CHURCHES

Ancient Churches

ALL SAINTS'.

The church's position, at an angle to the modern High Street and on the same alignment as a nearby Roman building, suggests that it existed before High Street was diverted southwards by the building of the castle bailey in the late 11th century. (fn. 3) St. Botolph's priory was patron in 1254, and retained the advowson until the Dissolution, when Henry VIII gave it to Sir Thomas Audley, later Lord Audley. The bishop presented by lapse in 1557, Robert Talcott by purchase of a turn in 1609, and the Crown by lapse in 1662, but the advowson descended in the Audley family (fn. 4) until Henry Audley sold it in 1698 to John Dane, clerk, who sold it the following year to Henry Compton, bishop of London. John English presented John Dane in 1709, presumably as a result of a grant from the same John Dane. (fn. 5) On Compton's death in 1713 his son, Hatton Compton, gave the advowson to Balliol College, Oxford, who retained it, presenting regularly, (fn. 6) until 1928 when the benefice was united with that of St. Nicholas with St. Runwald. Thereafter Balliol had two turns in four, until the new benefice of St. James with All Saints, St. Nicholas and St. Runwald was formed in 1953 with the bishop as patron and All Saints' church was closed. (fn. 7)

The rectory was valued at 1 mark in 1254. (fn. 8) No value was recorded in 1291 or 1535. Although Lord Audley, by will dated 1544, gave the rector of All Saints' all the Colchester tithes formerly held by St. Botolph's priory, the living was vacant because of poverty in 1563. (fn. 9) In 1650 the tithes were worth £30 and the parsonage house £3. (fn. 10) In 1772 Charles Gray settled a yearly rent of £10 10 s., from a house and land in All Saints' parish, on the rector as long as he was resident. By 1810 the payment was £12 a year because funds had accumulated during a vacancy, and the rent charge was redeemed in 1921. (fn. 11) The net income of the living was £291 in 1835. (fn. 12) In 1837 tithes on c. 161 a., mainly arable land, were commuted for a yearly rent charge of £35. The total value of the living in 1898 was c. £300. (fn. 13)

There was no glebe in 1610, but by 1810 there were 5 a. of land in Mile End parish bought by the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty with a benefaction from R. Hoblyn, rector 1798-1827, and c. 1 a. of meadow in St. Leonard's parish; by 1887 the meadow had apparently increased to c. 3 a. (fn. 14) Most of the glebe was sold in 1918. (fn. 15)

The rectory house, recorded in 1610, stood west of the church in the churchyard. (fn. 16) In 1720 Francis Powell, rector, repaired it, but it was still too small for his family to live in. (fn. 17) After improvements by a later rector, John Abbot, in 1759, the house was occupied by successive incumbents. (fn. 18) A new brick house, designed by H. Hayward, was built on or near the site of the old house in 1858. (fn. 19) It was used as a rectory house until the ecclesiastical reorganization of 1953. (fn. 20)

Medieval rectors, recorded from 1318, included John, amerced in 1337 for felling hazel trees growing on the town wall, William Robyn amerced in 1375 for assault, (fn. 21) and William Brown, amerced in 1484 for obstructing the highway with a 'whirlegigge', perhaps a turnstile. (fn. 22) A yearly rent of 12 d. for a lamp in the church survived until 1548. (fn. 23) A rent of 6 d., recorded in 1334, was presumably for general church purposes. (fn. 24)

Rectors often held other livings, frequently in Colchester, where most incumbents lived for at least part of the year serving All Saints' personally. John Lakyn, a future Master of Jesus, Cambridge, held the living from 1557 until the Elizabethan settlement. (fn. 25) Oliver Pigg, presumably a relative of the younger puritan of the same name, was instituted in 1569, but from 1571 until 1609 the parish was in the hands of John Walford, an 'unpreaching minister', who also held St. Mary Magdalen's by sequestration from 1574 until 1596. He was accused of puritan practices in 1583 but thereafter seems to have conformed. In 1586 he was 'tied to the exercises' of the less learned clergy. He resigned in 1610 and was succeeded by Thomas Talcott, rector of St. Mary's-at-the-Walls since 1604. (fn. 26) Thomas Warner, who resigned the living in 1638, was also rector of Abberton of which he was deprived in 1644. (fn. 27) Successive visitations in the late 16th century and the early 17th revealed neglect by the churchwardens. In 1584, for instance, the communion book was torn and there was no large Bible; in 1633 the church had no communion plate, and the churchwardens were ordered to remove from the churchyard two posts for drying yarn. In 1636 the churchwardens had not sworn to the articles. (fn. 28)

From 1662 to 1837 rectors held the living in plurality with the neighbouring St. Botolph's whose church had been destroyed in the siege of 1648. (fn. 29) Edmund Hickeringill, rector 1662-1708, resorted to law in 1674 and 1691 in an attempt to collect tithes from the occupiers of the former St. Botolph's priory lands and from the castle bailey. In the early 1680s he quarrelled vituperatively with Henry Compton, bishop of London, about the St. Botolph's tithes which the bishop wanted to divert to another church. (fn. 30) In 1683 the churchwardens were excommunicated for refusing three times to take the customary oath. (fn. 31) Francis Powell, rector from 1713 until his death in 1749, also complained of encroachments on the rights and revenues of the church. He held a daily service when he was at home, at least one service with a sermon on Sundays, and communion monthly and at the great festivals; he was imprisoned in the Fleet in 1747. (fn. 32)

From 1749 to 1928, except for 1890-2, the church was held by a succession of members of Balliol College. (fn. 33) Nathaniel Forster, rector 1764-90, a utilitarian writer on political economy, lived at the rectory house and seems to have served All Saints' personally, although he was also rector of Tolleshunt Knights and vicar of Ardleigh. He employed as curate Samuel Parr, who was also curate of St. James's and master of Colchester grammar school. (fn. 34) Despite Forster's residence and his interest in Sunday schools, between 1766 and 1790 the average number of communicants fell from c. 60 to c. 20-30. Services were reduced to only one on Sunday, and in 1790 communion was celebrated only c. 8 times a year. (fn. 35) In 1841 of the 100 families in the parish 78 were said to belong to the church. On Census Sunday 1851, out of a population of 477, attendances of 120 in the morning and 200 in the afternoon were reported, with an additional 100 Bluecoat schoolchildren from St. Nicholas's parish on each occasion. (fn. 36)

St. Mary-at-the-Walls, 1864

J. T. Round, rector from 1851 until his death in 1860, restored the church. It was largely as a result of his work that the new parish of St. John the Evangelist was formed, partly out of a detached part of All Saints' parish, in 1863. (fn. 37) His successor, F. Curtis, asked parishioners in 1866 not to 'thirst after change', but by 1874 had introduced a daily service and increased the number of communion services to two a month. (fn. 38) T. G. Gardiner, rector 1890-2, was concerned about the education and welfare of working people and active in the labour movement; he encouraged lay participation in parochial work. (fn. 39)

By 1907 communion was celebrated every Sunday, and the church was probably already in the 'broad church tradition' which the congregation was anxious to retain in 1933. A. W. Deakin, rector 1924-7, raised congregations from 40 to 100 on Sunday mornings, and from under 100 to a full church (330) in the evenings, but the poverty of the living forced his early resignation. (fn. 40) The church was closed in the ecclesiatical reorganization of 1953. (fn. 41)

The church of All Saints' comprises a chancel, nave, north chapel and aisle, and a fine west tower of knapped flints. (fn. 42) The walls are of stone and flint mixed with brick; the dressings are of limestone. The south wall of the nave, which was refaced in 1855, was said in the 18th century to contain herringbone work, suggesting an 11th-century date, but the width of the nave indicates that it was largely rebuilt later. (fn. 43) The chancel was rebuilt in the early 14th century, and the north chapel and aisle were added in the 15th century, probably soon after 1448. The tower was rebuilt in the early 16th century, possibly c. 1500, but the 14th-century tower arch was retained. (fn. 44) A small house adjoining the church with a little room over it, recorded in 1610, was probably a porch and porch chamber, for in 1720 Francis Powell pulled down a small chamber over the church porch, and a south porch existed in 1748. (fn. 45) The north arcade was demolished in 1738 and replaced by wooden piers which were themselves replaced in 1824 by four 'iron Gothic' columns. In 1771-2 a gallery was erected and a window inserted at its west end, and in 1811 another gallery was added. (fn. 46) Between 1855 and 1857 the north arcade was rebuilt in 13th-century style as part of a major restoration to the designs of H. Hayward; other work included refacing the south wall of the nave and inserting new windows in it. (fn. 47) The tower was repaired in 1878. The chancel was restored c. 1890 by Rolfe and Coggin. (fn. 48) The church was sold to the borough council and converted in 1957 into a natural history museum. (fn. 49)

There were five bells: (i & ii) Miles Gray, 1610, (iii) Richard Boler, 1587, (iv) Miles Gray, 1620, and (v) Miles Gray, 1682. All were rehung in Little Horkesley church between 1953 and 1973. (fn. 50) The plate included two silver cups, one of 1658, and another with silver paten cover of 1714 by Richard Hutchinson of Colchester, a silver paten of 1714 and a silver flagon of 1777, all in Colchester museum in 1987. (fn. 51)

Monuments include grave slabs in the chancel to two rectors, Edmund Hickeringill (d. 1708) and John Abbot (d. 1760). In the north aisle are marble monuments to Charles Gray (d. 1782), and to his wife, her two daughters, and her mother, Mary Webster. (fn. 52) In 1987 most of the monuments were hidden by the museum display units.

HOLYTRINITY.

Architectural evidence shows that the church, which stands on the east side of Trinity Street overlying a minor Roman street junction, existed by the 11th century. (fn. 53) Until 1536 its parish included Berechurch. (fn. 54) In the 1170s the advowson was in dispute between Bury St. Edmunds abbey (Suff.) and Thomas dean of Colchester. Thomas surrendered it to the abbey, but c. 1205 abbot Samson returned it to him. (fn. 55) By 1254 it had passed to Richard Champneys, who gave it to St. John's abbey before 1259. (fn. 56) The king presented in 1393, believing the rectory to be vacant and the patronage lapsed, but John Mayn, presented by the abbey in 1382, recovered the living in 1397. (fn. 57) At the Dissolution the advowson passed to the Crown, which presented until 1628 except for the years 1605 and 1606, when two turns were apparently sold. The rectory was sequestered to the rector of St. Mary's-at-the-Walls from c. 1644 until 1735. (fn. 58) In 1702 George Compton, earl of Northampton, acting for his uncle Henry Compton, bishop of London (d. 1713), acquired the advowson from the Crown by exchange. Compton intended to give it to Balliol College, Oxford, but an error in the grant of 1702 delayed the gift until 1714. The Crown presented by lapse in 1735 when the last sequestrator died, but Balliol College presented in 1736, and regularly thereafter. (fn. 59) In 1932 the benefice was united with St. Martin's, and the college and the patron of St. Martin's presented alternately until 1953 when Holy Trinity was closed and its parish incorporated into the new parish of St. Botolph with Holy Trinity and St. Giles. (fn. 60)

The rectory was valued at 3 marks between 1182 and 1211 and in 1254, and at £6 13s. 4d. in 1535. (fn. 61) No value was recorded in 1291. An annual pension of 4s., paid to the abbot of Bury St. Edmunds from 1182 or earlier until c. 1205, was apparently claimed later by St. John's abbey. (fn. 62) In 1510 the bishop of London annexed to Holy Trinity rectory a chantry in West Bergholt church, endowed with 2 messuages, c. 49 a. of land, and 33s. 4d. rent; rectors served the chantry until its suppression in 1543. (fn. 63) In 1536 Sir Thomas Audley gave a farm at Ardleigh to the rectory to compensate for the loss of Berechurch chapelry, which was then worth 43s. a year. (fn. 64) The farm, leased at 30s. in 1559, was worth £16 in 1650 but only £12 in 1683, and £11 in 1707. In 1765 the rector paid a quitrent of 5d. to the lord of Ardleigh manor. (fn. 65) The living was augmented in 1738 by £200 from Queen Anne's Bounty and a like sum from Edward Brookes's legacy, which with a supplement from the rector were used to buy a farm at Waltonle-Soken. (fn. 66) By 1835 the net income had risen to £158, but part of the farm belonging to Holy Trinity had been destroyed by the sea by 1843. In 1845 tithes on c. 60 a. of mainly arable land, 17 a. of garden ground, and 10 a. of houses were commuted for a rent charge of £23 12s. 2d. Another 12 a., which had belonged to St. John's abbey, were tithe-free. The farm at Walton was exchanged in 1853 for stock producing £90 a year. (fn. 67) The income of the living was £300 in 1890. The farm at Ardleigh was sold after 1911. (fn. 68)

A house opposite Holy Trinity churchyard was occupied by the rector c. 1250 and an adjacent house belonged to successive patrons in the 13th century, but there is no evidence that either was a rectory house, (fn. 69) and later medieval rectors lived in a house 'opposite' or 'by' the churchyard leased from the borough. (fn. 70) Trinity House, adjoining the churchyard, was given to the parish as a rectory house by A. M. Ager by will proved 1927, but it was in very bad repair and in 1932 it was sold and the money invested for the living. (fn. 71)

Thomas dean of Colchester seems to have been rector in the 1170s, assisted by his brother William. (fn. 72) Most later mediaeval rectors, recorded from c. 1250, held the church only briefly; (fn. 73) one, Edward Squire, was deprived in 1510 for an unknown offence. (fn. 74) William Jay, instituted in 1530, subscribed the oath of supremacy in 1534; he may have survived throughout the Reformation period, living in the parish and dying c. 1559. (fn. 75) William Lyon, instituted in 1561, retained Holy Trinity and Mile End, which he held in plurality, until his death in 1585. (fn. 76) His successor Robert Good, a former saddle-mender, was described as doublebeneficed in 1586 and was 'tied to the exercises' for the instruction of the less able clergy in 1586 and 1589. He apparently abandoned the living in 1591 when a relative procured him the vicarage of Tolleshunt D'Arcy. (fn. 77) Good's successor, Henry Corinbeck, refused in 1592 to subscribe to the Articles, and neglected divine service. A series of short incumbencies from that year compounded neglect; in 1604 the churchwardens failed to procure even the Easter communion. In 1607 the rector, John Booty, was ordered by the archdeacon to study the Old Testament and the works of the Swiss reformer Bullinger. (fn. 78) A parishioner protested in 1616 at the curate's use of the surplice, and another in 1636 refused to receive communion from the Laudian rector Thomas Newcomen. (fn. 79)

From 1648 until 1714, while St. Mary's church lay in ruins, rectors of St. Mary's, the sequestrators of Holy Trinity, ministered to both congregations in Holy Trinity church, and in the period 1649-51 most of the recorded marriages of Colchester couples took place there. (fn. 80) In 1683 the cure was said to be served diligently by William Shillito, assistant curate 1679-99. (fn. 81) In 1723 the last sequestrator, Robert Middleton, was employing an assistant who lived in Holy Trinity parish and provided daily and Sunday services there; communion was celebrated monthly and at festivals in the two churches by turn. (fn. 82)

Charles Lidgould, rector 1736-65, lived in the parish and served it himself for most of the year, performing one Sunday service and communion every two months and at festivals. (fn. 83) His successors from 1766 until 1830 were fellows of Balliol College who did not live in Colchester and employed assistant curates to serve the parish and provide one Sunday service and communion four times a year. Peter Wright, rector 1830-9, although already 70 years old and resident on his living of Marks Tey, performed daily services at Holy Trinity. (fn. 84) He was succeeded in both parishes by Lewis Welsh Owen, rector 1839-68, who started parish day and Sunday schools, (fn. 85) restored the church, and increased the services to two on Sundays with a monthly communion. On Census Sunday 1851, out of a population of 798, congregations of 300 in the morning and 250 in the afternoon were reported, with 50 children at the afternoon Sunday school. (fn. 86) John Bush Early, rector for 33 years from 1877, started monthly afternoon services for children c. 1894. (fn. 87) His successor E. R. Monck-Mason, rector 1910-39, refurbished the church, built and enlarged a church hall, started a parish magazine, and encouraged meetings and social clubs for men, women and children. (fn. 88) After the union with St. Martin's in 1932 Monck-Mason was assisted by a Church Army captain in providing three services every Sunday in each church. His successor found the living too poor to pay for regular help throughout the year and from 1940 services were usually held in the two churches alternately. (fn. 89)

The church is built of flint rubble, septaria, and Roman brick, with dressings of Roman brick and Reigate stone. (fn. 90) It comprises a chancel with north and south chapels and south-east vestry, an aisled nave of three bays with south porch, and a west tower of three stages with a pyramidal cap. The Anglo-Saxon church may have been single-celled, the nave and chancel undifferentiated from each other structurally. Parts of the west wall of that church survive, and part of its east wall has been found at the south-east corner of the surviving nave. The surviving tower was added in the later 11th century. In the mid 14th century the nave was rebuilt and the chancel built or rebuilt. The south arcade and aisle and the south porch were built in the late 15th century; the south chapel was added later in the same century.

