An Extract from the Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society
‘New Series’ Volume X, Part II (1907). Henry Laver was President of the Society and read this “paper” when members visited the church on 6 October 1906.
It is rather surprising so little should be recorded in this Society's Transactions of either the history or architecture of this most interesting church, peculiar as it is, and as being the one existing example of a style which prevailed so universally during the Saxon period for buildings for domestic as well as for ecclesiastical and defensive purposes. It is also very remarkable that, notwithstanding the value and interest of this building, there should be no satisfactory illustration of it anywhere in the Society's Transactions.
It is true that in vol. iv. p. 90, there is a very poor sketch of the church printed in the middle of the letter-press of an article by an anonymous author on timber work in churches, but of special notices of the building there are scarcely any to be found, although the Society has on various occasions included a visit to this church in its excursions.
The fact that this most interesting and valuable historical monument has been so thoroughly neglected by the county Society, diminishes somewhat the surprise that otherwise might be felt at the scant notices which it has received in other and kindred societies, and amongst authors who have written on the ancient architecture of this kingdom.
Very little has appeared anywhere in reference to this relic, and the earliest notice we have of it, beyond the information contained in early Charters, is in a communication to the Society of Antiquaries of London by Mr. Smart Lethieullier, dated January the 21st, 1751, in which he gives a full description of the church, as then existing, and he also enters somewhat fully into its history. In the Builder for October the 8th, 1904, p. 351, is an excellent article on this church. The author of this article writes:-
The following is an exact transcript of a letter dated from Aldersbrook on January 21st, 1751-2 (Stowe MSS. 752, f. 49):-
In obedience to your command I send you the best account I can collect concerning our very singular parish church at Greensted, juxta Ongar, in this county.
What is now the body of the church was the whole of the original fabrick. It is 29 ft. 9 in. long and 14 ft. wide. The sides from the present ground without, only 5 ft 6 in high, on which the primitive roof depended, but whether of thatch or of other materials, we have nothing to determine by. This structure is entirely composed of the bodies of oak-trees split and roughly hewn on both sides. They were sett upright close to one another and lett into a sill at bottom and a plate at top, where they are fasten'd with wooden pins all in a very rough manner at first, and now much corroded and worn with age.
There appears one little contrivance of art in ye building, viz., that the edge of one tree is made to slip a little within its neighbour, doubtless to prevent the wind from blowing thro, but upon the whole I think an ax, a chizzel, a mallet, and an augre were tools sufficient to compleat the fabrick.
It was no small pleasure to me to meet with a passage quoted from an ancient MS., which in some measure I think determines the time and occasion of erecting this uncommon fabrick.
Leland and the compilers of the Monasticon have extracted a passage from a register once belonging to the Abbey of St. Edmunds Bury in Suffolk, wherein it is recorded that the body of St. Edmund the King and Martyr, being on its way from London to Bury, was lodg'd one night in Stapleford in Essex, when the Ld of the manor was by its presence miraculously cured of an infirmity he had long labour'd under; and then says the register- Idem apud Aungre hospitiabaltur ubi in cjus memoria ligdea capella permanet hodie. 'Tis no wonder that the monk who drew up this register should mistake Aungre for Greensted in his placing this chapel, since they are hardly a mile asunder; but it is evident that the present road thro Ongar is a much later one, since it cutts thro the outward fortifications of the castle, which was built there in Henry ye 2nd's time. And we have both tradition and visible remains that the antient road from London into Suffolk ran thro Oldford, Abridge, Stapleford, Greensted (perhaps Green Street), Dunmowe, and Clare upon the borders of the two counties.
The forementioned Translation of the body of St. Edmund appears to have been in the year 1013. For the Danish fleet under Turkill, having committed great ravages in most parts of England, Ailwinus bishop of Elmham in ye year 1010, the 30th of King Ethelred, caused the holy body to be transported to London for safety against those ravagers, and peace being soon after bought, the body was three years after recarried to Bury. From all which I think we may reasonably conjecture that this wooden fabrick was at that time erected on purpose to receive the holy body, and having been once so honour'd was preserved with veneration and converted into a parish church with the addition of a small chancel in much later ages.
Perhaps here is better authority for the history of this piece of antiquity than we have for any other of so remote an age, and of no more considerable import in its original; I look upon it as a thing done in haste for a particular occasion, and not as any model for the style of the age it was erected in. I fear I have been tedious, but as you seem to esteem it a curious piece of antiquity I was willing to sett it in as clear a light as I was able.
