ARKESDEN, St. Mary (TL 482 346), ESSEX. (Bedrock: Upper Cretaceous, Upper Chalk.)
A large, heavily restored church, most interesting to day for its monuments, and a late Stuart one by Edward Pearce (d. 1695) in particular.
This is quite a large church but one so substantially restored and rebuilt that its architectural interest is now confined to a number of individual features. The building consists of a chancel, an aisled nave with a S. porch, and a W. tower with a prominent semi-polygonal stair turret at the southeast angle, and externally, almost its only surviving mediaeval features appear to be two, possibly re-set, Decorated windows towards the east end of the N. aisle - a two-light one to the north and a three-light one to the east, the latter with ungainly tracery composed of a quatrefoil and two over-large mouchettes above trefoil-cusped ogee lights (illustrated below left). The tower and nave clerestory were entirely rebuilt in 1855 (notes in the church) but the porch is essentially mediaeval and Perpendicular: its outer doorway carries wave mouldings and hollows beneath an ogee-pointed dripstone and a stone panel carved with two shields and a cross, while the inner doorway carries two flat chamfers above two orders of semi-octagonal shafts. The material in all parts of the building is flint and pebble rubble with dressings, according to Pevsner, of imported Caen stone (Nikolaus Pevsner & James Bettley, The Buildings of England: Essex, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 90).
Inside the church, the differing pier sections of the arcades presumably have some mediaeval basis (both arcades are double-flat-chamfered but the S. arcade is supported on round piers and the N. arcade on octagonal ones, as seen in the interior photograph looking east, above right) but it would be rash to assign a date to either as the capitals appear to have been retooled or renewed. The chancel arch is unashamedly Victorian and formed of an arch of complex profile springing from semi-octagonal responds with deeply-cut leaf capitals. The font (below left) is another uncertain masonry feature however, comprising a square cambered bowl resting on a base cut through on each side by a lancet opening surrounded by a roll moulding. Pevsner suggested the bowl might be twelfth century work and the stand, thirteenth century, but if so, then both appear to have been scraped or tidied up in some way. The chancel and nave roofs of hammerbeam construction are Victorian but in the nave, at least one of the original head corbels beneath the wall posts has been preserved.
That brings the visitor to the monuments, which are the most items here, beginning in age order with a fifteenth century tomb chest recessed in the N. wall of the chancel (as seen below), bearing a recumbent effigy bisected by a slab of masonry halfway along, like a stunt-woman at a circus about to be 'sawn in half'. Commemorating John Croxby, who was vicar here from 1453-56 (or 1435-56 - the inscription beneath and the notes in the church are contradictory), it features crocketed gabled niches at the ends and mid-point that leave the effigy visible through two very depressed four-centred arches beneath an embattled cornice. More striking than this, however, is the enormous painted Tudor tomb chest at the E. end of the S. aisle, with the recumbent effigies of Richard Cutte (d. 1592) and his wife laying on top, their hands clasped in prayer, beneath a heavy canopy supported on six balusters. The couple's six children kneel around the chest but only the two girls have escaped decapitation.
Finally, described, entirely fairly, by Pevsner as 'a first-class work', there is an archetypal late Stuart wall monument against the N. wall of the tower (the upper part of which is shown above right), commemorating John Withers (d. 1692) and his wife, featuring skulls and branches in bass relief on the tomb chest below, and on the upper part above the inscription, excellent busts of the couple dressed in their best clothes, he bewigged, and with drapes at the sides, a disembodied winged cherub hovering above, and in the open pediment at the top, a huge achievement reminding the viewer of their distinguished genealogy. This is the work of Edward Pearce, who Rupert Gunnis recorded as having had 'a high reputation among his contemporaries' (Dictionary of British Sculptors, 1660-1851, London, The Abbey Library. 1951, p. 297). Pearce was employed at various times in his career at St. Paul's Cathedral, Hampton Court and Whitehall, but this must have been one of his last commissions for he died in 1695.
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