By 1585 the walls and windows were decayed and there was neither pulpit nor reading desk. (fn. 91) The rector repaired the chancel in 1597, but it was not until 1609 that repairs to the tower and south wall of the nave were carried out. (fn. 92) The pulpit and reading desk, mentioned in 1708, may have been provided at that time. (fn. 93) By 1633, however, the chancel was dilapidated, the tower ruinous, and the churchyard used as a milking yard. (fn. 94) Some repairs were done at once, for the tower was fit to receive a new bell later that year. (fn. 95) In 1705 the chancel needed new paving. (fn. 96) In the 17th or 18th century a window was inserted in the west wall of the south aisle. A vestry was added to the east end of the chancel and south aisle in 1840. In the 1850s the church was reseated and plaster removed from the outside walls revealing two niches containing defaced statues. The statues, and a carved stone coffin in a 14th-century niche in the south wall, were destroyed. (fn. 97) The north aisle and chapel were added in 1866. (fn. 98) For nearly 20 years after the closure of the church in 1953 the building was left unoccupied and was vandalized. In 1972 the borough council, with a gift from the Soroptimists of Colchester, bought the building and in 1974 opened it as a museum of rural crafts. (fn. 99) The design of the museum retained the surviving monuments and 15th-century font.

The church's one bell, of 1633, was stolen in the 1960s. (fn. 1) The church plate included a paten of 1710 and a mazer mounted with silver-gilt, which has been ascribed to the 15th century and may have been given to the church in the 19th century. (fn. 2) An iron-bound chest, in the church in 1987, is probably of the early 17th century. (fn. 3) The 14th-century door with contemporary knocker plate and hinges was in 1987 displayed in the porch. The memorials include a marble and alabaster tablet to William Gilberd (d. 1603) (fn. 4) and a tablet to the madrigalist John Wilbye (d. 1638), erected in 1938 by the English Madrigal societies. (fn. 5) Five funeral hatchments display the arms of Sir John Shaw (d. 1690) and his wife Thamar (d. 1681), John Brasier (d. 1725), Sir Richard Bacon (d. 1773), and Thomas Talcott (d. 1685). (fn. 6) In the churchyard, which became a public garden in 1972, (fn. 7) are many 18thand 19th- century tombs, but a pyramidal monument to Mary Darcy, countess Rivers (d. 1644), had been removed by 1748. (fn. 8)

ST. BOTOLPH'S.

A church existed before the foundation of the Augustinian priory between 1093 and 1100. (fn. 9) Its functions were taken over by the priory church, which was apparently both conventual and parochial until the Dissolution. As an Augustinian foundation, the church was exempt from all ordinary jurisdiction until 1550 when it was made subject to the bishop of London. (fn. 10) After St. Botolph's church was destroyed in the siege of 1648 the benefice was regularly held in plurality with All Saints' until 1851. (fn. 11)

The ecclesiastical parish comprised many small scattered pieces. (fn. 12) In 1852 c. 12 a. near St. Mary Magdalen's church was transferred to that parish. In 1863 an outlying part of St. Botolph's parish east of the Harwich Road was transferred to the new parish of St. John the Evangelist. Under the comprehensive boundary reorganization of 1911 St. Botolph's parish boundaries were consolidated by the transfer of small areas to St. Mary's, St. Giles's, St. Mary Magdalen's, St. Paul's, and St. James's, and the addition of small areas of St. Giles's and St. Mary Magdalen's. In 1950 a part of St. Botolph's was transferred to the new parish of St. Barnabas, Old Heath. In 1953 under the Colchester ecclesiastical reorganization St. Botolph's became part of the new parish of St. Botolph with Holy Trinity and St. Giles. (fn. 13)

The cure was not presentative, but was supplied by the priory or its appointees until the Dissolution, when Henry VIII gave Sir Thomas Audley, later Lord Audley, the site of the priory and the rectory with all its appurtenances, including presumably the advowson or right to appoint a curate. (fn. 14) The advowson of the living, later styled a perpetual curacy, remained in the Audley family until 1698 when Henry Audley sold it, together with that of All Saints', to John Dane who sold it the following year to Henry Compton, bishop of London. On Compton's death his son, Hatton Compton, gave it to Balliol College, Oxford. (fn. 15) Balliol retained the advowson until 1870 when it was exchanged with the diocesan bishop for that of Little Tey. (fn. 16) The bishop was the patron of the united benefices of St. Botolph, St. Giles, and Holy Trinity in 1987. (fn. 17)

The church was worth c. 40s. in 1254; (fn. 18) it was not separately valued in 1291 or 1535. Most of the church's potential income was lost when Lord Audley, by will proved 1544, gave all the priory's tithes in Colchester to the rector of All Saints'. (fn. 19) Before 1548 St. Botolph's churchwardens sued the rector of All Saints' for the tithes, but evidently did not retrieve more than the small tithes, worth £10, which the curate held in 1650. (fn. 20) In 1766 St. Botolph's had no income, but in 1810 when the living was being served by the rector of All Saints', there were said to be tithes on 500-600 a. and surplice fees of £10-15. The tithes were presumably those granted to the rector of All Saints' in 1544. (fn. 21) No value was recorded in 1835, but when the new church was built in 1836 an endowment of c. £100 a year was proposed for the living. (fn. 22) In 1851 the income comprised a permanent endowment of £85 17s. 8d., fees of £10, and the Easter offering of £7 10s. (fn. 23) Mary Montagu Thorley (d. 1861) left a house and 5 cottages in Colchester for the augmentation of St. Botolph's. (fn. 24) The Ecclesiastical Commissioners augmented the living by £82 in 1871, and by 1887 the income was c. £283. (fn. 25) A parsonage house in Priory Street, mentioned in 1866, became in 1953 the parsonage house for the new benefice of St. Botolph with Holy Trinity and St. Giles. (fn. 26)

A guild in the parish chapel of St. Botolph's was recorded in 1488. The church goods included some small candlesticks, a little bell, and some banners, sold by 1548. (fn. 27)

The living cannot be shown to have had a regular curate until the early 1570s, probably because the ancient priory church became, after 1559, the pulpit for the common preacher. From the early 1570s, however, the cure was served by William Kirby, rector of East Donyland 1572- 91, who in 1583 failed to read the weekday services and was described as 'a sower of discord between neighbour and neighbour'. (fn. 28) Thomas Holland, curate 1586-7, was 'tied to the exercises' for the instruction of the less able clergy and was eventually suspended for failing to attend them. From about 1588 until at least 1607 the living was in the hands of Thomas Farrar, rector of St. James's from 1592. (fn. 29) In 1584 the communion table was 'naught' and certain stalls were 'broken up and thrown about', possibly in an earlier manifestation of the puritanism displayed in 1616 by two parishioners and in 1636 by another who refused to receive communion kneeling, (fn. 30) and in 1635 by the churchwarden, James Wheeler, who refused to rail in the communion table. (fn. 31)

From the siege of 1648, when St. Botolph's church was ruined, until the consecration of the new church in 1837, St. Botolph's parishioners attended All Saints' church. The new church was not licensed for marriages until 1848, but burials took place in St. Botolph's churchyard throughout. (fn. 32) Church life until 1837 suffered from the lack of a parish church, and in 1815 many parishioners attended the Baptist or Presbyterian chapels. (fn. 33) The new church with accommodation for over 1,000 enabled large congregations to attend. On Census Sunday 1851 below average attendances of 342 in the morning, including 161 Sunday school children, and 669 in the afternoon, including 168 children, were reported from a population of 3,000. (fn. 34) From 1851, when T. B. G. Moore became perpetual curate, St. Botolph's was no longer held in plurality. In 1859 there was monthly communion. (fn. 35)

J. R. Corbett, vicar 1875-1907, rural dean of Colchester 1897-1907, employed assistant curates. (fn. 36) St. Stephen's mission hall, Canterbury Road, a temporary building of 1894, was licensed as a chapel in 1899. A new permanent chapel was built alongside it in 1905 and became a separate parish church in 1953. (fn. 37) In 1920 average morning attendances were 300 at St. Botolph's and 60 at St. Stephen's, and average evening attendances were 350 and 150 respectively. In the early 20th century three priests served the parish, but after 1922 the parish could no longer support more than two, and S. T. Smith, vicar 1927-31, resigned for financial reasons. (fn. 38) Church attendance decreased as the town centre population fell, until the 1970s when P. Evans, the vicar, increased congregations by actively encouraging new members from outside the parish. Music and drama played an important part in the church's life in 1987, and the church was often used by other organizations, such as local schools and the Colchester Institute. (fn. 39)

At the Dissolution the priory church of St. Botolph became the parish church. It was also used by the corporation on civic occasions until the Civil War. (fn. 40) In 1584 the windows of the church and chancel were so broken that the church was more like a dovehouse than a place of prayer. (fn. 41) The belfry was in a poor condition in 1633 and the church windows needed glazing. (fn. 42) In 1650 the church was described as burnt and ruined from the siege, and it was left in ruins thereafter. (fn. 43)

The new church of St. Botolph, immediately south of the priory ruins, consecrated in 1837, was designed by William Mason of Ipswich in the Norman style. (fn. 44) The large white brick building comprises a chancel, nave with galleried north and south aisles, south chapel, south vestry, west gallery, and west tower. Extensive alterations to the interior in 1882 included the creation of a chancel in the eastern bay of the nave. (fn. 45) A south chapel was dedicated to St. Agnes in 1933. (fn. 46) In the later 1970s the screen, choir stalls, and pulpit were removed, and the nave pews were replaced with chairs. (fn. 47)

There is one bell of 1837 by Thomas Mears. The plate is 19th-century. (fn. 48) A white marble wall monument with a female figure in classical dress, commemorating William Hawkins (d. 1843) and Mary Ann his wife (d. 1834), on the east wall south of the altar, was obscured by an internal partition in 1987.

ST. GILES'S.

The church, immediately north of St. John's abbey precinct, was probably built soon after the foundation of the abbey in 1097 and may have replaced an Anglo-Saxon church dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, which stood c. 100 yd. away on the site of a Roman cemetery. (fn. 49) St. Giles's was recorded between 1165 and 1171 when the bishop of London confirmed it to St. John's abbey. The abbey appropriated the church c. 1220; no vicarage was ordained, but the abbey was to provide a suitable chaplain. (fn. 50) After the Dissolution the living was called a perpetual curacy, but it appears that from 1650 or earlier the rectory, composed of tithe only, passed to successive curates. From 1812 the living was treated as a rectory. (fn. 51)

At the Dissolution the advowson of the perpetual curacy, together with the tithes, seems to have descended with the site of St. John's abbey to the Lucas family, although Thomas Audley, nephew of Lord Audley, was said to have held it at his death in 1572. (fn. 52) John Lucas, Lord Lucas, presented in 1662. There is no later record of any presentation by him or his heirs, and in 1702 the Crown presented, presumably by lapse. (fn. 53) Francis Powell, curate of St. Giles's (d. 1749), acquired the advowson, which was sold by his executors to his successor, Charles Lind. (fn. 54) Lind mortgaged it to Jeremy Bentham who obtained possession after Lind's death in 1771 and in 1774 sold it to Nicholas Tindal. By will dated 1774 Tindal left the patronage in trust for John Morgan and Anna Maria his wife. Thomas Woodrooffe, one of the trustees, presented in 1788 and 1812, and the bishop of London by lapse in 1810. John Morgan (d. 1817) devised the advowson in trust for his son, John Woodrooffe Morgan. In 1818 the trustees presented the same J. W. Morgan, who died in 1857, leaving the advowson to his nephew, T. M. Gepp (d. 1883), who devised it to his son, N. P. Gepp. In 1913 the Gepp family transferred the patronage to G. T. Brunwin-Hales, rector of St. Mary's, Colchester, who later the same year transferred it to the archdeacon of Colchester. (fn. 55) St. Giles's benefice ceased to exist in 1953 when the new benefice of St. Botolph with Holy Trinity and St. Giles was created in the reorganisation of Colchester parishes, and the church was closed. (fn. 56)

The living was valued at 40s. in 1254 and £3 6s. 8d. in 1291. (fn. 57) No value was recorded in 1535, and the living was vacant because of poverty in 1563. (fn. 58) By 1650 the rectorial tithes worth c. £25 were attached to the living, but in 1719 its value was only £30 a year because much of the parish, the site of St. John's abbey and its demesne, was exempt from tithes. (fn. 59) The living was augmented with the reversion of a quarter share of Huntsman's Farm, Foxearth, left by Moses Cook (d. 1732), matched in 1770 with £200 from Queen Anne's Bounty. In 1824 J. W. Morgan's grant of a house and c. 1 a. of land worth £400 was met by two parliamentary grants of £300 each. (fn. 60) Thus the value of the living increased to £50 by the mid 18th century and to £190 by 1835. (fn. 61) Tithes on 385 a. of arable, 118 a. of meadow, 32 a. of market gardens, and 1 a. of glebe (presumably that recently given by J. W. Morgan), were commuted for a rent charge of £193 14s. in 1837. (fn. 62) By 1887 the value of the living had risen to c. £250. (fn. 63)

There was no glebe, and no parsonage house until 1824 (fn. 64) when J. W. Morgan gave the parish a rectory house in Mersea Road. The house was sold in 1903 and a new one bought in Gladstone Road, no house or land being available within the parish. (fn. 65)

