Complete View of the Manners,
Customs, Arms, Habits & Co of the Inhabitants of England, 1774, by Joseph
Strutt.
Essex references
13. Coggeshall
Page 103
Coggeshall Abbey |
“At the bottom of the first
plate of the Danish AEra, Plate 26, (where it was put for want of room) is a
view of the abbey chapel at Coggeshall, in Essex, which was built by king
Stephen, A.D. 1141, (1) in the 7th year of his reign. This has a pointed arch, and was in its first
state far from being an inelegant building, though very plain and void of ornament,
which was afterwards crowded in such superfluous excesses on the buildings of
gothic structure. The wall is composed
of unhewn flints, pieces of brick and tile sheards, over which the cement was
neatly plaistered both withinside and without, and seems in all respects to
have answered the purpose of stone facing.
The four corners (on the outside of the building) were ornamented with
bricks, many of which are evidently Roman.
All the arches of the windows and the two supports down the middle of
the large window, are composed of bricks, having the ornament necessary for the
purpose handsomely cut upon them. This
ruin is at present full as perfect as the drawing, but it is much to be feared
that it will no longer remain so, for being now turned into a barn, it will
most likely soon be demolished. Near
this place without doubt must have been a Roman camp or station, as well from
the vast number of Roman bricks that are to be seen, as from the accounts of
historians (2) concerning such antiquities as have been found near this
place. It has been by some supposed to
be the ad ansam of the antient Romans, but this is entirely left to the
judgment of the curious.”
References: (1) Speed’s
Chron. (2) See Camden in Essex, &
Weaver’s Funeral Monuments page 168, & page 63 of this work.
Supplementary Note:
In ‘The Remains of Coggeshall
Abbey’, published in the Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, n.s.
Volume 15 (1918), G F Beaumont quotes Strutt in relation to the St Nicholas
Chapel adding, “The sketch shows the building without any roof, and the view
is, apparently, of the north side as no doorway or barn entry is shown. It is not a very accurate drawing. Good illustrations of this interesting
building, as adapted for farm purposes, will be found in Excursions in Essex
(AD 1818), vol I, p42, and in Wright’s History of Essex, vol I, p367, the
latter being dated 1833.”
Strutt’s engraving appears to
have been an afterthought, an insertion into a peculiar plate having no sense
of order. He feared that the building
might be lost, but in the event became an unusual Essex barn. It stands today at what is the half way mark
of the 81-mile Essex Way.
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