British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car: Being a Record of a Five Thousand Mile Tour in England, Wales and ScotlandMurphy, Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler)
History
British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car: Being a Record of a Five Thousand Mile Tour in England, Wales and Scotland
Murphy, Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler)
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Maps
We left this highway at Chelmsford to visit the Greenstead Church near
Chipping-Ongar, about twenty-two miles from London. This is one of the
most curious churches in all England. It is a diminutive building, half
hidden amidst the profusion of foliage, and would hardly attract
attention unless one had learned of its unique construction and
remarkable history. It is said to be the only church in England which is
built with wooden walls, these being made from the trunks of large oak
trees split down the center and roughly sharpened at each end. They are
raised from the ground by a low brick foundation, and inside the spaces
between the trunks are covered with pieces of wood. The rough timber
frame of the roof is fastened with wooden pins. The interior of the
building is quite dark, there being no windows in the wooden walls, and
the light comes in from a dormer window in the roof. This church was
built in the year 1010 to mark the resting place of St. Edmund the
Martyr, whose remains were being carried from Bury to London. The town
of Ongar, near by, once had an extensive castle, of which little
remains, and in the chancel of the church is the grave of Oliver
Cromwell's favorite daughter. A house in High Street was for some time
the residence of David Livingstone, the great African explorer.
From Chipping-Ongar we followed for the third time the delightful road
leading to London, passing through the village of Chigwell, of which I
have spoken at length elsewhere. On coming into London, we found the
streets in a condition of chaos, owing to repairs in the pavement. The
direct road was quite impassable and we were compelled to get into the
city through by-streets--not an easy task. In London the streets do not
run parallel as in many of our American cities. No end of inquiry was
necessary to get over the ten miles after we were in the city before we
reached our hotel. It was not very convenient to make inquiries, either,
when driving in streets crowded to the limit where our car could not
halt for an instant without stopping the entire procession. We would
often get into a pocket behind a slow-moving truck or street car and be
compelled to crawl along for several blocks at the slowest speed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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