In 1414 John Wells, parish clerk, and four others were accused of reading books in English but were apparently treated leniently. (fn. 66) William Tey, by will proved 1514, endowed an obit in the church, presumably the one worth 8s. a year which survived until 1548. (fn. 67) In 1542 as many as half the 320 adult parishioners failed to attend church, some working and others frequenting the alehouse or staying in bed. (fn. 68)

About 1586 the curate William Cock was ordered to be deprived for refusing to wear the surplice; he presumably conformed for he kept St. Giles's for 34 years, although in 1605 he was accused of allowing excommunicated people to attend church. (fn. 69) Cock's son and successor, Samuel, was presented in 1627 for not reading prayers in church on Wednesday and Sunday, (fn. 70) but the reason may have been laziness rather than opposition to the established church, for in 1644 he was apparently ejected after being charged with non-residence, with forgetting to administer the wine at communion, with excommunicating those who did not come to the altar rail for communion, and with failing to prepare people to take the Covenant. (fn. 71) In 1636 one of many parishioners who did not attend communion vowed that he would be brained before he would receive communion kneeling at an altar rail. (fn. 72)

The living was vacant in 1650 and probably remained so for much of the later 17th century, being served by other Colchester clergy and by masters of the grammar school; (fn. 73) most 18th-century incumbents were pluralists. Francis Powell, rector of All Saints' and curate of St. Botolph's 1713-49, acted as curate for the absentee Edmund Heywood who was incumbent of St. Giles's from 1702 and also vicar of Great Bentley from 1708 until his death in 1728. Powell acquired the patronage of St. Giles's and appointed himself as perpetual curate. (fn. 74) He performed one Sunday service when he was at home, paying a curate to do so at other times. (fn. 75) His successor, Charles Lind, who held two other Essex livings, continued to conduct only one Sunday service and in 1766 administered communion four times a year to 20 to 30 parishioners. In 1778 the non-resident incumbent claimed to be very careful that the church was served properly. (fn. 76)

In 1810 the living was vacant, being served, as it had been for the previous 31 years, by Charles Hewitt, rector of Greenstead; there were c. 30 communicants. (fn. 77) Church life improved slightly under the resident J. W. Morgan, rector 1818- 57, who held two Sunday services, but only c. 50-60 parishioners out of a population of 1,987 attended church in 1841, and on Census Sunday 1851 attendances of 123 at both the morning and afternoon services were reported out of a population of 2,443. (fn. 78) Morgan's successor, W. Goode, a firm Evangelical, resigned in 1872 and was followed by W. H. Wardell, rector until 1903, a moderate High Churchman, who inaugurated daily services and a full choral Sunday evening service. St. Barnabas's church was opened in 1875 as a chapel of ease in the growing suburb of Old Heath, and an assistant curate was appointed from 1887 to serve it. In 1903 a new parish room was built, and the church was restored in 1907 after many years of fund-raising. (fn. 79) In 1914 there were four Sunday and two daily services, in line with the moderate High Church tradition which continued in 1941. (fn. 80)

The average attendance in 1920 was 130 at the morning and 280 at the evening service, and 30 at St. Barnabas's in the evening. In 1928 a house in Claudius Road was bought for the curate, but sold in 1930 when a new house was built next to the church. By 1930 E. W. H. Harley Parker, rector 1927-31, was finding it difficult to manage with only one curate in a growing parish where there were no people of leisure to help in church organizations. (fn. 81) In 1939 a new parish hall was opened beside St. Barnabas's church, and in 1950 St. Barnabas's became the church for a new parish taken from St. Giles's, East Donyland, and St. Botolph's. (fn. 82) Already in 1942 St. Giles's was regarded by many as redundant, too close to more attractive churches, and it was closed on the reorganization of Colchester parishes in 1953. (fn. 83)

The church of St. Giles (occasionally called St. Sepulchre's in the 17th century or the early 18th) (fn. 84) comprises a chancel with north and south chapels, nave with south porch, and west tower. (fn. 85) The walls are of mixed rubble with some septaria and brick, the porch is mainly of brick, and the tower of wood. The roofs are of tiles, slates, and lead. In the west end of the surviving south wall of the nave is a small lancet window, apparently of the 12th century. The chancel was rebuilt or at least remodelled in the 13th century when the surviving, blocked lancet window was made in the south wall. The north aisle of the nave and tower were probably built in the 14th century, and further work may have been done in 1423 when £3 15s. or more was spent on ironwork for the windows. (fn. 86) The church was remodelled in the early 16th century, when the south porch was added, a new east window inserted, and the north chapel built or completely rebuilt; the demolished north porch may have been of the same date. The tower was repaired soon after 1514. (fn. 87)

In 1748 only the chancel and a small part of the nave were used, the rest of the church lying in ruins, probably from the 1648 siege; there was a boarded west tower, (fn. 88) perhaps that which existed in 1987, but that tower, which is constructed of re-used materials, is central to the nave and aisle as they were amalgamated in 1819. Other work in 1819 included the bricking in of empty windows, and the insertion of wooden columns to support galleries and a low-pitched roof. (fn. 89) Extensive alterations were made to the interior and furnishings in 1859. From 1886 funds were raised to restore the church or build a new one, (fn. 90) but it was not until 1907 that the chancel and the north chapel were restored, and a vestry added south of the chancel, designed by Sir A. Blomfield. (fn. 91)

The church was closed in 1953, and was for some years used as a store by St. John's Ambulance Brigade. In 1972 it was sold and converted into a masonic hall, opened in 1976. The interior was rearranged, an upper room, reached by a staircase in the tower, being formed at gallery level in the west end of the nave. Single storey additions were made on the south and west sides of the nave. (fn. 92)

The surviving plate, of 1826, was on display in Colchester museum in 1987. (fn. 93) The only bell, of 1627 by Miles Gray, was cracked by 1881 and unusable by 1954. (fn. 94) The north chapel contains several memorials to members of the Lucas family. A black marble memorial, originally a floor slab, to Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, royalists shot by order of General Fairfax after the siege in 1648, has been mounted on the north wall. An arch with carved rosettes and strap ornament on its soffit also survived on the north wall, probably from the tomb of Thomas Lucas (d. 1611) and Mary his wife (d. 1613). A wall tablet to John, Lord Lucas (d. 1671), and another to Anne, Lady Lucas (d. 1660), also remain.

ST. JAMES'S.

Architectural evidence shows that the church was founded by the 12th century or earlier. (fn. 95) Before 1242 the advowson was held by Ralph Somer; it was granted to Coggeshall abbey in 1253, and recovered presumably by Ralph's heirs in 1266. (fn. 96) From 1328 or earlier until the Dissolution St. Botolph's priory was patron, presenting regularly except on two occasions in 1469 when Coggeshall abbey presented. In 1536 Henry VIII granted the advowson to Sir Thomas Audley, who gave it to his brother, Thomas Audley of Berechurch. Although the Crown presented by lapse in 1585, 1622, and 1670, the advowson remained with the Audley family until 1700 when Henry Audley sold it to Henry Compton, bishop of London (d. 1713), whose executor sold it to his successor, John Robinson. On Robinson's death in 1723 the advowson passed to his widow who sold it to Samuel Hill; Hill exchanged it with the Crown in 1724 for that of Shenstone (Staffs.). The Crown presented until 1857, (fn. 97) but seems to have sold the advowson c. 1865 to Charles Cornwallis, Baron Braybrooke, who in 1868 exchanged it with the bishop of Rochester, then the diocesan bishop, for that of Littlebury. Since then successive diocesan bishops have presented. (fn. 98) The new benefice of St. James with All Saints, St. Nicholas and St. Runwald was formed in 1953 with the bishop as patron and St. James's as the parish church. (fn. 99)

The rectory was valued at 40s. in 1254 and £11 8s. 4d. in 1535. (fn. 1) No value was recorded in 1291. In 1495 a pension of 10s. a year was paid to St. Botolph's priory, and payments continued until the Dissolution. (fn. 2) In 1650 tithes and rates on houses levied by the town council were worth £20 and glebe 20s. a year. (fn. 3) Thomas Audley, Lord Audley left 10 s. a year to the rector, but payment had ceased by the mid 18th century. (fn. 4) Moses Cook (d. 1732) left the reversion of a quarter share of the rent of Huntsman's Farm, Foxearth; the living was augmented in 1749 by £50 under the will of Susanna Hoyt, and in 1770 by £200 from Queen Anne's Bounty, to match Cook's legacy, which was used to buy a house in Bear Lane (later East Stockwell Street). A parliamentary grant of £200 in 1812, and another of £300 in 1823 to meet the £200 received from the rector and parishioners following the exchange of the parsonage house, helped to raise the gross income to £122 by 1835. (fn. 5) Tithes on 49 a. of arable, 20 a. of grass, 62 a. of gardens, and 30 a. of buildings were commuted for a rent charge of £75 14s. 4d. in 1845, and the value of the living had increased to £140 by 1863. (fn. 6) In 1865 part of the purchase money of the advowson was used to endow the living; the sum was augmented by the will of Margaret Round, proved 1887, so that by 1890 the living was worth £205. (fn. 7)

There was a rectory house near the church in the time of John Ball, rector 1372-93. (fn. 8) The house which needed repair in 1596, and was 'ready to fall down' in 1609, was probably the one on the south side of East Hill just outside East gate which was burnt down during the siege of 1648. (fn. 9) The site was owned by the rector and let as garden ground in 1742. (fn. 10) There was no rectory house until the late 18th century when a house in East Stockwell Street was acquired, presumably the one bought with the augmentation of Queen Anne's Bounty. Under pressure from the archdeacon the house was exchanged c. 1820 with William Walford for a house on East Hill in St. James's parish. (fn. 11) A new rectory house, designed by S. S. Teulon, was built in 1859 on land north of the old house. (fn. 12) It was still the rectory house in 1987.

The living was poor, but not the poorest Colchester living, and vacancies were usually filled. (fn. 13) The rector in 1406 was accused of keeping a concubine. (fn. 14) Edmund Coningsburgh, non-resident rector for under a year in 1470, was employed by Edward IV as an envoy to the pope in 1471 and became archbishop of Armagh in 1477. (fn. 15)

Anchorites were associated with the parish church in the 12th and 13th centuries. (fn. 16) A statue of St. James, in the chancel, was recorded in 1409 and 1485, and one of St. Ignatius, possibly with an associated altar, in 1500. (fn. 17) There was a guild of St. Peter in 1426, perhaps in the chapel of the saint recorded in 1500. The lady chapel was recorded in 1491. (fn. 18) Alice Strange, by will of 1409, endowed an obit in the church, but it had been lost by 1548. (fn. 19) A guild of St. Anne and St. James, in existence in 1525, had disappeared by c. 1546. (fn. 20)

In 1534 John Wayne, rector 1510-36, openly preached against certain new books 'of the king's print', but later rectors and their parishioners, notably the alderman and clothier John Clere (d. 1538), seem generally to have endorsed the protestant changes of the 16th century. (fn. 21) John Pekins, rector 1537-9, and John Blank, instituted 1541, were deprived of subsequent livings in Mary's reign. (fn. 22) By 1548 the churchwardens had used the 31s. 9d. raised from the sale of copper plate, wax, and latten to glaze, whitewash, and paint the church. (fn. 23) The living seems to have been vacant from 1554 or earlier until 1586. (fn. 24) In 1575 as many as 11 people were fined for repeated absence from church. The puritan curate in 1582 did not use the catechism but expounded parts of the scripture instead. Robert Holmes, rector 1586-92, also rector of Greenstead 1586-9, was accused in 1585 of 'slack administration' of the communion; in 1588 he described the wearing of the surplice as superstitious. (fn. 25) In 1595 Thomas Farrar, rector 1591-1610, was accused of serving two cures in the same day; in 1616 his successor Samuel Crick was non-resident and his curate apparently unlicensed. (fn. 26)

In 1632 the rector always wore a surplice to read prayers before the sermon he preached on the Friday before the monthly communion service, but in 1636 he was reminded to administer communion only to parishioners kneeling at the rail. (fn. 27) Robert Tuller signed the Essex Testimony, a presbyterian manifesto, in 1648, apparently as minister of St. James's, and the Independent Owen Stockton preached there on Sunday mornings from 1657 to 1662. (fn. 28)

William Shelton, rector 1670-99, who also held Stisted 1691-9, was a staunch defender of the Church of England, and opposed papists, Quakers, and other dissenters, (fn. 29) as did the nonresident Thomas Bennet, rector 1701-16, lecturer at St. Olave's, Southwark, and preacher at St. Lawrence Jewry (Lond.). (fn. 30) His successor Barnabas Simpson, rector from 1716, lived in Colchester, employing a curate to serve his country living. In 1723 there were two Sunday services and monthly communion. By 1738, when Simpson was also sequestrator of St. Nicholas's, services at St. James's had been reduced to one on most Sundays. John Milton, rector 1743-67, held only one Sunday service in 1747 when he also served Lexden. (fn. 31) By 1766 Milton, then also vicar of Fingringhoe, was in poor health and employed one curate to perform the Sunday service and another to say prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays; monthly communion was administered to 60-70 communicants. John Heath, rector 1777-81, lived in Chelmsford where he was master at the grammar school; his curates included Samuel Parr, master of Colchester grammar school. (fn. 32)

In 1810 the resident rector John Dakins provided an evening lecture as well as one full service on Sundays, and communion eight times a year for 50-60 communicants, a number little changed since 1778. By 1815, although he also served Peldon, he seems to have increased the Sunday services at St. James's to two. (fn. 33) Meshach Seaman, rector 1839-49, was an Evangelical writer of devotional and literary works. (fn. 34) In 1841 three quarters of the population of 1,439 were said to belong to the church, but on Census Sunday 1851, out of a population of 1,845, only 270 in the morning and 370 in the afternoon, including 70 Sunday school children on each occasion, attended church. (fn. 35)

St. Anne's mission hall was built before 1907 to serve the increasing population in the Ipswich road area. (fn. 36) By 1902 there were four Sunday services and two each weekday at St. James's, reflecting the high churchmanship of C. C. Naters, rector 1895-1918, who, despite the opposition of many parishioners, introduced incense, vestments, processions, lights, and holy pictures, into the church. When in 1914, without a faculty, he erected a rood loft and screen, and an altar in the south chapel which obscured the monument to the philanthropist Arthur Winsley, parishioners brought a case against him in the consistory court. Naters was ordered to remove the rood loft and some of the candlesticks and pictures. When a further judgement compelled him to replace the altar with a small Jacobean table to reveal Winsley's monument, he complied, but with solemn ceremonial and a defiant sermon against state interference in religion. (fn. 37) The high church tradition was maintained by Naters's successors. The average church attendance in 1920 was 130 in the morning and 150 in the evening. C. W. James, rector from 1927, needing help especially for the growing district round St. Anne's mission hall, from 1934 had an assistant curate. (fn. 38) In 1987 the church was a focus for catholic faith and worship in Colchester and three quarters of the members lived outside the parish. (fn. 39)

