THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
75
to leave his room, had himself suggested the visit to the house; and this was
fitly seconded by a nephew of Thomas Hood, Mr. Townley Green, who was one
of the party.
The members were then led to the old entrance to Wanstead Park, formerly
called " The Bush Gate," from a small inn which stood there on the site of
Mr. Venables* house. After a glance at the interlaced monogram of Sir
Richard Child on the carved pillars, the footway was followed to the Church
and Churchyard of St. Mary (catching, by the way, a glimpse of Blake Hall)
where Mr. Crouch gave some particulars of the building and its associations.
The old Church was a small and very ancient structure, which stood on a site
in the Churchyard (still to be traced) south of the present one, and which was
mentioned by the author of the "British Traveller" in 1771 as having been
lately "repaired and fitted up in the neatest manner for Divine Service;" yet,
as Mr. Walford remarks, only twenty years afterwards, " the Church was
ruthlessly pulled down, to make room for a brand-new Italian edifice."
A reproduction of an engraving of the old Church as it appeared about
1710, by J. Kip, is given above. As a boy of 13 (in 1787—8) J. W. M.
Turner, R.A., made a water-colour sketch of the Church, a copy of which,
made for the Rev. Moreton Drummond (the present Rector), now hangs in the
vestry. The new Church was begun in 1787, and it was consecrated in 1790.
The ground was given by the then owner of the manor, Sir J. Tylney Long,
and the cost of the building was £9,000, the subscriptions received amounting
to £3,000, and the remainder was paid off by means of a tontine. It is
built of brick, faced with Portland stone in a mixed classical style, with Doric
portico, and small cupola, supported by eight Ionic columns, and consists of a
chancel, nave, and two aisles, separated by pillars, with Corinthian capitals
of white, picked out with gold. The east window, the work of Eginton of
Birmingham, with a figure of Christ bearing the Cross, is copied from the
picture by Murillo, in Magdalen College, Oxford. In the north gallery are the
Royal Arms, and in the south the arms of Sir J. T. Long in stained glass.
There are several monuments and tablets which were removed from the old
Church; the largest and finest being the elaborate marble monument on the
south wall of the chancel, with a lengthy Latin epitaph, and life-sized statue
of Sir Josiah Child (1699), in Roman toga, and with a large Charles II. wig
flowing over his shoulders. Beneath is the recumbent effigy of his eldest son,
and around are angels with trumpets, and weeping females. There are also
tablets to Rev. Gerald S. Fitzgerald, and Rev. W. Gilly, former rectors ; the
late Alderman Finnis, Sir John Hopkins, David and Mary Petty, etc., but the
most beautiful, as a work of art, is the fine monument by Sir Francis Chantrey
in the north gallery (under the window with the Royal Arms), with a boldly
carved weeping female, and bust of George Bowles, of the Grove, who died in
1817, in his 85th year. Outside, on the site of the chancel of the old Church,
are memorial stones to some of the old rectors, Dr. Horne, Dr. Pound (of whom
more anon), Thomas Juson, and, under the old yew, the monument to Dr. Glasse,
with, inter alia, the grave-stone of Thomas Turpin, of Whitechapel (said to be
the father of the too famous Dick of that name). Nor were the adjoining tombs
of the Froysells forgotten; an old Huguenot family, from whom descended the
mother of the distinguished naturalist, Sir Richard Owen, one of hon. members
of the Essex Field Club. In the oldest Register Book is a protestation made
in 1641 by forty-eight inhabitants of Wanstead, among whom were Thomas