Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is a substantial medieval church dating from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, restored in 1775 following a fire and again in the 1870s by Charles Read. It stands a little inland from the historic port settlement of Burnham on Crouch.

The church is built of flint rubble, rag rubble, and brick with stone dressings. The roofs are tiled, with lead covering the aisles. It has an unusual plan for Essex: a hall church with continuous aisles and no structural division between nave and chancel. The north and south arcades each have nine bays, the western six forming the nave and the eastern three the chancel. There are north and south porches and a west tower.

The nave and chancel are roofed continuously as a single unit, and the aisles and chancel chapels are also treated as single structural elements. The south aisle has an embattled parapet; the north aisle has a plain parapet. Three 18th-century clerestory dormers, inserted when the roof was rebuilt after the fire of 1774, are almost hidden behind the aisle parapets. They have segmental heads and small paned lights.

The chancel east window is 14th century with three trefoiled lights in a four-centred head. The late 15th-century north aisle east window has a pedimental head and three lights; the south aisle east window is also late 15th century with three lights under a square head. An early 16th-century door is set into a buttress for the south chapel.

The north aisle has five 14th-century windows in the north wall, one of which towards the east was reset in the 15th century. The west window of the north aisle is also 15th century. The north door is 14th century with moulded jambs and a hood mould with head stops. The door itself is 15th century with trellis framing. The brick north porch was added in the early 16th century and has a crow-stepped gable. The outer arch has moulded jambs, and the side walls have diapering and small blocked windows.

The south aisle has seven windows on the south side, all of three traceried lights in four-centred heads with similar designs, but the eastern three are apparently from around 1520 and the rest late 15th century. The west window is also 15th century. There are early 16th-century south doors, one set in a buttress between the second and third windows from the east, the other covered by the south porch. The south porch is dated 1523 and has an embattled parapet. The four-centred outer arch has moulded jambs, with shields of arms above it including those of Dunmow Priory, Fitzwalter, and Radcliffe. The porch roof has early 16th-century moulded wall plates. The early 16th-century south door has chamfered jambs and a three-centred arch. The early 16th-century linenfold doors were reset from the outer to the inner opening in 1930.

The embattled west tower has three stages, the lower part 14th century and the upper parts 15th century. The west door has chamfered jambs and a hood mould, and was blocked to form a window in the 18th century. The 14th-century west window has a steeply angled head, possibly a reworking, and reticulated ogee tracery. Above it is a large cross made in knapped flints. There are single-light 15th-century windows in the second stage and two-light 15th-century windows in the upper stage. The top of the tower is said to have been rebuilt and shortened in 1702, and the steeple was lost after storms in 1779.

Inside, there is no chancel arch or screen, and the interior is dominated by the long, smooth plaster vault inserted after the fire in 1774. The north arcade has nine bays with two chamfered orders on octagonal piers with moulded capitals and bases. The western six bays are 14th century. The eastern three bays are late 15th or early 16th century and are lower than the western bays. The profile of the capitals and bases differs slightly in the two sections. At the west end of the north aisle, a 14th-century niche, formerly outside, has been reset. It has moulded jambs, a triangular head, and a carved and crocketed border. The south arcade is also of nine bays in two sections. The western six bays are from around 1500, and the eastern three early 16th century. The arches have two moulded orders and the piers have four attached shafts with moulded capitals and bases. The tower arch is 14th century with two moulded orders on plain responds. It is closed by a glazed timber screen. The internal staircase in the north-west corner of the tower has a 15th-century door with studded iron bands.

The principal fittings include a late 12th-century Purbeck marble font with a plain, square bowl on five columnar supports, badly worn. The cover was added in 1955. There is a 15th-century piscina in the north aisle and an aumbry of 1954.

The pulpit of 1877 is by J Forsyth. Very rich, it is made of Caen stone with marble panels and shafts, and carved figures in canopied niches. The choir stalls with open traceried fronts were installed in 1922. The nave benches are 19th century.

There is some good 19th-century glass, including the east window of 1874 and the south chapel east window of 1881 by Clayton and Bell, the north chapel east window of 1884 by Jones and Willis, and another north window of 1879 by Cox and Sons.

There are fine, probably late 17th-century brass chandeliers in the nave and matching candelabras in the aisles. A small brass of around 1500 with a Virgin and Child was found in the churchyard in 1977. An indent for brasses found in the north aisle may be for Henry Boode, an early 16th-century benefactor. Wall tablets include an early 19th-century tablet to the Scott family including Reverend Alexander Scott, chaplain on HMS Victory at Trafalgar, and another to George and Lydia Middleton, died 1680. There are memorials for both World Wars.

In the churchyard stands a brick mounting block of 1733.

Burnham was an important port in the Middle Ages, but the settlement is in two parts, with the church and manor house a little way inland of the port settlement. The church was probably founded in the late 11th or early 12th century, and was certainly in existence by 1155 when it was given to Little Dunmow Priory. Irregularities in the setting out suggest that the present building developed around an older structure. The nave, chancel, north aisle, and lower part of the west tower were built in the mid 14th century. The upper part of the tower was added or rebuilt in the mid 15th century, and in the late 15th century the north aisle was lengthened to create a north chancel chapel. The south aisle was added or perhaps entirely rebuilt around 1500 and lengthened in the early 16th century to form a south chancel chapel. The north and south porches are also early 16th century. The upper part of the tower was rebuilt in 1702. The roof, including the plaster barrel vault, was redone in 1775 following a fire the previous year. It was restored around 1871 to 1879 to designs by local architect Charles Read. There were further repairs in the 20th century.

There were two religious guilds in the church in the Middle Ages: the south aisle is known to have been dedicated to St Katherine, and the north aisle to the Trinity. There was also an image, and probably an altar, of St Peter in the north aisle. At least some of the work in the 16th century was paid for by Jon Harvey, vicar, and Thomas Ratcliffe, Lord Fitz Walter, and bequests from parishioners are also recorded. New furnishings and pews were installed in the late 16th and 17th centuries, but with the exception of the chandelier, these do not survive and were probably destroyed in the fire of 1774. Samuel Deeker, bricklayer and plasterer, was responsible for the restoration work, which cost £812 8s 7d. The 18th-century fittings were removed during the 19th-century restoration, as was commonly done to bring the church into line with new liturgical practices.