The church of St. James, the largest in Colchester, stands in a commanding position just inside the former east gate at the top of East Hill. It is built of rubble with ashlar dressings, and comprises an aisled chancel with north-east vestry, aisled and clerestoried nave with north porch, and west tower. (fn. 40) The Roman brick north western quoins of an unaisled nave survive and the later medieval development suggests that in the 12th century the church may have been cruciform. The lower stages of the tower are late 12th- or early 13th-century, and the upper stage is 14th-century. The presumed transepts were extended as aisles c. 1300 when the two eastern bays of the arcades were built. Money for a new aisle was being collected in 1403. (fn. 41) The church underwent a major reconstruction in the late 15th century; new work was done on the chancel in 1464 and in 1490 money for the enlargement and enrichment of the church was raised by an entertainment in the street outside the church. The two western bays of the arcades were built and the arches of the eastern bays were reshaped to match them. The aisles were extended and the older parts refenestrated. The chancel and its chapels and vestry were built or rebuilt, as was the chancel arch and the matching arches between the chapels and the nave aisles. The tower was remodelled and given diagonal buttresses. (fn. 42)

The tower was said to be decayed in 1633. (fn. 43) A parish clerk's house adjoining the north side of the chancel was demolished in 1818 for highway improvements to East Hill. (fn. 44) The church was in reasonably good order in 1835 except for the north wall, but by 1870 was so dilapidated that services were no longer being held there. (fn. 45) Restoration work was carried out in 1871-2 under S. S. Teulon. The north porch and tower arch were rebuilt, and all the roofs were renewed except for those of the chancel aisles. A new organ was installed in the north chapel in 1890, and screens to designs by T. G. Jackson were erected in the south chapel in 1899-1900. (fn. 46) In 1951 the 19th-century choir stalls were removed from the chancel and the floor was lowered. In 1954 the north chapel was restored, and the existing organ removed and replaced by the organ from St. Nicholas's church. The organ console was moved to the west end of the church in the 1970s. (fn. 47)

Two brasses of the late 16th century to Alice and John Maynard survive. A large marble statue of Arthur Winsley was erected in 1738 at the east end of the south chapel. It was moved to the west end of the north aisle in 1923 when the south chapel was restored. A painting, the Adoration of the Shepherds, presented by the painter George Carter in 1778 as an altarpiece, was hanging above the north door of the nave in 1987 and a painting of the Last Supper by Sir William Archer of 1855 was above the sacristy door in the north chapel. (fn. 48)

Two bells by Miles Gray of 1622 survive; the smaller one is used as a clock bell. The church plate includes a silver gilt paten of 1705 and a pair of silver gilt flagons of 1750. An oak chest of the 16th century and one of the 17th remained in the church in 1987, and there was a medieval altar slab with consecration crosses, which belonged to St. Martin's Church. (fn. 49)

ST. LEONARD'S.

The church, on the north side of Hythe Hill, was recorded c. 1150 when Maurice de Haie gave the church of 'Hethe' to St. John's abbey who still held the advowson in 1227. (fn. 50) The king presented in 1388, the temporalities of the abbey being in his hands, (fn. 51) and Sir Thomas Audley in 1539 by purchase of a turn. At the Dissolution in 1544 the advowson passed to the Crown which presented regularly until 1676 when the living was left vacant and sequestered. (fn. 52) In 1702 the advowson was acquired by exchange for Henry Compton, bishop of London (d. 1713), and it passed in 1714, like that of Holy Trinity, to Balliol College, Oxford. (fn. 53) The Crown presented in 1742 but the college did so regularly from 1753 (fn. 54) until 1977 when the benefice was united with that of St. Mary Magdalen with St. Stephen. Thereafter the patronage board presented for two turns in three and the Lord Chancellor for the third. (fn. 55) The church was closed in 1983 and in 1987 was acquired by the Redundant Churches Fund. (fn. 56)

The rectory was valued at 5 marks in 1254 and £10 in 1535. (fn. 57) A pension of 5s. due to St. John's abbey was recorded in the late 12th century and still paid in the 13th century. (fn. 58) In 1227 there was a vicarage endowed with some small tithes, but it was not certainly recorded thereafter. St. Botolph's priory successfully claimed tithes of the Sokeham or Haymsokne in 1227, and a pension of 2s. due to the priory from St. Leonard's in the 1490s (fn. 59) may have been in lieu of tithes. In 1650 the income of £7 15s. from the 3 a. of glebe and £2 from tithes was augmented by £38 from rates on houses levied by the town council. In 1707 the total income of the living was only £16. (fn. 60) Moses Cook (d. 1732) left the reversion of a quarter share of Hunter's farm, Foxearth, and the living was augmented by grants of £200 from Queen Anne's Bounty in 1770 (to match Cook's benefaction) and 1814 and by a parliamentary grant of a further £200 in 1809. (fn. 61) The Bounty added 2 a. of meadow to the glebe in 1805 and a further 2 a. in 1810. (fn. 62) By 1835 the net income had risen to £100. (fn. 63) In 1845 tithes on 79 a. were commuted for £30. (fn. 64) The income was augmented with £24 a year in 1843, with a capital grant of £200 in 1864, and with a total of £41 13s. 4d. a year in 1868, 1875, and 1879; the sale of 4 cottages and 5 a. of glebe in 1879 raised £1,376. (fn. 65) The sum of £200 collected by Trinity church school, Springfield, in 1874 when the headmaster F. J. Manning became rector was matched by the patron, the diocese, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to produce an annual income of £30. By 1894 the tithe rent charge had fallen to £18, augmentation by the Bounty and the Ecclesiastical Commission amounted to £116 18s. 6d. a year, and the share in the farm at Foxearth produced £10 a year making a total income of £144 18s. 6d. (fn. 66) In 1916 James N. Paxman endowed the living with a rent charge of £32 out of Stisted rectory house and glebe. (fn. 67)

The medieval rectory house, recorded in 1531, (fn. 68) was probably opposite the church at the junction of Hythe Hill and Parsonage Lane, where the house stood in the 18th century. (fn. 69) The rectory house, which had seven hearths in 1662, was let to a tenant and was in disrepair in 1683. (fn. 70) Although it was described in 1748 as a large house with a good garden, it was not occupied again as a rectory house and was pulled down c. 1841. (fn. 71) A new rectory house was built in 1863 on open land on the north side of Hythe Hill about 325 yd. west of the church. The house, designed by H. W. Hayward, may have reused some older materials and was enlarged in 1871. (fn. 72) It was requisitioned during the Second World War. (fn. 73) After the war it was used again as a rectory house until it was sold c. 1970. (fn. 74)

In 1290-1 an anchoress was associated with St. Leonard's. (fn. 75) The names of rectors are known from 1311. (fn. 76) Before the Reformation incumbencies were usually short, (fn. 77) and in 1466 the rector was licensed to hold one, and in 1480 two, other benefices in plurality because of the poverty of the living. (fn. 78) An altar of St. Peter existed by 1437 and a chapel of the saint by 1502. (fn. 79) St. Mary's guild played an important part in church and parish life in the 1480s, and by c. 1500 St. Mary's light had been endowed with rents worth 11s. 6d. (fn. 80) Peter Barwick founded a parochial chantry c. 1480, giving in trust rents and a house and garden for a priest to sing mass and help serve the cure. The house was probably that on the east side of the churchyard, recorded in 1586. (fn. 81) John Honyngton, by will proved 1485, gave a field to the chantry but its future was apparently uncertain in 1486. (fn. 82) Edmund Harmanson, by will proved 1502, left a house and rent charge to the parish chantry, and a house to support another chantry priest. (fn. 83) Both chantries survived in 1546 when the parish or Barwick's chantry was worth £8 14s. 4d. and Harmanson's 10s. (fn. 84) A guild of St. Leonard, in existence in 1486, had disappeared by c. 1546. John Bardfield, by will proved 1506, and John Day the chantry priest, by will proved 1520, endowed obits which in 1548 were together worth 18s. 8d. of which 8s. 8d. was paid to the poor. (fn. 85)

In 1546 the Privy Council dismissed trivial complaints, perhaps from protestant parishioners, against William Wright, rector 1539-50. (fn. 86) Nicholas Davy, former parish chantry priest, became rector in 1550 and was probably deprived for marriage in 1554. (fn. 87) In 1559 the Privy Council ordered the bailiffs to pillory Peter Walker, rector since 1557, for 'false seditious tales'. (fn. 88) Walker had left the parish by 1561 and the cure was then served by the prominent radical and former Marian exile Thomas Upcher, rector of Fordham 1561-96. Upcher became rector in 1571 and held the living until his resignation in 1582. (fn. 89) His successor, Thomas Lowe, had been a founder member of the Dedham classis but withdrew from the meetings in 1584. He was shunned by the godly as double-beneficed: he held St. Mary Magdalen's, apparently by sequestration, in conjunction with St. Leonard's until his death in 1615. (fn. 90) By 1585 the church and churchyard were filthy, and in 1594 a man was presented for making sails in the church. (fn. 91) In 1632 John Wall wore the surplice but in 1635 he administered communion to parishioners in their seats; the churchwardens were said to be 'absolute Brownists'. (fn. 92) Wall was succeeded by the presbyterians William Jenkyn, 1640-44, and Alexander Piggott, c. 1648-60. (fn. 93) Edmund Hickeringill, rector of All Saints', unsuccessfully sought presentation to St. Leonard's in 1668 and vehemently opposed the appointment of a new sequestrator c. 1680. His tactics, of encouraging parishioners to withhold tithes and the tenant to refuse to vacate the rectory house, were successful, for by 1683 he was rector. (fn. 94) As late as 1705 the archdeacon had to order the placing of the communion table against the east wall. (fn. 95)

In the early 18th century the living was held by sequestrators who provided only one Sunday service and communion once a month. (fn. 96) From 1753 it was often held by rectors of All Saints', another Balliol living, (fn. 97) who employed assistant curates, among them the political economist Nathaniel Forster and the eccentric John Trussler, to provide one Sunday service and monthly communion. (fn. 98) In 1841 more than three fifths of the population were said to belong to the church, (fn. 99) but in 1850 the rector Francis Curtis chided parishioners for their apathy. (fn. 1) On Census Sunday 1851, out of a population of 1,295, congregations of 120 in the morning and 200 in the afternoon were reported, with 140 children at the Sunday school. (fn. 2) Curtis and his successors John G. Bingley, 1864-74, and F. J. Manning, 1874-86, lived in the parish, employed assistant curates, sought to remedy the effects of poverty and ignorance there, and restored the church. (fn. 3) In 1870 the slogan 'Change here for Rome- Bingley, station master' was chalked on the church wall. (fn. 4) H. T. Osborne, rector 1886-96, introduced daily services (fn. 5) and his successor, H. F. Carter, refitted the church in Tractarian style and frequently invited the ritualist A. H. Stanton to preach. (fn. 6) The Anglo-Catholic G. M. Withers, rector 1934-7, alienated many church members and by 1939 the congregation was depressed and depleted, but by 1950 attendance at church and Sunday school had increased greatly, although a moderately High Church tradition was maintained. (fn. 7) The political activities of J. R. Hale, 1964-71, briefly a member of the National Front, aroused controversy. (fn. 8) From 1972 until its closure in 1983 the church was served by a priest-in-charge who was industrial chaplain for Colchester. (fn. 9)

The church of St. Leonard comprises a chancel with north and south chapels and north-east vestry, aisled and clerestoried nave of four bays, two-storeyed south porch, and west tower. (fn. 10) The walls are of mixed rubble, septaria, flint, pebbles, brick, and freestone, with limestone dressings. The roofs of the nave and chancel are tiled; those of the aisles and tower are of lead. An earlier church comprising nave and chancel was enlarged c. 1335 by the building of the north aisle and the rebuilding of the chancel; the considerable difference in alignment between the nave and chancel suggests that the new chancel replaced an earlier one on faulty foundations. The west tower of three stages was built in the late 14th century and in the early 15th the embattled south aisle and porch were added. The 15th-century south door with contemporary hinges and knocker plate survived in 1983. The north and south chapels were added in the late 15th century. The parish undertook considerable building work in 1481-2 which included the reconstruction of the vestry. (fn. 11) The clerestory, mooted by 1464, (fn. 12) was built c. 1500; the hammerbeam roof was originally decorated with twelve carved angels, five of which were stored in the church in 1983. The north vestry was added in the 16th century and the rood stair rebuilt c. 1530.

The building, a royalist stronghold, was stormed by parliamentary soldiers in the siege of 1648. (fn. 13) It was repaired in 1662 and a brick font installed. (fn. 14)

The church was repaired again in 1724 when a painted altar piece was set up, and by 1748 painted wooden panels depicting the patriarchs had been fixed to the chancel roof, and the tower had a battlemented parapet and cupola. (fn. 15) The top of the tower fell c. 1780 and was rebuilt in brick in 1788. In 1802 the south wall of the church was buttressed. (fn. 16) The painted panels, then decayed, were removed from the chancel roof in 1815, (fn. 17) and in the 1830s the church was repaired and repewed. The brick font of 1662 was broken up in 1840, buried in the north chapel, and replaced by the 15th-century font from East Donyland church. (fn. 18) In the 1860s the tower arch was opened and the chancel restored. Wall paintings in the chancel were discovered in 1866 and painted over. Restoration of the south porch may date from that time. The tower was damaged by the earthquake of 1884 and c. 1889 the brickwork of 1788 was replaced by flint flushwork and a double-stepped, pinnacled parapet. (fn. 19) In the period 1904-35 the interior was refurbished and screens and a rood inserted; (fn. 20) the 15th-century work incorporated in the screens may be from the pre-Reformation screen, part of which survived behind the choir stalls in 1883. (fn. 21) A flying buttress was built to reinforce the south wall in 1912. In 1987 the Redundant Churches Fund became responsible for the church. (fn. 22)

The church had six bells in 1683. (fn. 23) Of those, two survived in 1983 and another, attributed to one of the Grays, was sold in 1829 when it was damaged and useless. (fn. 24) A sanctus bell, attributed to Mot, was recorded unhung in 1904. (fn. 25) In 1983 there were six bells: (i) Bowell, 1927 (ii) Gardiner, 1755 (iii) Chamberlain, formerly attributed to Jordan, late 15th-century (iv) Kebyll, 15th-century (v) Thornton, 1719 (vi) Gardiner, 1755, recast by Bowell, 1926. (fn. 26) The plate includes an Elizabethan chalice, another of 1638, and a paten of 1713. A medieval mazer bowl was given to the church in the 18th century. (fn. 27) An oak chest and three chairs, all of the 17th century, survived in 1983. The monuments include an indent of a priest's memorial brass which has been moved from the chancel to the north chapel (fn. 28) and a wall tablet by George Lufkin to William Hawkins (d. 1812). (fn. 29)

ST. MARTIN'S.

