Details

The monument includes the buried and upstanding remains of St Mary the
Virgin's Church, situated on low-lying land some 120m to the west of Salcott
Channel. The remains of the church are a Listed Building Grade II. The church
ruins are within the parish of Virley located in the garden of the rectory,
next to Virley Hall. A scatter of farms and cottages surround the church, but
Salcott to the south on the other side of the creek is the nearest village.
The monument includes a roofless nave and slightly narrower chancel. The west
wall of the nave no longer survives above ground; however, its foundations lie
between the surviving nave walls and a grave located some 3.5m to the west.
The original church comprising a nave and chancel dates to the 13th century,
its walls built primarily of Roman tile and brick, septaria, pegtile, flint
and Kentish Ragstone. The principal surviving features of this original
construction are the narrow chancel arch and the buttresses at regular
intervals which have two weathering tables with imported Caen stone dressings.
The chancel arch (of Reigate stone), is rounded, rather narrow, and has
octagonal responds with moulded capitals. The church underwent various
modifications during the 14th and 15th centuries. The surviving windows were
all inserted into the walls of the church during this period. The window in
the north wall of the nave is probably 14th century. It has a head of Reigate
stone, jambs of Caen stone and would originally have had two pointed lights in
a two-centred head, as would the less well-preserved window in the south wall.
The windows in the chancel are clearly of a different date to those in the
nave; they are thought to date to the 15th century, each having two lights
with tracery in a four centred head.
In and around the standing structure of the church is a great deal of loose
stonework. Several of the stone fragments are recognisable as window heads,
mullions and sills; some are early Perpendicular in style and may be dated to
the late 14th century.
Before the final abandonment of the church at the end of the 19th century,
several efforts were made to repair the fabric, the most obvious of these
being the brick buttresses on the north wall and south east corner of the
nave.
Documentary sources refer to the Verli family holding the parish during the
late 13th century; an 18th century description of the church noted that there
were no coats of arms or monuments in the church apart from those of the Atte
Lee family, lords of the manor in the 14th century. Descriptions of the church
written in the 18th and 19th centuries record that the church had a tower
which had collapsed by the 18th century and was superceded by a timber
enclosure containing a bell. A 19th century novel of marshland life in Essex
(Mehalah - a story of the salt marshes by S Baring-Gould) gives a graphic
description of a rustic wedding held there and the church seems to have been
in an advanced state of decay by that time. The last service was held in the
church in 1879 when an Order in Council was issued uniting the parishes of
Salcott and Virley. The famous Essex earthquake of 1884 split the walls of the
church and the roof collapsed. In 1893 a faculty was issued making Salcott the
parish church.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

A parish church is a building, usually of roughly rectangular outline and
containing a range of furnishings and fittings appropriate to its use for
Christian worship by a secular community, whose members gather in it on
Sundays and on the occasion of religious festivals. Children are initiated
into the Christian religion at the church's font and the dead are buried in
its churchyard. Parish churches were designed for congregational worship and
are generally divided into two main parts: the nave, which provides
accommodation for the laity, and the chancel, which is the main domain of the
priest and contains the principal altar. Either or both parts are sometimes
provided with aisles, giving additional accommodation or spaces for additional
altars. Most parish churches also possess towers, generally at the west
end, but central towers at the crossing of nave and chancel are not uncommon
and some churches have a free-standing or irregularly sited tower. Many parish
churches also possess transepts at the crossing of chancel and nave, and south
or north porches are also common. The main periods of parish church foundation
were in the 10th to 11th and 19th centuries. Most medieval churches were
rebuilt and modified on a number of occasions and hence the visible fabric of
the church will be of several different dates, with in some cases little
fabric of the first church being still easily visible.
Parish churches are found throughout England. Their distribution reflects the
density of population at the time they were founded. In regions of dispersed
settlement parishes were often large and churches less numerous. The densest
clusters of parish churches were found in thriving medieval towns. A survey of
1625 reported the existence of nearly 9000 parish churches in England. New
churches built in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries increased numbers to
around 18,000 of which 17,000 remain in ecclesiastical use. Parish churches
have always been major features of the landscape and a major focus of life for
their parishioners. They provide important insights into medieval and later
population levels or economic cycles, religious activity, artistic endeavour
and technical achievement. A significant number of surviving examples are
identified to be nationally important.

The surviving fabric of St Mary the Virgin's Church illustrates its demise
from a medieval church with full parochial status to little more than a ruin
by the 19th century. Although services were still held at St Mary's well into
the middle of the 19th century, the fabric was allowed to deteriorate without
any of the major restoration work often undertaken during this period. As a
consequence rare early features such as the rounded chancel arch and the
pegtiles have survived. The arch is an important survival from the original
building, as most narrow chancel arches were removed or replaced with larger
ones. The 13th century pegtiles, in particular those capping the putlog holes
(each measuring some 18cm by 28cm), are some of the earliest known of this
size.
Beneath the surviving fabric, elements of the 13th to 15th century church
may survive below ground; they will contain archaeological information
relating to the sequence of rebuilding as well as environmental evidence for
the landscape in which they were constructed. The surrounding graveyard will
also contain further archaeological evidence relating to the history of the
church.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Baring-Gould, S, Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes, (1880), p182
Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, , An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Essex, (1922), p225
The Morton Partnership Ltd., , Brief Structural Assessment of the Ruins of Virley Church, Essex, (1999)
Chancellor, F, 'Essex Review' in Essex churches X. St. Mary, Salcott Wigborough...., , Vol. 3, (1894), p167-78
Rodwell, WJ, 'CBA Research Report No.19' in Historic Churches a wasting asset, (1977), p122
Other
Colchester Archaeological Archive Rep, Rayner, N et al, Survey of Virley Church, Salcott-cum-Virley, (1999)
Colchester, DOE, List of Buildings of Special Architectural and Historic Interest, (1982)
Essex Record Office Documents D/CF 32/7, (1893)
Holman, Essex Record Office Document T/P 195/7, (1800)
Order in Council, Essex Record Office Documents D/P 413 1/1; D/CP c52, (1879)
Tyler, S, MPP Film , (2000)

Source: Historic England