This small but ancient and highly significant building  marks the spot where St. Cedd landed in 653, having been sent out from Lindisfarne by King Oswiu of Northumbria (reigned 641-70) on a mission to evangelize the East Saxons.  This was an undertaking rather less hazardous than might at first appear since King Sigeberht of Essex had already accepted Christianity on a visit to Gaul in 627 and, besides, seems also to have agreed in advance to receive Cedd, when making a visit to Oswiu’s court earlier the same year.

 

The building to be seen here today (shown above from the southwest) was almost certainly constructed c. 660 under the direction of Cedd himself and probably replaced a temporary wooden structure.  It consists of a nave 49½ feet long by 21½ feet wide (15.1 m. by 6.6 m.), which survives to its full height, and traces of foundations which show that there was once, in addition, (i) a chancel that extended about six feet (2 m.) eastwards before ending in a semicircular apse (see the photograph below right), (ii) two porticuses - one each to the north and south of the junction between the nave and chancel, and (iii) a W. narthex - which, in later years, had for a time a little tower built above it, used at one stage as a beacon for shipping!  The nave shows the re-use of Roman masonry (that consisted not only of brick and tile, but also Kentish ragstone, septaria, and even some oolitic limestone), of which plenty would have been immediately to hand as this is also the site of the now-vanished Roman fort of Othona.  The W. window, which is the only one whose round-headed arch remains, is turned in Roman brick, as are the surviving parts of the arcade that once separated the nave from the chancel, now to be seen in the blocked E. wall.  Remaining fragments of St. Pancras’s church, Canterbury, St. Mary’s, Lyminge, and St. Mary’s, Reculver, all in Kent and dating from the mid-seventh century, show there were usually three arches in this position, but measurements here suggest there can only ever have been two.  The building plan also shows the N. porticus was entered from the chancel and the S. porticus from the nave.  This would conform with their use in the Roman church at this time as what was known as the diaconicon and the prothesis, respectively a room for the clergy and the keeping of sacred vessels (i.e. a kind of vestry-cum-sacristy), and a room for the reception of offerings from the worshippers (and not the other way round as stated in the 1966 guide to the building).  (See also the entry for Escomb church, County Durham.)   Very large doorways, now blocked, were cut in the N. and S. walls of the nave in the seventeenth century when, for a time, the building was used as a barn.  However, remnants of its original buttresses can still be seen at the western corners, as well as at various points along the walls.  The present roof, of course, is modern:  the original would probably have been shingled.

 

Situated on the edge of Bradwell Marshes, this is surely the county’s most atmospheric church - a building which is in its way more powerful, and certainly more enduring, than the already decommissioned nuclear power station that now looms ominously on the skyline just two miles to the east.