Topographical and archaeological evidence suggests that the church was founded in or before the late Anglo-Saxon period. (fn. 30) It was recorded in 1254 when the advowson of the rectory was held by St. Botolph's priory. The priory retained the advowson until the Dissolution, when it was granted to Sir Thomas Audley. The Audley family did not present after 1537, and the Crown presented, presumably by lapse, in 1616. (fn. 31) In the early 18th century Henry Audley sold the patronage to Henry Compton, bishop of London (d. 1713). Compton's executor sold it to his successor, John Robinson, and on Robinson's death in 1723 it passed to his widow, but its later descent is not clear. The Crown presented in 1760 by lapse. In 1748 and 1768 the advowson was held by Bowater Vernon of Hanbury (Worcs.), (fn. 32) but later the Vernon family's patronage was disputed. William Smythies presented in 1770, presumably having purchased a turn, and the bishop presented by lapse on the next vacancy in 1825 and thereafter. (fn. 33) The advowson remained with the bishop until 1929 when the benefices of St. Martin's and Holy Trinity were united. Succeeding presentations were made alternately by the bishop of Chelmsford and the patrons of Holy Trinity, until the reorganization of the Colchester parishes in 1953, when St. Martin's church was closed and the benefice of Holy Trinity with St. Martin's was incorporated into the new benefice of St. Botolph with Holy Trinity and St. Giles. (fn. 34)

The rectory was valued at 13s. 4d. in 1254 and £6 13s. 4d. in 1535. No value was recorded in 1291. From 1254 until 1537 an annual pension of 3s. was paid to the prior of St. Botolph's and in 1254 2s. was also paid to the rector of St. Mary's. (fn. 35) In 1650 there was no house, glebe, or tithes. (fn. 36) The living was augmented in 1714, 1749, and 1752, with sums of £200 from Queen Anne's Bounty, which were used in 1764 to buy a farm at Ardleigh. A further grant of £200 in 1802, a parliamentary grant of £800 in 1814, and two benefactions of £100 each from J. Round and the Curates' Aid Society, raised the value of the living to £45 a year in 1810 and £72 in 1835. (fn. 37) Tithes on 3 a. of garden ground were commuted for a rent charge of £2 in 1849. (fn. 38) That and a gift of £1,500 stock had increased the value of the living to £115 in 1851. (fn. 39) In 1887 the income was £188 but there was no rectory house. The farm at Ardleigh was sold in 1920. (fn. 40)

In the Middle Ages, because of its small income, St. Martin's was frequently held by pluralists such as Thomas Clark, rector 1438-57 who nevertheless lived in Colchester in 1444 when he was accused of several assaults including an attempted rape in the church vestry. (fn. 41) By will of 1523, Robert Everard left the proceeds from his house and lands at Mile End for an obit in the church. Another obit, endowed with land at Kings mead, was recorded in 1548. (fn. 42) About 1545 the churchwardens sold a gilt pyx and crucifix, and a silver chalice, partly to pay for work on the fabric and furnishings. (fn. 43)

For much of the period c. 1550-1760 the living was vacant and served, often unsatisfactorily, by curates or the incumbents of other Colchester parishes. (fn. 44) In 1582 the minister was accused of preaching false doctrine, and in 1584 the curate did not catechize. The parish had no surplice in 1585 and 1605, and no Book of Common Prayer in 1604. The curate in 1609 abused the church and parishioners by his 'naughty speeches' from the pulpit, (fn. 45) and his successor in 1634 excused his failure to read prayers on holy days by saying that no one attended them. (fn. 46) The puritan practice of sitting for communion was followed in 1635 when seats for communicants were put round the communion table inside the rail. (fn. 47)

The church fabric was allowed to decay in the earlier 17th century, and damage sustained in the siege of 1648 does not seem to have been repaired. By 1693 the church was unusable, and services for St. Martin's parishioners, taken by Robert Dickman rector of Aldham and Strethall, were presumably held in a neighbouring church. (fn. 48) Robert Turner, vicar of St. Peter's, read prayers and preached at St. Martin's on Sunday mornings from 1723 or earlier until c. 1727, when his voice became too weak. In 1742 Sunday services for St. Martin's, St. Runwald's, and St. Peter's parishes were held at St. Peter's church. (fn. 49)

From 1760 incumbents were appointed regularly. Yorick Smythies, presented by his father, held the living for 54 years 1770-1824; he lived most of the time in Colchester but occasionally resided on his other living of Little Bentley, performing one Sunday service with sermon at each church. Communion was administered monthly to c. 30 communicants in 1766, but by 1810 only quarterly to c. 20. (fn. 50) Most baptisms between 1735 and 1812 took place at St. Peter's. (fn. 51) Three quarters of the families in the parish were said to belong to the church in 1841, but on Census Sunday 1851, when the population was 942, only 167 in the morning and 250 in the evening (including 37 and 30 Sunday school children respectively) attended church. (fn. 52) By 1891 services had increased to three on Sundays, daily evensong, and communion on saints' days. There were Sunday classes for young girls and young men, a mothers' meeting, and a working men's club. (fn. 53)

O. D. Watkins, rector 1902-7, had worked in India for 26 years. (fn. 54) He lived in an adjoining parish and served the cure personally, but felt the need for help in a parish where three quarters of the population did not attend church and collections covered less than three quarters of church expenses. H. F. de Courcy-Benwell, rector 1913-c. 1930, a member of the local Labour and Independent Labour parties, read morning prayers daily, held communion weekly, and tried to visit his parishioners monthly. His efforts to make use of lay helpers foundered in the largely working-class parish. (fn. 55)

The church of St. Martin, West Stockwell Street, comprises a chancel with modern north vestry, aisled nave of three bays, with south porch, and west tower. (fn. 56) The walls are of flint rubble with Roman and later brick, and the roofs are tiled. By the 11th century the church was probably a cruciform building with chancel, nave with north aisle, and transepts. The surviving west tower, which includes much Roman brick and may have replaced a central tower, was added in the 12th century. The chancel was rebuilt in the earlier 14th century, from which date a piscina and a probable Easter sepulchre survive; its roof is supported by an open crown post truss on arch braces with wall posts running down to the floor. In the 14th or 15th century the nave, north aisle, and transepts were rebuilt and a south aisle was added; a hagioscope in the north aisle and the rood-loft staircase at the south-east corner of the nave survived in 1987. On the site of the 19th-century vestry there was a 14th-century north chapel whose south door survived in 1987. (fn. 57) A south porch was probably built in the late 14th century, but was rebuilt in the late 17th century. The tower or steeple was being built or rebuilt in 1517. (fn. 58)

The building was in bad repair in the late 16th century and the 17th. In 1607 two broken bells were removed, the tower being too weak and damaged to hold the three bells, and the windows and chancel needed repair. (fn. 59) By 1633 part of the tower had fallen down, and more was demolished during the siege of 1648. (fn. 60) Some repairs were apparently made between 1748 and 1768 and the ruined tower was covered in, but the church remained in poor condition. (fn. 61) The interior was renovated and reseated shortly before 1848. (fn. 62) The nave and chancel were partially restored in 1882, the chancel roof by Sir George Gilbert Scott at his own expense. (fn. 63) Further extensive controversial restoration was undertaken in 1891 but was apparently never completed: the floor was repaved, the arcade pillars were repaired, the tower arch was reopened, and a north vestry was built. (fn. 64) Between 1903 and 1907 the tower was restored. (fn. 65)

The two bells removed in 1607 were sold and were apparently replaced in 1642 by one by Miles Gray, which was old and cracked in 1899. The church plate included a silver salver of 1741, at the Colchester museum in 1987. Two oak chests, one with an early 16th-century lockplate, and one Jacobean with moulded panels, were still in the church in 1985. (fn. 66) A medieval altar slab with consecration crosses was being used in 1922. (fn. 67)

St. Martin's church was made redundant at the 1953 reorganisation. (fn. 68) In 1957 it was transferred in trust to the Colchester theatre group as a cultural centre. (fn. 69) The interior was painted black and a stage erected at the west end, but in 1987 the building was declared unsafe for public performances. In 1991 Essex county council bought the church for conversion to offices. (fn. 70) The graveyard, maintained by Colchester district council, contains a large sarchophagus tomb of 1816 of William Sparling.

ST. MARY'S-AT-THE-WALLS.

The discovery of Anglo-Saxon graves, perhaps of the Middle-Saxon period, south of the surviving churchyard suggests that a pre-Conquest church stood on or near the site of the surviving building. (fn. 71) The church, near the western postern in the town wall, lay within the soke acquired by the bishop of London between 998 and 1066 and was recorded in 1206. (fn. 72) It was an episcopal peculiar; (fn. 73) although it was included in the archdeacon's visitation in 1683 it was exempt from his jurisdiction in 1768 and parishioners' wills were proved in the bishop of London's, not the archdeacon's, courts until c. 1857. (fn. 74) The advowson, retained by the bishop of London when he leased the soke in 1206, passed to successive diocesan bishops, and the bishop of Chelmsford was patron when the church closed in 1978. (fn. 75) The Crown presented in 1361 and 1596, the bishopric being vacant. (fn. 76)

The rectory was valued at 3 marks in 1254, £2 13s. 4d. in 1291, and £10 in 1535. A payment of 2s. from St. Martin's rectory, recorded in 1254, was apparently lost by 1291. (fn. 77) In 1429 the abbot of St. John's successfully claimed tithes on land in Monksdown in the parish. (fn. 78) In 1650 the living was worth £40 a year. (fn. 79) In 1766 Charles Gray gave the rector of St. Mary's tithes on 24½ a., formerly tithe-free lands of St. Botolph's priory. (fn. 80) A parliamentary grant of £200 in 1833 and an annual grant of £50 from that year by the patron, the bishop of London, raised the value of the living to £212 a year in 1835. (fn. 81) In 1898, when the annual net income was £275, boundary changes resulted in tithe rent charges of £48 being transferred from Lexden to St. Mary's. (fn. 82)

In 1610 the glebe comprised c. 10 a. of arable, 3 a. of half year land, and two small houses in St. Mary's Lane. (fn. 83) The houses apparently replaced two taken down in the 1540s and were later divided into three dwellings which were pulled down c. 1677. (fn. 84) By 1810 Philip Bayles, rector 1804-55, had increased the half year land to 11 a. by lease and purchase; from 1823 or earlier until c. 1890 he and his successors leased from the free burgesses rights of common on the glebe. (fn. 85) By 1900 all the glebe had been sold. (fn. 86)

The rector had an orchard and garden, and presumably also a house, in the early 14th century. (fn. 87) A rectory house mentioned in 1610 was probably the one opposite the church in St. Mary's Lane that had 10 hearths in 1671, and was extended eastwards c. 1677 by the rector, Joseph Powell. In 1739 its older west end was rebuilt by the rector, Philip Morant. (fn. 88) A new house was built in 1871, to the designs of Frederic Chancellor, north-east of the old house, which was demolished. (fn. 89) The 1871 house was pulled down and replaced in 1964-5 by a smaller one, which was sold in 1983 to the Mercury theatre and renamed Mercury House. (fn. 90)

In 1338 Joseph Eleanor or Colchester, clerk, obtained licence to alienate 2 messuages, 102 a., a toft, and 10s. rent to two priests to say divine service in St. Mary's church. (fn. 91) In 1348 he gave the same endowment, with 100 sheep, for a chantry of St. Mary and All Saints served by two chaplains who were to pray for him, his parents and benefactors, and all faithful Christians. (fn. 92) From 1362 or earlier the chantry was served by one priest in the chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr. When Eleanor died its advowson passed to the bailiffs and commonalty, who presented until the Suppression. (fn. 93) The endowment, worth £8 6s. in 1535, was given by the king to the bailiffs and commonalty in 1539 for the foundation of a grammar school and other uses. (fn. 94) A chantry house in the churchyard near the north-east end of the church was demolished when the church was rebuilt in 1714. (fn. 95)

Rectors were recorded from c. 1220; the living was poor and in the Middle Ages incumbencies were usually short. (fn. 96) Papal authority was given in 1398 for the rector to have a portable altar, and in 1440 to allow the new rector, Robert Lardener, to hold another living, because of the poverty of St. Mary's. (fn. 97) Lardener (d. 1464) endowed two lights before the great crucifix and one at the entrance to the chancel. (fn. 98) The sale by the churchwardens of a silver and gilt pyx and other plate c. 1534 and the removal of painted window glass by 1548 suggest that parishioners held protestant views, as presumably did Thomas Kirkham, rector 1540-51, who was fined in 1544 for failing to read the king's statutes in the church and for living with a woman. (fn. 99) His successor, Marmaduke Smith, escaped deprivation for marriage in the spring of 1554, but took the precaution of fleeing before the arrival of bishop Bonner's episcopal visitors in October. (fn. 1)

From 1562 until 1804 rectors of St. Mary's served at least one other cure, usually in or near Colchester, and from c. 1644 to 1735 were sequestrators of Holy Trinity. (fn. 2) Hugh Allen, rector from 1562, also held St. Mary Magdalen and, from 1567, Tolleshunt D'Arcy. He subsequently went to Ireland with the Ardes Expedition of 1572, becoming bishop of Down and Connor (1572-82) and of Fearns (1582-9). John Walford, rector of All Saints, 1571-1609, and an unpreaching minister, held St Mary's by sequestration until 1596. (fn. 3) George Archer, formerly 'a scrivenor and an attorney in the County Court', was instituted in 1596 and also held St Nicholas's by sequestration from 1598 until his death in 1604. (fn. 4) Archer was succeeded by the conformist Thomas Talcott, 1604-41, rector of All Saints, 1609-26 and of Mile End 1626-41. (fn. 5)

In 1644 parliament replaced the non-resident Robert Mercer, who was also vicar of St. Peter's, with William Boissard, who may have had royalist sympathies as he was presented to All Saints' rectory in 1640 by Sir Henry Audley. (fn. 6) Nevertheless he remained at St. Mary's until 1660, when he became perpetual curate of St. Giles's. (fn. 7) Despite serious damage in the siege of 1648 (fn. 8) St. Mary's church was used for baptisms 1654- c. 1663 and for marriages 1656-c. 1660. (fn. 9) The congregation used Holy Trinity church for services until 1714, (fn. 10) when St. Mary's church was rebuilt. John Smith, rector 1661-c. 1676 was also minister of the Dutch church 1668-75; he was later known as 'Narrative Smith' for his narrative of 1679 on the Popish plot. (fn. 11) The pluralist Joseph Powell, rector 1676-97, seems to have lived in Colchester at least occasionally, for he enlarged the rectory house, but an assistant curate, William Shillito, served St. Mary's and Holy Trinity 1679-99. (fn. 12)

Robert Middleton, rector 1706-34, rebuilt St. Mary's church in 1714 and from that time provided one Sunday service in St. Mary's, another in Holy Trinity, and communion once a month and at festivals in the two churches by turns. From 1723 or earlier he employed assistant curates. (fn. 13) In the later 18th century the parish, with several wealthy residents, a new church, and a good rectory house, (fn. 14) attracted two eminent scholars who preached to 'polite congregations'. (fn. 15) Philip Morant, historian of Essex, rector 1737-70, provided one full Sunday service, communion once a month and at festivals, and read prayers on Sundays between Michaelmas and Easter. He lived in the rectory house until he moved in 1767 to his other benefice at Aldham, leaving an assistant curate to serve St. Mary's. (fn. 16) Thomas Twining, translator of Aristotle, vicar of White Notley 1772-96, and curate of Fordham 1763-89, thought the living so attractive, although not valuable, that he 'used a bit of pushery' to get it in 1788. He lived at Fordham and Colchester and died in 1804. (fn. 17)