Mr. Lethieullier forwarded some drawings of the church to Dr. Lyttleton with his letter, and the Society of Antiquaries considered them to be of sufficient importance to be figured in Velusta Monumenta (vol. ii., pl. 7). On that plate is given a general south view of the church drawn in 1748, of the timber wall of the north side, and of the timbers of the west end of the church. A single dormer window, of four lights, is shown in the roof of the nave on the south side. There is a clumsily-made plain wooden porch on the same side. The priests, door, of moulded brick, with a window each side, appears in the chancel. A vacant space between the logs for a north doorway to the nave is also shown, though apparently plastered up. But the most interesting feature of these drawings is that of "the west end of the church." It is an exterior view of the west gable, formed of seventeen split logs with their rounded surfaces outwards, rising in the centre to a considerable height. The date and construction of this gable is evidently coeval with the side walls. A very small doorway is shown as roughly cut through parts of the two centre logs. This drawing could not have been an invention, and is clearly intended to show the condition of the west end before the tower was added, and which must then have remained with the tower simply built up against. This very small doorway seems at that time to have been the only entrance into the tower. The west end remained, we suppose, in this primitive condition until the restoration of 1848-9.
In Vetusta Moultinenta, vol. ii. pl. 7, are some illustrations of the church as it existed in 1751. One only of these plates, that showing the west end, will be reproduced, as it affords an excellent example of the way the timbers were used in the construction of the edifice. Two of the other illustrations are those which appeared with the article previously mentioned in the Builder, and I have to thank the editor of that journal for his great kindness in allowing me the use of them, and that of the north side is from a sketch made by Major Bale, expressly for use on this occasion.
The next notice we have of this church was by Morant in his History of Essex, published 1768. He says, in vol i. p. 152:-
It is a very uncommon antique building, for the walls are of timber not framed, but trees split or sawn asunder and set into the ground. There is a print of it engraved by the Society of Antiquaries.
With this short notice lie dismisses it, apparently not seeing its value. Other Essex historians have followed Morant, in simply referring to the fact that such a building existed.
In 1869 the rector of Greenstead, the Rev. Philip W. Ray, published a history of this church and parish, he gave the same information which the Society of Antiquaries already possessed and also a most accurate description of the mode of construction, with longitudinal and transverse sections of the trees. He said:-
The building is formed of split trunks of oak trees, the top part being cut to a thin edge which is let into a deep groove in the plate and pinned. The bottoms of these upright timbers were morticed into the cill.
The timbers in the west end were carried up in the middle as high as the ridge of the roof.
Accompanying the description are two views of the church, one before the first restoration in 1848 and one after it.
It was during his incumbency the first restoration in 1848 took place under the direction of Mr. T. H. Wyatt as architect. And antiquaries can never be sufficiently grateful to all concerned for the care taken of the building and for the fact that they preserved the church, instead of erecting a brand new Victorian abomination in its place.
In the Essex Naturalist, vol. xii. p.263 is a description of an excursion of the Essex Field Club, during which a visit was paid to this church. In the report of this meeting a very good account is given of the building and of its history.
A reference has been made to an article " Timber Work in Churches," which appeared in vol. iv. p.90, of the Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society. The author of this paper says:-
It is a veritable example of the rude log churches which our Saxon ancestors used to build in the far off days, before the Norman conquest. Its preservation to the present day, and in a very perfect and unaltered condition, owing, doubtless, to the peculiar sanctity which attached to the building as having been the temporary shrine of the remains of St. Edmund, the King and Martyr, is a very remarkable fact. This Saxon log church forms the existing nave of the present parish church of Greenstead.
There is a foot-note to the same page which says that the church which Finan built at Lindisfarn, according to Bede, was composed not of stone but more scollorum of cleft wood covered with reeds. In continuation of the same article on the next page is a description of the wood-work of this church of Greenstead; but there is nothing further that we need quote at present.
On the 28th of July, 1881, the Essex Archaeological Society met at Chipping Ongar and in the course of the excursion visited this church.
In the Essex Archaeological Society's Transactions vol. ii. N.S. p 396, is a description of the visit when Mr. Chas. F. Hayward, F.S.A., in addressing the meeting, said that this structure had no often been described and illustrated that there was really nothing new to be said of it, and then some quotations were given from a pamphlet by Capt. Budworth on the church, and also from another work, Memorials of the Antiquities and Architecture of Essex by the Rev. Allred Suckling, in which there are illustrations and descriptions of this church, but Mr. Hayward gave reasons why he did not consider the illustrations quite correct.
A further mention of Greenstead church in our Transactions, is in the report of a general meeting of the Society at Colchester, on the 29th day of February, 1892. This report is recorded in vol. iv. N.S. p.223, and during the meeting Mr. I. C. Gould, F.S.A., drew attention to the recent restoration of the roof of Greenstead church under the superintendance of Mr. Fred. Chancellor, who writes:-
The fir roof which was put on about (I believe) forty years ago, was in an advanced state of decay. Whether this roof was a facsimile of the previous roof, I had no means of ascertaining, but I think it only fair to assume that, in its general construction, it was. I therefore advised that it should be taken off and a new roof, constructed entirely in oak, and in accordance with the decayed roof, but so constructing it that there was an air space between the tiling and boarding, the omission of which had brought the fir roof to grief. There was a modern brick buttress built against the centre of the nave on the north side, and as this had settled away from the building I persuaded the churchwardens to let me remove it, this was done, and the half oak trees, similar to the rest of the walls, were found behind it.
