th 1918 aged 19 years. How awful. And yet, I thought, the churchyard they stood in to watch him put into the earth has not changed. The one they knew is the one there now.
Simon Knott, April 2018