His successor Philip Bayles, rector 1804-55, served the cure himself, assisted in his later years by a curate, and on Census Sunday in 1851 morning and afternoon services were attended by c. 400. (fn. 18) In the 1860s the rector Charles L'Oste's great age inhibited innovation, but parish life revived under his successor John W. Irvine, rector 1870-97 and rural dean from 1880, who increased the number of services and rebuilt the church and rectory house. (fn. 19) His association with G. H. Wilkinson suggests an interest in the reconciliation of ritualists and evangelicals; he also urged better relations with nonconformists. (fn. 20) The parish boundaries were altered in 1898 by an exchange of detached parts with Lexden and in 1911 by the transfer to St. Mary's of detached parts of St. Runwald's, St. Botolph's, and Holy Trinity, consolidating the parish south and west of the church. (fn. 21) Greville T. Brunwin-Hales, rector of St. Mary's 1897- 1932 and vicar of Berechurch 1913-32, rural dean from 1907, was active in borough affairs and did notable work in the formation of the new diocese of Chelmsford. (fn. 22) He introduced daily matins and evensong and weekly communion, attracting many people from other parishes to St. Mary's. (fn. 23) G. A. Campbell, rector and rural dean 1933-46, replaced daily matins, which was rarely attended, with daily communion in St. Mary's or Christ Church chapel of ease. (fn. 24) In the 1970s St. Mary's was isolated from much of its parish by the new ring road, and in 1978 the church was closed. (fn. 25)

Christ Church opened in 1904 as a chapel of ease in an iron building on land in Ireton Road given by James Round. It was served by curates of St. Mary's. (fn. 26) In 1978 the iron building was replaced by a brick and slated church on the same site in Ireton Road, built to the designs of Bryan Thomas as the parish church of Christ Church with St. Mary and shared with the former Headgate Congregational church. (fn. 27)

The church of St. Mary's-at-the-Walls comprises a chancel with northern organ chamber, north-east vestries, and a south chapel, an aisled and clerestoried nave, north and south porches, and a north-west tower. (fn. 28) All but the tower are of 1872. The medieval church apparently comprised a chancel, perhaps with a chapel, a nave, south porch, and north-west tower. (fn. 29) The tower needed repair in 1385, and was replaced c. 1534 by the surviving tower, built of rubble containing Roman bricks and tiles, with limestone dressings. (fn. 30) The church was ruined in the siege of 1648. (fn. 31)

The repair of the church may have been mooted in 1679 when a new bell was cast, but it was not until 1709 that steps were taken to rebuild the church by brief. (fn. 32) In 1713 the remains of the chancel, nave, and porch were demolished, and a new brick church, designed by John Price, was built immediately east of the stump of the medieval tower. It comprised an aisled nave with a west gallery, a small chancel, and the tower whose the upper stage was rebuilt in brick in 1729. (fn. 33) Plans to crown the tower with four stone pineapples and a cupola may not have been carried out. (fn. 34) In 1853 the western gallery was removed, revealing the tower arch. (fn. 35) A south-east vestry, in imitation of Price's style, was added c. 1859. (fn. 36)

In 1872 the church, except the tower, was rebuilt in red and black brick to the designs of Arthur Blomfield. The chancel with south chapel and north organ chamber was built first as an extension to the existing church, but as funds increased the nave and aisles were rebuilt on the 18th-century foundations, the columns of the arcades being of cast iron. A clerestory and north and south porches were added. (fn. 37) In 1911 the tower battlements, damaged in the earthquake of 1884, were repaired and a chancel screen and choir stalls were built; the iron columns of the nave arcades were clad with light ochre terracotta and their capitals decorated. (fn. 38) In 1922 an apse was added to the south chapel which was refitted as a war memorial. (fn. 39) A rood and beam were erected in 1931. In 1936 vestries were added to the north-east end of the church, (fn. 40) and in 1937 the interior walls of the church were plastered and whitened, covering Blomfield's patterned brickwork. (fn. 41) In 1980 the building was converted to an arts centre. (fn. 42)

The church had one bell of 1679, which was moved to St. Leonard's when St. Mary's closed. (fn. 43) The plate deposited in Colchester museum includes a chalice of 1633, apparently made for the friary of Ross (Ireland); it is not known how or when St. Mary's acquired it. (fn. 44) A table font by Albert Hartshorne c. 1872, (fn. 45) survived in the tower in 1988. Several monuments from the 18th-century church were re-erected in 1872 and retained in 1980. Among them is a memorial to the Rebow family, with a figure of John (d. 1699), (fn. 46) and a tablet in memory of Thomas Twining, rector 1788-1804. A tablet commemorating Philip Morant was erected in 1966. (fn. 47) Mrs. Church, by will proved 1928, gave £301 stock to maintain, repair and decorate the fabric; the income of £9 a year was transferred to Christ Church in 1978. (fn. 48) Dame Catherine R. Hunt, by will proved 1950, gave £1,468 for the benefit of the church and parish. (fn. 49)

In 1714 the churchyard was levelled, tree-lined paths were laid round the church, and the place became a fashionable resort of the gentry. (fn. 50) The paths and lime trees survived in 1988 with some 18th- and 19th-century monuments.

ST. MARY MAGDALEN'S.

The church may have been founded by Eudes the sewer in the 12th century as the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen's hospital, (fn. 51) but it had acquired parochial status by 1237 when the church, ecclesia, of St. Mary Magdalen was confirmed to St. John's abbey, and in 1254 the master of the hospital was rector of the church. (fn. 52) In 1558 the advowson was granted to the bishop of London. (fn. 53) When the hospital was refounded in 1610, the Lord Chancellor was given power to nominate the master, who was also to be rector of the parish, and the rectory was not separated from the mastership until 1953. (fn. 54) In 1977 a team ministry was set up for the parishes of St. Mary Magdalen, St. Leonard, and St. Stephen; it was dismantled in 1986 and the benefices of the three parishes were united, the patronage board presenting for two turns in every three and the Lord Chancellor for the third. (fn. 55)

The church had no separate endowment until 1953 when, after a Charity Commission inquiry, the capital sum of £11,000 and the master's house, no. 24 New Town Road, were transferred from the charity to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. (fn. 56)

From an unknown date until 1548 a rent of 13d. a year from 1 a. of arable was paid for providing holy bread. Walter Ramyssen, by will dated 1457, gave a tenement in Magdalen Street for an obit in the church; it had been lost by 1548. (fn. 57) Thomas Gale, master and presumably rector 1548-57, combined protestant and Catholic tenets in his will. (fn. 58)

Benjamin Clere the younger, although described as a clerk on his appointment in 1562, was said in 1580 to be neither minister nor priest. In 1584 there was another minister, presumably a curate, but two men doubted whether he preached sound doctrine. By 1586 the mastership had been granted to Thomas Lowe, rector of St Leonard's, who was warned not to meddle with the profits of the parsonage and hospital. He continued to hold it, presumably by sequestration, until his death in 1615. On several Sundays in 1599 no services were held, and in 1604 there was no surplice. (fn. 59)

Gabriel Honifold, rector for 28 years, and rector of Ardleigh 1614-42 was ejected c. 1644 accused of preaching seldom, neither residing nor providing for the cure, swearing by his faith, and playing cards on Sunday. (fn. 60) He seems to have been succeeded by the royalist minister of St. Giles's, Samuel Cock, who in 1646 was ordered to give the hospital to the rector of St. Leonard's. (fn. 61) In 1650 when Henry Barrington, a former mayor and a protestant extremist, was appointed master of the hospital, the living was left vacant and the church was used as a poorhouse. (fn. 62)

The church seems to have remained in ruins and unused until 1721, when the Lord Chancellor appointed the first of a regular succession of rectors. (fn. 63) From then until 1852 the living was held by three members of the Smythies family: Palmer Smythies (1721-73), who was also rector of St. Michael's Mile End and master of the grammar school, his son John (1773-1816) also rector of Alpheton (Suff.) 1806-16, and John's son, John Robert (1816-52) one of the founders of the Royal Agricultural Society. (fn. 64) In 1768 there was a sermon every Sunday. (fn. 65) On Census Sunday 1851 attendances were 150 in the morning and 180 in the afternoon (including 30 Sunday school children on each occasion) from a population of 433. (fn. 66) By 1859 there was monthly communion, and the average number of communicants increased from 7 in 1841 to 50 in 1896. (fn. 67) Assistant curates were appointed from the early 19th century until 1944 or later. (fn. 68)

Robert Bashford, rector 1900-16, also chaplain of Colchester Union workhouse, held two Sunday services, litany twice weekly, communion three times a month, and one service on saints' days. In 1906 a parish hall was built in Wimpole Road. (fn. 69) About 1920 the parish bought a smaller hall, formerly a Methodist mission hall, in Magdalen Street; it was sold in 1956. From 1965 there was close contact with Wimpole Road Methodist church. (fn. 70) St. Mary Magdalen's church was closed in 1986 on the creation of the united benefice of St. Leonard, St. Stephen and St. Mary Magdalen. (fn. 71)

The medieval church of St. Mary Magdalen stood on the north side of Magdalen green, north of the modern Magdalen Street. It seems to have comprised an aisleless nave and chancel with an adjoining chapel for the lepers. The nave contained a 13th-century south doorway and windows of the 14th and 15th centuries. A porch of unknown date survived in 1601. (fn. 72) The hospital chapel had been destroyed before 1610, and the church needed repair in 1633. (fn. 73) After the siege in 1648 it was abandoned until 1721 when Thomas Parker, the Lord Chancellor, repaired it at his own expense. The 18th-century church comprised a small brick chancel, presumably built in 1721, and the repaired medieval nave. The wooden bellcot was damaged by lightning in 1739 but afterwards repaired. (fn. 74) The church was demolished in 1852, and a new one, designed by F. Barnes in the decorated style, was built just to the south and consecrated in 1854. It comprises a chancel, aisleless nave, north and south transepts, and south porch. (fn. 75) A small polygonal south-west tower was added after 1861, damaged by the earthquake in 1884, and rebuilt in 1885. (fn. 76) Vestries on the north side of the chancel were added in 1920. (fn. 77) The tower was extensively repaired in 1931. (fn. 78)

There was one bell of 1847. The church plate included a silver chalice and cover of 1723 which passed to the united benefice. (fn. 79)

ST. NICHOLAS'S.

Archaeological and topographical evidence suggest that the church, which stood on the south side of High Street, was founded in the 10th century, but it was not recorded until the early 13th century when Simon son of Marcian, the patron, confirmed a payment of 1s. a year to St. Botolph's priory. (fn. 80) Before 1238 he gave the advowson of the rectory to St. John's abbey, which retained it until the Dissolution when it passed to the Crown. (fn. 81) In 1702 George Compton, earl of Northampton, obtained the advowson from Queen Anne in an exchange. He conveyed it to his uncle, Henry Compton, bishop of London (d. 1713), who left it to Balliol College, Oxford. The college presented in 1742 and thereafter, except in 1771 when the Crown presented by lapse. (fn. 82) The benefice was united with St. Runwald's in 1873 and the patronage alternated between the successors of Emma Sarah Round, patron of St. Runwald's, and Balliol College. In 1928 the united benefice of St. Nicholas's and St. Runwald's was united with that of All Saints', and Balliol College presented for two turns in four until the creation of the new parish of St. James with All Saints and St. Nicholas and St. Runwald in 1953. (fn. 83)

The rectory was valued at £1 6s. 8d. in 1254, and £10 in 1535. No value was recorded in 1291. From the income a pension of 1s. was paid to the prior of St. Botolph's in 1254 and 2s. in 1495, but it appears to have been lost by 1535. (fn. 84) In 1650 the tithes and the rates on houses levied by the town council for the incumbent amounted to only £9; (fn. 85) in 1766 the income was under £25 a year. (fn. 86) The living was augmented in 1773, 1786, 1789, and 1796 with a total of £800 from Queen Anne's Bounty, and in 1813 with a parliamentary grant of £600. A benefaction of £200 from Balliol College was matched with a parliamentary grant in 1833, followed by two further parliamentary grants of £200 each, raising the value of the living to £92 in 1835 and to £135 in 1863. (fn. 87) Tithes on about 13 a. of meadow and garden ground were commuted for a rent charge of £1 10s. in 1849. The living was worth c. £298 in 1898, excluding the income from St. Runwald's Farm, Old Heath. (fn. 88) The St. Runwald's glebe land, in Queen's Road and in Old Heath, was sold in 1918, and a small piece of glebe at Monkwick in 1922. (fn. 89)

A rectory house, recorded in 1637, was worth £4 10s. in 1650; attached to the west end of the church over a passage into the churchyard, it was repaired by the parish in 1695. (fn. 90) By 1738 it was being let; described as small and inconvenient in 1766, it was still being let as a shop in 1815. (fn. 91) No new house was acquired. (fn. 92)

Thomas Francis, by will made 1416, gave land and tenements in trust for 100 years to St. Helen's guild in St. Helen's chapel to pay a chaplain £6 13s. 4d. a year to pray in St. Nicholas's church for his soul and those of his family. Before 1533 Henry VIII granted the chantry to Sir Thomas Audley. (fn. 93) In 1383 John Bayn bequeathed £86 13s. 4d. to endow a chantry for himself and his family. (fn. 94) Arrangements were made in 1406 for the keeping in the church of an obit for William of Colchester, abbot of Westminster. (fn. 95)

A boy bishop ceremony, apparently for the boys of the grammar school in the parish, was held in the church in the earlier 15th century. (fn. 96) A chapel of St. John and a Jesus mass were recorded in 1456. (fn. 97) Between 1236 and 1560 almost half of recorded incumbents were known pluralists, including Richard Langridge, rector 1531-7, chaplain to two consecutive archbishops of York and archdeacon of Cleveland from 1534, who was presumably non-resident. (fn. 98) In 1535 the curate of St. Nicholas's was presented for praying for the pope and cardinals and speaking against the king's statutes. (fn. 99)

Gerard Shilbury, curate from 1578 to 1586, and rector of Greenstead 1580-7, was an unpreaching minister. His parishioners attended other churches because of his 'simplicity' and at the episcopal visitation of 1586 he was 'tied to the exercises' for the instruction of the less learned clergy. Thomas Farrar held the living by sequestration from 1586 until he was presented to St. James's in 1592. Under his successor, William Banbrick, there was neither morning nor evening prayer in 1594. George Archer, rector of St. Mary's, held the living by sequestration from 1598 until his death in 1604. (fn. 1)

The Laudian Theophilus Roberts, rector from 1609 and rector of Berechurch from 1633, was lampooned in 1632 or 1633 for railing in the communion table and proceeding against parishioners who refused to contribute to the cost. (fn. 2) In 1648 the sequestrated living was apparently served with that of St. Giles's by Nathaniel Seaman, rector of Greenstead and master of Colchester grammar school. (fn. 3) In 1683 William Shelton, rector of St. James's and sequestrator, preached on one Sunday a month and on weekdays, the church being used by the Dutch congregation at other times. (fn. 4)

In 1718 the church was in ruins and most baptisms took place at St. James's. (fn. 5) It was repaired in 1721, and in 1738 Barnabas Simpson, rector of St. James's and sequestrator, held one Sunday service at St. Nicholas's except once a month and on great festivals when he took two services at St. James's. Communion was administered c. 5 times a year. (fn. 6) In 1766 there were daily prayers and one sermon on Sundays. (fn. 7)

There was still only one Sunday service in 1810, usually taken by John Smythies the former rector who was acting as curate, and communion was administered four times a year to c. 30 communicants. (fn. 8) In 1841 only about half of the families in the parish belonged to the church; the relatively low attendances of 150 in the morning and 210 in the afternoon (including 40 Sunday school children on each occasion) reported on Census Sunday 1851, out of a population of 959, reflect the high incidence of nonconformity in the parish. (fn. 9) The early years after the union with St. Runwald's in 1873 were difficult. There was friction between the rector, J. G. Bullock former rector of St. Runwald's, who was non-resident from 1882 because of ill health, and a non-communicant churchwarden. (fn. 10)

By 1893 there was communion twice a month as well as at major festivals, and by 1906 there were three services on Sundays. (fn. 11) The congregation fell to only c. 30 under H. E. Legh, rector 1895-1902, but rose to 300 by 1907. (fn. 12) Attendances were still increasing in 1911, but by 1927 diminishing as many older residents moved away. Between Bullock's resignation in 1891 and 1913 there were seven rectors. In 1908 there was much activity in Sunday school and mission work and church services were described as bright but without extravagant ritual. J. M. Harris, rector 1913-28, an Evangelical, supported the labour movement and showed concern about social problems. (fn. 13) The church was closed in the reorganization of Colchester parishes in 1953.

