East Mersea
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East Mersea is a village and
civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...
on Mersea Island in the
City of Colchester The City of Colchester is a local government district with city status in Essex, England, named after its main settlement, Colchester. It is, with 194,394 people according to Office of National Statistics estimate for mid 2022, the most populous ...
district of
Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...
, England. It was historically referred to as ''Mersea'' in the Domesday book.


St Edmund's Church

The
Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...
parish Church of St Edmund King and Martyr dates from the 12th or 13th century with the nave and tower dating from the 14th and 15th century respectively. The oak and red-brick south porch is 19th century.  Inside there is a 15th-century octagonal
font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...
and mid-17th century
pulpit A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin ''pulpitum'' (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, accesse ...
. The rector at East Mersea from 1871 to 1881 was the scholar
Sabine Baring-Gould Sabine Baring-Gould (; 28 January 1834 – 2 January 1924) of Lew Trenchard in Devon, England, was an Anglican priest, hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist, folk song collector and eclectic scholar. His bibliography consists of more than 1,240 pu ...
who wrote the words for the
hymn A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hymn'' d ...
'' Onward Christian Soldiers''.


Grave of Sarah Wrench

The grave of Sarah Wrench (1833–1848), by the North wall of the
chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...
at St. Edmund's Church in East Mersea is unusual for an English grave because it is covered by a
mortsafe A mortsafe or mortcage was a construction designed to protect graves from disturbance, used in the United Kingdom. Resurrectionists in the United Kingdom, Resurrectionists had supplied schools of anatomy since the early 18th century. This was due ...
, a protective cage used at the time in
Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
to protect corpses from graverobbers. Richard Jones, in ''Myths of Britain and Ireland'', refers to popular speculation that Sarah Wrench was a
witch Witchcraft is the use of magic by a person called a witch. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic to inflict supernatural harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning. According to ''Enc ...
, and that the cage was designed to keep her from escaping her grave after death. Although
East Anglia East Anglia is an area of the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, ...
was at one time known for witch trials, this was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not the mid-nineteenth.


Notes


References

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External links

* Villages in Essex Civil parishes in Essex Mersea Island {{Essex-geo-stub