Landmarks With A Legacy

Thanks to Henry VIII and his Dissolution of the Monasteries, our country is blessed with many truly romantic ruins, and Essex is home to some truly stunning monastic remains. Stephen Roberts picks his top 10 of particular significance

- Stephen Roberts

10. BRADWELL (ANGLO-CELTIC)

I feel almost guilty relegating Bradwell to the tenth place. Bradwell on Sea, or Bradwell juxta Mare, has one of England’s oldest churches, St Peter’s on the Wall, so named because it’s built on the walls of a Roman ‘Saxon Shore’ fort (Othona). The church is ancient enough, built c654, reputedly by St Cedd, who is said to have established a monastery here within those old Roman walls. All that remains of the structure today is its nave, 50ft by 20ft, and 20ft tall, which is, unsurprisingly, built mainly from Roman materials. For many years the now happily restored church was in use as a modest barn.

9. LITTLE COGGESHALL (CISTERCIAN)

This is the first of two sites where the former early-13th-century gate chapel is now a parish church. A gate chapel, or ‘capella ante portas’ (church outside the gates), was a building that stood on the fringe of a monastic precinct, built for guests and wayfarers, and now, as in the case of Little Coggeshall, serving the community as a parish church, while the adjacent abbey lies in ruins. Foundations have been traced and excavated, and, while the main church has vanished, ancillary buildings survive, including a two-story corridor, and a monastic priest-house containing some of England’s oldest medieval brickwork. The abbey was founded by King Stephen in the mid-12th century.

8. TILTY (CISTERCIAN)