The church of St. Michael the Archangel was built here in 1563. It is the sole Elizabethan church in Essex and one of only six built in England during Elizabeth's reign. It is not however, the first church to be consecrated in Woodham Walter but the site of its predecessor cannot be exactly determined. Village tradition has it that it was on the site of Falconer's Lodge, formerly Wilderness Cottage. Certainly a church dedicated to St. Michael was usually built on the highest piece of land in the parish so it is possible that here or the fields by the main road to Maldon may hide its foundations. It is likely that it was contained within the grounds of Woodham Walter Manor to which Thomas, Earl of Sussex, succeeded on the death of his father, Henry Fitzwalter, in 1557.

The time of the Reformation had seen violent swings in the religious loyalty of the lords of Woodham Walter Manor. The catholic Robert Fitzwalter became protestant at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries but his son Henry reverted to the catholic faith and was a supporter of Queen Mary, history's Bloody Mary. Before her accession he sheltered her at Woodham Walter Manor and plans were laid to help her sail secretly to Holland. For some reason these never reached fruition and Mary left Woodham Walter for New Hall and eventually St. James's Palace in London.

Henry’s son, Thomas, was a protestant and one of his first acts on succeeding his father was to remove the catholic priest, John Byrte, and replace him with a protestant rector, John Williamson, despite the fact that Queen Mary was still alive. However, Elizabeth I became Queen in 1558 and the young Thomas threw himself ardently into her service. Old Essex histories record that "the church being distant from the inhabitants and very ruinous, Thomas, Earl of Sussex, obtained a licence from Queen Elizabeth dated 26 June, 1562, to build a new church where he should think proper; he accordingly erected the present one and it was consecrated 30 April, 1564."

Possibly the old church was very ruinous, certainly it was distant from the inhabitants of the village, but also if it was within the bounds of the Manor and, in common with his contemporaries, Thomas was extending his house and the park surrounding it, improving the fisheries in the moat, building stables and hawk mews and entertaining the wealthy and favoured friends he made at Court, he would not be best pleased by the gaggle of peasantry which trailed through his grounds for church services. For whatever reason, however, a licence to rebuild was obtained from the Queen and the new church was erected.

Over the door into the vestry is a wooden tablet, painted red, with 1563 JP inscribed on it in black. Obviously 1563 is the date the building was completed but to whom JP refers remains a mystery. The millers at Hoe Mill at this time were surnamed Peare but what connection, if any, they had with the building is unknown. Possibly Lord Thomas went outside the parish for his Master Builder. The exterior brickwork is quite unusual for the period and to be found repeated in an outbuilding at Ingatestone Hall, owned at the time by Sir WIlliam Petre, and at Leighs Priory, built by Lord Rich.

It is certain that much of the interior of the church was removed from its predecessor. The roof structures over the nave and chancel are fourteenth century and the bell frame has been dated 1382-1422. The span is the same but the chancel wall is slightly thinner and the division is exactly over the centre of the easternmost arch of the arcade. In a church built before the Reformation there would be one or two steps up to the chancel from the nave but at the time of the Reformation this distinction was done away with and here there is a level floor the whole length of the church until the kneeling step before the communion rail.

In 1454 Thomas Hawkyn, a grocer living in London who had been born in Woodham Walter and lived there as a small boy, willed the cost of a "new Ile on the north side of the Church of Wodeham aforesaid, with an honest Chappell on the north side of the Chauncell to be halloweid of our lady and Seint Thomas of Cantbury."  Thomas Hawkyn calls it the church of St. Nicholas but it is extremely unlikely he would have written his will himself, nor had he lived in the village for many years, and it would seem the name became confused in either his mind or the writing for the church is dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel and there is no record of Queen Elizabeth being asked to approve a change of name as well as a change of venue. The pillars between the nave and the north aisle are most definitely those from the original building for they have been scrawled on and some of the writing has been positively dated as being between 1450 and 1500. The name William Barton appears, written and rewritten in various letter styles, and this at a time in history when few were able to write. His name is found in an item dated 1471 in the Calendar of Patent Rolls when it appears he paid money and was "pardoned for offences committed before 6 July." What offences? Writing on church pillars? Presumably he would have had to pay again to be pardoned for offences committed after that date! The roof of the north aisle is also fifteenth century which would indicate that Thomas Hawkyn's north aisle was removed to the new site, as was his "honest Chappell," now the vestry. Other motifs scratched on his pillars include drawings of what appear to be pennants. Did a Royalist group make the church a meeting place in the middle 1600s in what was essentially Cromwell's country? The marks are fading now; over succeeding years many have fingered them to try and decipher their meaning and it becomes more and more difficult to trace them with the eye.