The Anglo-Saxon church, comprising nave and chancel, seems to have been adapted from a Roman building. (fn. 14) It was rebuilt in the 14th century in flint and brick with a chancel with a north vestry, north and south transepts, and aisled nave. (fn. 15) One aisle was apparently added soon after 1384, and there was a north chapel by 1395. A bell tower was mentioned in 1409. (fn. 16) The tower was probably over the crossing where substantial piers survived in 1874. The south aisle was remodelled or rebuilt in the 15th century and extended eastwards to form a south chancel chapel, incorporating the south transept. About 1700 the tower collapsed on the nave and chancel destroying both roofs. The west ends of the nave and south aisle were repaired in 1721 and new pews installed, but the rest of the church was left in ruins. In 1729 a wooden tower surmounted by a small conical bellcot was built north of the nave, apparently above the north transept. St. Nicholas's was popularly called the Dial Church in the mid 18th century because of the clock which projected into the street from the tower. (fn. 17)

The church was restored and greatly enlarged in 1875-6 in the gothic revival style to the plans of Sir George Gilbert Scott. The north aisle, nave, chancel, north transept, and part of the tower were retained, the nave and chancel becoming the north aisle of the Victorian church and the north aisle being converted to a parish room. The tower was rebuilt and a leaden spire added, the gift of G. H. Errington of Lexden Park. A new nave, chancel, vestry, organ chamber, and south aisle were built, financed by voluntary subscriptions, against the old church on the south and east. (fn. 18) In 1920 a reredos and mural tablet were erected as a war memorial. A chapel of St. Runwald, in the north aisle, was dedicated in 1935. (fn. 19) The church was demolished in 1955. (fn. 20)

There were six bells, two 15th-century by Richard Hill and by Joan his widow, one of 1701, and three of 1803. They were bought by St. Martin's church, Basildon. (fn. 21) The church plate included an inscribed silver cup and cover of 1569, displayed in 1987 in the Colchester museum and used on special occasions in St. James's church. (fn. 22) The pews and the pulpit were moved to St. Barnabas's church. (fn. 23) Part of the churchyard, converted into a small public garden, and some tombstones survived in 1987.

ST. PETER'S.

The church, on the east side of North Hill near its junction with High Street, was established before the Conquest when it was held of the king's alms by two priests. In 1086 Eudes the sewer held a quarter of the advowson and Robert son of Ralf of Hastings three quarters. (fn. 24) Eudes's quarter passed to his foundation St. John's abbey; Robert's three quarters were given by his son William to St. Botolph's priory. In the early 13th century the abbey granted its share of the advowson to the priory in exchange for confirmation of a pension of 5s. 4d. a year. (fn. 25) By 1254 the priory had created the parish of Mile End out of the north part of St. Peter's parish, and in 1319 the priory appropriated St. Peter's rectory and ordained a vicarage. (fn. 26) A presentation by the Crown in 1335 was revoked in 1336 when the priory was pardoned for appropriation without royal consent. (fn. 27)

At the Dissolution the rectory and the advowson of the vicarage were granted to Sir Thomas Audley, later Lord Audley, (fn. 28) in whose family they remained until c. 1700, but the Audleys presented only 8 of the 15 incumbents between 1565 and 1690. The archbishop of Canterbury presented in 1579, the Crown in 1589, and turns were sold in 1600, 1629, and 1632. During the lunacy of Thomas Audley (d. 1697) the Crown presented in 1672 and Audley's guardian in 1682. The Crown presented by lapse in 1698. (fn. 29) Henry Audley (d. 1714) sold the advowson of the vicarage c. 1700 to Henry Compton, bishop of London. Compton's executor sold it to the next bishop, John Robinson (d. 1723), whose widow presented in 1738 and 1739. (fn. 30) The advowson belonged to Bowater Vernon by 1748; Humphrey Carleton presented in 1760 and Charles Smith in 1781. John Thornton (d. 1790) bought the advowson, presumably from Smith, (fn. 31) to ensure the presentation of Evangelicals. (fn. 32) His trustees, dominant among them the leading Evangelical Charles Simeon, presented in 1814 and 1830. (fn. 33) Before his death in 1836 Simeon acquired the advowson and since 1854 his trustees have presented. (fn. 34)

In 1066 St. Peter's was the richest church recorded in the county, with an endowment of 2 hides, a mill, and two houses in the town, worth 30s. in all. By 1086 the estate's value had increased to 48s., but Eudes the sewer held a quarter of it and Robert son of Ralf of Hastings claimed the rest. (fn. 35) The rectory was valued at 5 marks in 1254 and £2 13s. 4d. in 1291. In 1254 annual pensions of 5s. 4d. and 16s. were due to St. John's abbey and St. Botolph's priory respectively. (fn. 36) The vicarage ordained in 1319 comprised the small tithes, except those of North mill, and a house; the vicar owed an annual pension of 60s. to the priory. (fn. 37) The priory acknowledged the abbey's right to an annual pension of 5s. from St. Peter's in 1364, and by 1492 had reduced to £1 6s. 8d. its own pension from the vicarage. (fn. 38) In 1535 the vicarage was valued at £10. (fn. 39) Lord Audley, by will proved 1545 gave £1 6s. 8d. to the vicar of St. Peter's for an annual sermon on Good Friday. (fn. 40) John Bryan (d. before 1519) by will dated 1516 augmented the vicarage with a sum which seems to have been used c. 1545 to buy 13 a. at Mile End. In 1574 Nicholas Clere and William Hall gave in trust for the vicar c. 40 a. in Great Horkesley. (fn. 41)

The last two augmentations seem to have been omitted from valuations c. 1610 and in 1650. About 1610 the vicarage was said to comprise only the vicarage house, 1 a. of glebe, and a house on North Hill. In 1650 the glebe worth only £6 was augmented by £8 18s. 10d. rates on houses levied by the town council. (fn. 42) By 1683 the land at Mile End and Great Horkesley yielded £22 a year and in 1707 supplied most of the total income of £35. (fn. 43) Augmentations of £200 each from the patron, the bishop of London, and Queen Anne's Bounty in 1719, and from the patron in 1795 and 1805 helped to raise the gross income to £300 by 1835. (fn. 44) Tithes on 26 a. were commuted in 1845 for £20 16s. 3d. (fn. 45) In 1884 c. 6 a. in St. Mary's parish were sold; in 1894 St. Peter's retained 40 a. in Great Horkesley, 12 a. at Mile End, and 9 a. in St. Botolph's and St. Leonard's parishes. The farm at Great Horkesley and part of the land at Mile End were sold by 1920 and by 1953 all the land had been sold. (fn. 46)

The vicarage house stood on the east side of the churchyard in 1385, and a house on the same site was mentioned c. 1610. (fn. 47) In 1748 the house was low, mean, and dark. (fn. 48) It was rebuilt c. 1760 as a two-storeyed house fronting High Street. The parapeted front range, extending beyond the churchyard boundary, had a central, semihexagonal bay with a pillared portico. (fn. 49) The house was burnt down in 1842 and replaced by no. 59 North Hill, an early 17th-century house largely rebuilt in the 18th century. That house was still occupied as the rectory in 1959 but by 1963 it had been replaced by a new house built in the garden, and the old house was sold. (fn. 50)

A guild or fraternity of St. John the Baptist had been established by 1404 and survived until 1457 or later. (fn. 51) Another guild was associated with the Jesus mass, recorded from 1447 and very popular in the early 16th century, which was presumably celebrated in the Jesus chapel on the north side of the church. (fn. 52) One or both of those guilds was apparently endowed with houses and land in St. Mary's and Lexden parishes and with houses on North Hill. (fn. 53) A guild of St. Barbara was recorded in 1457 and 1525. (fn. 54) The 15th-century church also contained a chapel and statue of St. Mary. (fn. 55)

John Odolishoo, by will proved 1452, endowed an obit in the church. (fn. 56) Richard Haynes (d. by 1506) (fn. 57) gave in trust houses and land in Colchester, Lexden, Layer de la Haye, Salcott Virley, Tolleshunt, and Easthorpe to pay a priest to sing the Jesus mass and give 8s. a year to clothe two poor men. In 1535 the chantry was valued at £8 19s. 8d. Nicholas Bush, chantry priest in 1535, (fn. 58) may be identifiable with the canon of that name at St. Osyth's abbey in 1539 and with the clerk imprisoned in 1561 for saying mass. (fn. 59) The bailiffs and commonalty bought most of the chantry land from the king in 1550. (fn. 60)

Rectors were recorded from c. 1194, and the names of most medieval vicars are known. Incumbencies were usually short. (fn. 61) In 1312 the rector was dispensed to take an additional living, but in 1324 and 1331 an oath of residence was exacted. (fn. 62) John Gurdon, found guilty of assault in 1433, acquired the living in 1434, committed robbery with violence in 1438 and resigned soon afterwards. (fn. 63) Richard Cawmond, vicar 1494- 1535, a Cambridge graduate and a pluralist, attended the examination of heretics at Colchester in 1528 and took the oath to Henry VIII and his heirs by Anne Boleyn there in 1534. (fn. 64) At his death in 1535 he had goods both in Colchester and at Clare Hall, Cambridge. (fn. 65) In 1539 the parish clerk was presented for opposing the particular confession of sins, and in 1543 the vicar Henry Beck was presented for neither preaching the gospel nor reading the king's statute in church. (fn. 66) The vacant living was served by a good curate in 1560. (fn. 67)

The benefice was vacant for most of the early part of Elizabeth's reign. (fn. 68) Robert Lewis, vicar 1579-89, was imprisoned for nonconformity in 1581 and was a founder member of the Dedham classis in 1582. The following year he admitted to not wearing the surplice and refused to subscribe to Whitgift's articles, and in 1586 he was threatened with deprivation for nonconformity. In 1589 he departed to take up the lectureship at Bury St. Edmunds. (fn. 69) William Cole, vicar 1593-1600, appears to have continued to serve the church in 1593 and 1594 in spite of being excommunicate and having no licence to preach. Parishioners accused him of neglecting the services, stealing the bells, and allowing the pupils of his school to break the church windows. (fn. 70) The presbyterian Edmund Warren, appointed c. 1653, was ejected in 1662, and replaced by Edmund Hickeringill who left St. Peter's for All Saints' in 1663. (fn. 71)

After the Restoration St. Peter's replaced St. Botolph's as the foremost town church. The bishops' and archdeacons' visitations were held there and the mayor and commonalty attended Sunday and special services. (fn. 72) By 1684 the church had a large organ, the only one in the town, and the borough paid an organist to play for festivals and town lectures, but by 1705 such payment had ceased. (fn. 73) From 1698 to c. 1750 when vicars of St. Peter's were usually sequestrators of St. Martin's and St. Runwald's, people from those parishes attended St. Peter's for two Sunday services with sermons, daily prayers, and monthly communion. (fn. 74) In 1748 prayers were said regularly on two weekdays and on some holy days. Although the income was insufficient for the duty, four vicars served for 20 years or more in the period 1714-1814, and from the mid 18th century assistant curates were frequently employed. (fn. 75)

William Smythies, vicar 1760-80, was a quarrelsome man who often appeared in the borough court and in 1765 was bound over to keep the peace with his wife. (fn. 76) The Evangelical Robert Storry, vicar 1781-1814, described himself as a 'gospel clergyman' and sought to attract Methodists to St. Peter's. (fn. 77) His successors maintained the Evangelical tradition and served the cure personally. William Marsh (1814-29), an impressive preacher of Calvinistic principles, established good relations with the garrison, and encouraged attendance at both Sunday services by providing dinners at the vicarage. (fn. 78) The scholar and pluralist Samuel Carr (1830-54) in 1843 erected a memorial in the church to the Marian martyrs of Colchester. (fn. 79) In 1841 he estimated that three quarters of the population of the parish were members of the church. (fn. 80) The practice of holding civic services in St. Peter's was revived in 1844 and maintained until the late 1920s. (fn. 81) By 1851 St. Peter's average attendance of 880 in the morning and 1,100 in the evening was the largest Anglican congregation in Colchester, and was rivalled only by that of Stockwell Street Congregational chapel. (fn. 82) C. T. Ward, 1895-1922, restored the church, founded boys' and girls' clubs, and held services for soldiers. (fn. 83) By boundary changes of 1911 St. Peter's parish lost an unpopulated area of Culver Street and c. 2 a. in the north-west corner of the parish, and gained a detached part of St. Nicholas's parish, north of High Street. In 1953 parts of the parishes of All Saints, St. Nicholas, and Holy Trinity with St. Martin were transferred to St. Peter's, (fn. 84) giving the church a compact parish. The church has maintained a vigorous life in the Evangelical tradition. In 1988 there were between two and four services on Sundays and one in the week.