These various notices here recorded appear to comprise all that have appeared in our Transactions in reference to this church, and, as before stated, but little has appeared in print by other authors excepting short accounts in works on architecture, such as that by Professor Baldwin Brown, F.S.A., &c., on Saxon architecture. This last account is of considerable value, especially coming as it does from such a well-known authority on Saxon work.
But the latest and most complete description is that published in the Builder for October 4th, 1904, previously mentioned, for this contains nearly all that is known of the history and architecture of the building. The article commences with a description of the position of the church, and says:-
Hidden among the trees, and at first sight of no particular moment, this diminutive village church may yet fairly lay claim to be in some respects the most interesting in all England.
A statement with which we may, when we know its full history, entirely agree.
It seems pretty certain that the Saxons never made any bricks for use in building, but they frequently used those they could quarry from the remains of Roman buildings. Their favourite building material was timber and this they used for castle, manor house and other domestic building, and for their churches, but not exclusively so, as so many remains of Saxon churches testify. Of the many Saxon buildings in timber in this kingdom, this church at Greenstead is, as far as known, the one remaining example. It is very extraordinary how the idea arose, but still it is so, that when examining any very old building, the opinion is often expressed that the timber of which it is composed is chestnut. Though why should the Saxons or Normans have gone to the expense of importing the inferior material when they had the better English oak in abundance everywhere around them? Chestnut is not indigenous to Britain and could hardly have been planted in sufficient quantity to have produced a sufficiently cheap wood to have made it worthwhile adopting it for building purposes. The microscope shows in every examination made of the timber of any ancient building that it is of oak, and chestnut has never been found.
The nave is the only part that concerns us, the tower, porch and chancel being of other and various dates; and in the nave the way the timber is arranged has conduced considerably to its preservation, the trees being placed perpendicularly, wet has not penetrated far into the wood. Before the first restoration of 1848, the half trees, of which the walls are solely composed, stood on a plate, and this was supported, at intervals, by some flint stones, but, generally, the plate had come into contact with the ground and was much decayed, and the upright timbers at their lower ends also suffering from the same cause.
One of the first proceedings at the restoration was to build a brick plinth to take a wall plate: and the uprights, after having their decayed ends removed, were placed on this and so kept clear of the damp of the earth. The proceedings of the restorers aroused a considerable amount of interest and opposition whilst the work was in progress.
The Builder of those days commented on the severity of treatment, and this brought a letter from Mr. Barlow, of Ongar, which appeared on January 27th, 1849. He there states that the principal cause of the walls being taken down, was that the oak sills, having been laid on the earth with merely some rough flint put under them at intervals, had become rotten as to let the upright timbers drop through, and, had not the wall plates rested on the brick work of the chancel, a great part of the nave must have fallen. He added that it was the wish of the rector and architect that every part of the old timbers should be preserved ; and that the only parts lost were 6ins cut from the lower ends; and that the timbers had been fresh tenoned and inserted in oak sills laid on brickwork 12 ins, from the ground.
After all the criticisms of the period we may congratulate all those who had a hand in the restoration, on the success of their work, thanking them for having preserved this most interesting relic.
According to a memorial placed in the tower, the names of those who carried out the work were:-
PHILIP W. RAY, Rector.
WILLIAM SMITH, JOSEPH KEMSLEY, Churchwardens
T. H. WYATT, Architect.
J. BARLOW, Builder.
It has been stated that this church was erected to contain the relics and the body of St. Edmund, on the return of these to Bury St. Edmunds, but this can hardly be correct. There is no doubt that this village church was chosen, because it was convenient to the road from London to Bury and also that it was a handy resting-place on the journey, and also there were residents in the district that the monks in charge wished to oblige. It may also be stated as a fact that this little building is the identical one where these events occurred.
Originally the building was plastered inside or, at all events, it was in 1848, but the plaster has been stripped off as quite unnecessary, and an examination of the timbers inside will show a number of cuts by an axe, to make a key for the plaster, otherwise they are fairly smooth, showing only the marks of the adze and axe, when they were originally prepared for the building. It appears that the trees were not split or sawed into shape, but had half their substance removed by the axe. This may appear to have been a wasteful proceeding, probably it was at that time much the cheaper, timber was plentiful but steel was not and no doubt such saws as this work required were rare and expensive, whereas an axe could be found anywhere and everywhere.
The points, then, of interest in this church are - it is the one example remaining of a Saxon wooden church with an undoubted history, proving it to be the veritable building described, and also as showing that timber is almost indestructible if used with due precautions.
I cannot close this account of this most interesting building without again expressing my deep indebtedness to the editor of the Builder for his kindness in allowing me the use of the illustration and of the article on the church which appeared in his paper on October 8th, 1904.