Originally the church was entered by a door on the south side, now blocked up.  Outside this was a porch where most of the business of the village would have taken place, both ecclesiastical and secular. More writing is decipherable here, scratched on the pillars in the 1600s and 1700s by a succession of doodlers waiting their turn. There is also a south door to the chancel visible from the outside but all traces of it on the inside have been obliterated and it is difficult to fix the date. In 1795 the main south door was blocked up by plasterwork on the inside and the porch dismantled. By this time the Manor House had been pulled down, there was no lord to drive across his park to the door nearest his home, less and less business was being transacted in the porch and the homes of the villagers were on the other side of the church. The tiles from the dismantled porch were sold and it is possible that the actual door itself was moved to the north side where it is still in use today.

Three bells are hung in the church and three appear in the inventory of the original building, dated 1552. Of these only one remains which is said to have been made by Giles Jordon, or his son Henry, in or near 1470. The other two bear the inscriptions "Miles Graye made me 1676" and "Tho. Gardiner Sudbury fecit 1713." To reach them one has to climb a steep ladder at the west end of the church, push open a trap door and climb through into the belfry. The present belfry is relatively new. Before it, probably around 1700, a gallery had been built at the back of the church with a school room below. It was only a small gallery but large enough to accommodate the orchestra co-opted from the village people who played at services during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Schooling was held in the room under the gallery, both secular and religious, and adults and children would gather there after Sunday Morning Service.  By 1833 ninety-six pupils were on the roll and it is hoped they did not all attend at the same time for the room was only twenty feet by twelve feet six. Their teacher during the first half of the nineteenth century was the Reverend Guy Bryan who was rector for fifty years and whose memorial records that he died in 1870 aged eighty-eight.

The font certainly came from the old church. It is of the Perpendicular period and the noted architect and church historian, Fred Chancellor, dated it as not later than 1400. Its cover, with the elaborate pulley mechanism to raise and lower it, was probably put over it in Victorian times.

On the south wall near the font hangs the painted oak screen found in many churches and which they bought, or had presented to them, at the time of the restoration of the Monarchy in 1660.

In 1768 Thomas Ffytche of Danbury, whose family had bought the Manorship of Woodham Walter in the late 1600s, gave a pulpit to the church and, by his wish, was buried in the vestry in 1777. No further gifts were made until 1867 when the church wardens purchased a harmonium. Presumably the orchestra had fallen into decline.

In 1879 the church was closed for a year while repairs and alterations were carried out. Thomas Ffytche's pulpit was demolished and replaced by the stone Victorian one now in use. The nave, chancel and aisles were tiled, new pews put in, the inner oak porch placed inside the north door, the gallery demolished together with the school room and replaced by the present belfry, and many of the windows reglazed. The only original glass now remaining in the church is easily identified by its colour which is softer and less brilliant than the more modern glass. There is a circular panel in the centre north window of a man reaping and the south windows all have small circular panels of suns, zodiacs and leopards' heads. The east window is an exact copy of the one it replaced but its stone framework and the framework of all the other windows in the church replaced the original Elizabethan ones.

A sketch by Selina Bryan, wife of Guy Bryan who was Rector for fifty years, hangs in the vestry.  Dated 1853 it shows the northern aspect of the church, showing stone framed-­windows - like their replacements ­which must have been the originals from the previous church as they are not Elizabethan.

The roof was also stripped and the rafters repaired and replaced before being retiled, almost entirely with the original tiles. It appears that some roof repairs have been necessary every hundred years since the church was built for there are records of money spent on its upkeep in the late 1600s and again in 1774.

In 1880 the organ was given to the church by Clarissa Ann Livermore of Little Baddow in memory of her brother Benjamen. The brass plate commemorating her own death in 1887 is under the East window.

In 1894 Emily Mewburn died and her husband, Chilton Mewburn himself carved the oak screens and panels which line the chancel as a memorial to her. Photographs at the rear of the church show these with elaborately carved canopies, similar to the one remaining on the north wall, but these were removed by the church wardens in the 1960s. The carvings took Chilton Mewburn four years and he has recorded each one of them - 1901, 1902, 1903 and 1904 - and six years after their completion he himself died at the age of forty-seven.

The church in 1911

The Great War of 1914 - 1918 claimed many of the village men and inside the north door an oak panel lists the names of those who died. In the early 1920s the church clock was placed on the belfry wall to commemorate all who had served in the war. It was refaced in 1937 but has otherwise remained unaltered. The second World War of 1939 - 1945 has a slightly whimsical memorial and one which now has almost faded completely. To avoid enemy aircraft being guided by lights from the ground towards their bombing targets the whole country was blacked out at night and penalties were enforced on anyone who allowed a light to show. To guide worshippers into the church on dark mornings and for evensong white lines were painted on the trees lining the path from the road to the door.

This then, is a short history of the fabric of St. Michael's church from 1563 to 2004. What of the people who gave life to the fabric? Some of them are buried here and a few of their memorials point to certain aspects of their lives. Their histories are separately written.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep. "

© Daphne Kiddle I977.  Revised 2004.
It has since been established that the site of the earlier church is at O.S. Ref TL 8120 0639.