The church of St. Peter comprises a chancel of one bay with north vestry over a charnel house, an aisled and clerestoried nave of seven bays with two western porches, and a west tower of three stages. The walls are of mixed rubble, septaria, brick, and ragstone, with limestone dressings. (fn. 85) The vestry is faced with knapped flint; the tower is of red brick with ashlar and white brick dressings. Ironwork on the south door, attributed to Thomas of Leighton (Buzzard) (fl. 1300), survives from a church comprising chancel, nave and central tower, perhaps with transepts, (fn. 86) which was enlarged by the addition of a south aisle in the early 15th century and a north aisle and chapel later in the century: the chapel existed by 1457. (fn. 87) A south porch, mentioned in 1632, (fn. 88) was probably of the 15th century. The north vestry was added in the early 16th century. The surviving pulpit, communion table, and chair are from a late 17th-century refitting of the church. Altar rails of the same date have been re-used in the west gallery staircase. Seats for the mayor and aldermen were made in 1701. (fn. 89)

In 1758 the church was remodelled. The central tower was taken down and replaced by the surviving west tower, surmounted by a cupola; the nave was extended eastwards, reducing the chancel to one bay, and all the windows, except the east window of the north aisle, were replaced. The 18th-century organ gallery at the west end may have been added in 1791 when a gallery was inserted in the north aisle. A gallery was built in the south aisle in 1815. (fn. 90)

The south aisle was extended eastwards in 1817. In 1832 the south doorway was bricked up on the inside and its porch probably demolished; new doorways with embattled porches were made into the west end of each aisle. (fn. 91) In 1859 the nave and aisles were reseated. A clerestory was added in 1896 but the Georgian galleries were retained. Restoration of the chancel, begun in 1896 with the replacement of the wooden chancel arch by a stone one, was completed in 1902. (fn. 92) The chancel platform was later extended westwards beyond the arch. The cupola and clock bell were removed when the tower was repaired in 1903. (fn. 93) The former communion table, a large, originally secular, table of the earlier 17th century, stands at the east end of the north aisle, surmounted by the 19th-century painted reredos from St. Nicholas's church. (fn. 94)

Six bells were recorded in 1683. (fn. 95) Eight new bells were hung in 1763 and recast in 1913. (fn. 96) The plate destroyed in the fire at the vicarage in 1842 included a silver chalice and cover of 1660 and a silver salver of 1691. They were replaced by Victorian vessels and a silver paten of 1698 by Benjamin Pyne. (fn. 97) A clock, prominently mounted on a bracket on the west side of the tower in 1866, was rebuilt in 1912. (fn. 98)

Among the surviving monuments are four 16th-century memorial brasses, one of the early 17th-century, and two wall monuments, with kneeling figures, to Martin Basill (d. 1623) and his wife and to George Sayer (d. 1577) and his wives. There is a memorial to the dead of the Crimean War above the south arcade of the nave; from 1858 until 1928 the colours of the 44th (East Essex) regiment hung above it. (fn. 99) A memorial in the south aisle commemorates men of the Essex Yeomanry and the Royal Horse Artillery who died in two World Wars.

ST. RUNWALD'S.

The invocation to an obscure 7th-century Mercian child saint suggests an Anglo-Saxon or possibly early Norman origin. The position of the church, on an island site in the middle of High Street within an existing market place, and its detached graveyard suggest that it was one of the later ancient Colchester churches, founded after much of the central area had been built up. It may have started as a chapel and later acquired parochial status and burial rights. (fn. 1)

In 1254 the patron was Margaret Baudechoun. (fn. 2) The advowson of the rectory seems to have passed to the Tey family by the marriage of Agnes Baude, presumably Margaret's descendant, and Sir Robert Tey, who presented jointly in 1364. It descended in the Tey family, with the manor of Marks Tey, until 1527 when Sir Thomas Tey conveyed it to Thomas Neville, perhaps on the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to Marmaduke Neville. Marmaduke held the advowson at his death in 1545, but did not exercise it, the bishop of London presenting by lapse in 1544. (fn. 3) No presentations were made thereafter until the Crown presented by lapse in 1760, but the advowson passed with Marmaduke Neville's estate of Botingham Hall in Copford (fn. 4) to Charles Gray, who presented in 1772. Gray devised the advowson to James Round of Birch Hall whose family retained it until the union of the benefice with St. Nicholas's and the closure of St. Runwald's church in 1873. (fn. 5)

The rectory was valued at 13s. 4d. in 1254, and in 1535 was said to be worth as much as £7 13s. 4d. No value was recorded in 1291. An annual pension of 6s. 8d. was paid to St. Botolph's priory in 1495. (fn. 6) A rectory house in North Street (North Hill) was recorded in 1387, but not thereafter. (fn. 7) In 1560 the living was described as utterly destitute. (fn. 8) In 1650 its income was only £3 8s. 8d. a year from the rates on houses levied by the town council for the incumbent, and 8s. from tithes, and in 1707 the value was still only c. £3. (fn. 9) In 1768 the only certain income was tithes of c. 7 a. of land in Borough field (presumably the 8 a. mentioned again in 1810) and the interest on £600 of Queen Anne's Bounty. (fn. 10) Moses Cook (d. 1732) left the reversion of a quarter share of the rent of Huntsman's Farm, Foxearth. The living was augmented in 1749, in 1752, in 1770 to match Cook's legacy, and in 1797 with sums of £200 from the Bounty. Charles Round gave £200 in 1809, and the rector J. T. Round £600 in 1828; the last two sums were matched by further augmentations from the Bounty. (fn. 11) The income in 1835 was £160. (fn. 12) There was no glebe in 1650, but by 1828 more than 45 a. of land in the parishes of St. Runwald, St. Mary, and St. Giles had been bought. (fn. 13)

Between 1275 and 1544 incumbencies were often short in the poorly endowed parish. About half of the recorded rectors resigned: among them were John Best, rector 1382-92, who probably belonged to the leading Colchester family of that name, Christopher Swallow, rector 1513- 16, who later founded Earls Colne grammar school, and John Farforth, found guilty of stealing £40 in 1520. (fn. 14) The parish owned some tenements in North Street in 1476. (fn. 15) Mathew Read, by will proved 1517, left a rent charge of 6s. 8d. a year to support an obit in the church. It survived in 1548. (fn. 16) A guild of St. John the Baptist was recorded in 1525. The rector presented in 1544 appears to have left after a very short time; before 1548 the churchwardens sold £12 worth of church plate, partly to pay the debt of £5 6s. 8d. which he owed the king, presumably for first fruits and tenths. The rest of the money was used to buy a pair of organs. (fn. 17)

The living, left vacant from the mid 16th century until 1760, was served by a succession of curates, many of whom were incumbents of nearby churches. In 1589 the church was being let out by the churchwardens as a covered market, and in 1597 the sequestrator, William Cole, sometimes said the service only once a month. (fn. 18) The royalist and Laudian views of Thomas Newcomen, rector of Holy Trinity, who served the church from c. 1627, led to conflict with the parishioners among whom was John Furley, a leader of the puritan party in Colchester and churchwarden in 1633. (fn. 19) Newcomen's dispute with a parishioner in 1637 over the erection of altar rails in St. Runwald's and his refusal to administer communion to those who would not kneel at them, created an uproar in the town, and involved the archbishop. Laud's behaviour in the dispute was cited against him later at his own trial. (fn. 20)

John Nettles, vicar of St. Peter's, served St. Runwald's in 1664. (fn. 21) The parish registers were signed in 1669 by Lewis Griffin, rector of Greenstead, in 1671 by William Shelton, vicar of St. James's, and in 1686 by the vicar of St. Peter's. (fn. 22) Between 1723 and 1748 there were no services at St. Runwald's, probably because of the poor condition of the building, and the parishioners attended St. Peter's.

Rectors were presented regularly from 1760. John Cantley, rector 1772-97, lived 4 miles away at Copford in 1778 and paid a curate to perform a Sunday service and preach once a fortnight; communion was administered four times a year to at least 20 people. There were 20-30 communicants in 1810 when the cure was served by a resident rector William Walford. (fn. 23) The Rounds presented two members of their family, James Round, rector 1797-1809, and James T. Round, son of Charles, rector 1824-51, rector of St. Nicholas's 1830-46 and rural dean from 1840. (fn. 24) By 1841 three quarters of the inhabitants of the parish were said to belong to the church. On Census Sunday 1851 attendances of 112 in the morning and 132 in the afternoon were reported, including 12 Sunday school children on each occasion, from a population of 324. (fn. 25) By 1859 there was monthly communion. St. Runwald's and St. Nicholas's benefices were united in 1873, because the combined population of less than 1,500 could not support two churches. (fn. 26)

The church of St. Runwald was probably built in the late 11th or early 12th century when it is thought to have comprised a small rectangular nave of coursed flint rubble and a square chancel. (fn. 27) Both nave and chancel retained a 12th-century or earlier plan. By the early 14th century the shops of Middle Row had been built against the east wall of the church. A lady chapel of three bays, on the north of the chancel, was added in the 15th century. There was a tower, presumably at the west end, by 1388. (fn. 28)

In 1595 the church was in ruins, and it needed repair in 1633. (fn. 29) The tower was taken down c. 1692, and replaced by a roughcast wooden turret at the east end of the nave roof, supported internally by timber framing. The chancel was repaired in 1695. (fn. 30) In 1760 the parish restored the church in brick, a pedimented surround was added to the south doorway and round-headed windows were inserted in the east and west walls; the chancel arch was probably rebuilt at the same time. (fn. 31)

The church was in a poor condition again by the mid 19th century: the removal of the Middle Row shops in 1857 left the east end of the church exposed and damaged, the foundations at the west end were defective, and the building was an obstruction in the busy High Street. It was demolished in 1878. (fn. 32) The 15th-century north arcade was re-erected in St. Albright's church, Stanway, in 1879. Some of the rubble was used in two houses, Cloisters and St. Runwald's, on the corner of Maldon Road and Salisbury Avenue. (fn. 33) The church site was sold to the town council in 1878. (fn. 34)

The churchwardens in 1765-6 paid 10s. 6d. for a font, which may be the one described in 1856 as a new and well finished octagonal font; architectural evidence does not support the claim that the 15th-century font in Little Totham church in 1985 came from St. Runwald's. A small Jacobean altar table from St. Runwald's was in St. James's church in 1985. (fn. 35)

In 1362 a plot of land 45 ft. by 43 ft. at the corner of West Stockwell Street and St. Runwald Street, 100 yards from the site of the church, was granted to John Newman, the rector, by William de Holton, chaplain, who succeeded him in 1364, to make a churchyard. It survived, slightly reduced in size, in 1985. (fn. 36)

The broken bell recorded in 1620 was probably recast or replaced by Miles Gray in 1621; his bell was transferred to St. Nicholas's in 1878 and to the Colchester museum in 1953. A second, smaller bell seems to have been sold when the tower was demolished c. 1692. (fn. 37) The church plate, comprising an Elizabethan communion cup, a cup and cover of 1765, and a paten of 1708, passed to St. Nicholas's in 1878 and was in 1985 displayed at the Colchester museum, as was the 14th-century plated iron parish chest. (fn. 38)

Modern Churches

ALL SAINTS', SHRUB END.

In 1845 a new parish of All Saints' Stanway was formed from parts of the east of Stanway and the west of Lexden parishes. (fn. 39) Its name was changed to All Saints', Shrub End, in 1960, after boundary changes had brought the parish into Colchester borough. (fn. 40) The patronage of the living was vested in the diocesan bishop. (fn. 41) The church was endowed with rent charges of £60 a year given by Elizabeth Papillon, £40 a year from Stanway rectory, £88 a year from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and a vicarage house built in 1847 in Shrub End Road. The house was sold c. 1975, and a new one was built in its garden. (fn. 42)

All Saints' church, built in the Decorated style in red brick with stone dressings, was designed by G. R. French. (fn. 43) It comprises a chancel, nave, and north-west tower with slated spire. A north choir vestry was added in 1958 and the nave was extended westwards in 1982. (fn. 44) The mission church of St. Cedd, Iceni Way, a simple dualpurpose brick building, was opened in 1955. (fn. 45)

ST. ANNE'S.

The church, formerly a chapel of ease to St. James's, became parochial in 1953 when a new parish was formed from part of the north-west of the parish of St. James with All Saints and St. Nicholas and St. Runwald, and part of the west of Greenstead parish. (fn. 46) The patronage was vested in the bishop. (fn. 47) A vicarage house was built in Compton Road in 1953. (fn. 48)

The church, in Compton Road, was built in 1937 of red brick, comprising a large rectangular nave with a small, shallow chancel. In 1982, following the sale of the parish hall built in 1962, the western half of the nave was converted into a hall and used by the local community throughout the week. (fn. 49)

ST. BARNABAS'S.

The church, formerly a chapel of ease to St. Giles's, (fn. 50) became parochial in 1950 when a new parish was taken from the parishes of St. Giles, St. Botolph, and East Donyland. (fn. 51) The archdeacon was succeeded as patron of the living by the bishop in 1956. (fn. 52) The vicarage house, no. 13 Abbots Road, was built c. 1930 for the curate of St. Giles's. (fn. 53)

The brick church, which in 1955 replaced the small one built in 1875, was designed as a dual-purpose building, comprising a shallow chancel and rectangular nave with a Lady chapel in a small room at the south-east corner. The parish hall, built in 1928-9, adjoins the west end. The pulpit, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, and the pews are from St. Nicholas's, the brass lectern given in memory of W. H. Wardell, rector of St. Giles's 1873-1903, is from St. Giles's, and the organ is from St. Martin's. (fn. 54)

ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST'S.

In 1863 an ecclesiastical district north-east of the town was formed on the initiative of J. T. Round, rector of All Saints' and St. Runwald's, to serve the increasing population from the parishes of All Saints, St. Botolph, Greenstead, Ardleigh, Langham, and Mile End. (fn. 55) A very small part of the south of the new parish was restored to Greenstead in 1961. (fn. 56) The patronage of the living was vested in the archdeacon of Colchester. (fn. 57) Tithe rent charges of £30 from Mile End, £10 from Ardleigh, and £5 from Langham, were granted to the new church. (fn. 58) The value of the living in 1887 was £250, together with the rent from two cottages with 1 a. of garden. In 1920 the land and one cottage were sold. (fn. 59) A glebe house was built in Ipswich Road, north of the church, in 1863 and replaced by a new building in Evergreen Drive in 1979. (fn. 60)

The church, in Ipswich Road, built in 1863 to designs by A. Blomfield in the Decorated style, is of red brick with yellow and blue bands and stone window tracery. It consists of a chancel and nave surmounted by a small bellcot at the west end. (fn. 61) The chancel and its fittings and part of the nave were built with money collected in memory of J. T. Round. (fn. 62)

ST. PAUL'S.

The church, formerly a chapel of ease to Lexden, became parochial in 1879 when a new parish was created from part of the north-east of Lexden parish. (fn. 63) The bishop became the patron at the request of J. Papillon, rector of Lexden. (fn. 64) The income of the living was £50 a year from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and a tithe rent charge of £60 a year from Lexden rectory. (fn. 65) By 1937 there was a vicarage house at Braiswick; the diocese sold it in 1956 to the retiring incumbent and bought a house in North Station Road. (fn. 66) The construction in 1933 of the Colchester bypass south of the church and in 1980 of Westway to the north isolated the church from many of its parishioners. (fn. 67)

The first stage of the church in Belle Vue Road, consisting of a chancel and nave, was built in 1869. The building was completed in 1879 by the addition of a south aisle, choir vestry, and south porch designed by J. Clarke. (fn. 68)

ST. STEPHEN'S.

The church, formerly a chapel of ease to St. Botolph's, became parochial in 1953 when a new parish was created from the eastern part of the parish of St. Botolph with Holy Trinity and St. Giles. (fn. 69) The parish was reduced in size in 1955 when an area in the south was transferred to Berechurch parish. (fn. 70) In 1977 St. Stephen's was combined with St. Leonard's and St. Mary Magdalen's under a New Town ministry, and in 1986 became part of the united benefice of St. Leonard, St. Mary Magdalen, and St. Stephen. The patronage of the living was held by Balliol College, Oxford, from 1953 until 1977; thereafter it was exercised by the patronage board twice and by the Lord Chancellor once in every three turns. (fn. 71)

The small red-brick church in Canterbury Road, designed by C. E. Butcher in 1904, comprises a chancel and nave, structurally undivided from each other, south vestry, and west porch, with a slated belfry over the nave. It was consecrated as a parish church in 1954. (fn. 72)

Footnotes