204
THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
glowing description of the old Hall in the opening chapters of Miss Braddon's
novel of "Lady Audley'* Secret," a poetical rhapsody in which styles and periods
are very much commingled, but yet conveying perhaps as good an idea of the
antique home as a learned disquisition from the pen of Dr. Dryasdust himself :—
" A glorious old place—a place that strangers fell into raptures with ; feeling a
yearning wish to have done with life, and to stay there for ever, staring into the
cool fish-ponds, and counting the bubbles as the roach and carp rose to the surface
of the water—a spot in which Peace seemed to have taken up her abode, setting
her soothing hand on every tree and flower ; on the still ponds and quiet alleys ;
the shady corners of the old-fashioned rooms ; the deep window-seats behind the
painted glass ; the low meadows and the stately avenues—ay, even upon the stag-
nant well, which, cool and sheltered, as all else in the old place, hid itself away in
a shrubbery behind the gardens. ... A noble place ; inside, as well as out,
a noble place - a house in which you incontinently lost yourself if ever you were so
rash as to go about it alone ; a house in which no one room had any sympathy
with another, every chamber running off at a tangent into an inner chamber, and
through that down some narrow staircase leading to a door which, in its turn, led
back into the very part of the house from which you thought yourself the farthest ;
a house that could never have been planned by any mortal architect, but must
have been the handiwork of that good old builder—Time, who, adding a room
one year, and knocking down a room another year, toppling over now a chimney
coeval with the Plantagenets, and setting up one in the style of the Tudors ;
shaking down a bit of Saxon wall there, and allowing a Norman arch to stand
here ; throwing in a row of high, narrow windows in the reign of Queen Anne,
and joining on a dining-room after the fashion of the time of Hanoverian George I.
to a refectory that had been standing since the Conquest—had contrived, in some
eleven centuries, to construct such a mansion as was not elsewhere to be met
with throughout the county of Essex."
At the Hall the party was received by the Very Reverend Canon Last, who
gave some most interesting chatty details of the house and its former inmates.
The Canon has been priest of the Mission at the Hall since 1832 He conducted
the visitors over the handsome little Roman Catholic Chapel in the central wing,
dedicated to SS. Erkenwald and Ethelburga. Erkenwald (who was Bishop of
London in the 7th century) gave the parish of Ingatestone as an endowment to
his sister Ethelburga, who was the first Abbess of Barking. The place was then
known as Ing or Ging Abbess. At the suppression of the religious houses by
Henry VIII., the nuns came from Barking to Ingatestone, and the chapel was
used by them as a private place of worship. Canon Last remarked that religious
houses were generally built where there was a plentiful supply of water, and at
that place the water was deepest in the reservoir in the hottest weather. In the
window immediately above the altar are figures in stained glass of St. Erkenwald
and his sister Ethelburga. The Canon pointed out that the former was represented
with his crozier turned outwards, signifying that he had jurisdiction outside, while
the crozier in the hand of his sister was turned inwards. There are other fine speci-
mens of stained glass in the chapel, the artist being Hartmann. Canon Last ob-
served that he thought that was the only place of worship in the kingdom dedicated
to St. Erkenwald. The tapestry which formerly adorned the walls of the Hall is
still preserved, but owing to the illness of one of the lady residents, the members
were not able to see this, nor, indeed, to make any extended examination of the
Hall. The Canon was warmly thanked by the President for his kindness, and
the members then repaired to the "Spread Eagle" for refreshment, and to meet
the other detachments of the party arriving from London, Chelmsford, &c. The
conductorship of the meeting was taken by Mr. Miller Christy and Mr. Chan-
cellor.