The fungi of Fryerning Churchyard
GRAHAM SMITH
48 The Meads, Ingatestone, Essex CM4 OAE
Fryerning Church stands at the southern tip of the Fryerning-Mill Green ridge and offers fine views
across the gentle rise and dip of the mid-Essex countryside towards the much steeper hills of the
Epping uplands. St Mary's Church has occupied this spot since the 11th century - or at least the
nave has - but the site may have been in use far longer than this as it stands on a raised embankment,
most evident on the southern side where the terrain dips steeply towards Ingatestone. The defensive
potential of such a position would surely not have gone unnoticed by Bronze or Iron Age
communities, as is perhaps evidenced by a nearby barrow, one of two that formerly occupied this
site. The Normans certainly had defence in mind when they built the nave as the walls arc three feet
thick and the five windows are situated fifteen feet from the ground, an ideal position from which
to rain arrows down on rebellious Saxons, minor local uprisings being not uncommon nationwide
following the Battle of Hastings.
William the Conqueror gave the manor of Fryerning to one of his barons, Robert Gernon, whose
grandson Gilbert Montfichet granted half the estate, together with the church, to the Knights
Hospitallers of Jerusalem, a religious order linked to the Crusades. It was they who replaced the
original wooden tower with the fine brick version present today, almost certainly using bricks
made locally as old parish maps depict both a Brick Kiln Field and a Brick Clamp Field close to the
church. A fat lot of good it did them, alas, as within a few years of its construction their order had
been suppressed by Henry VIII at the dissolution of the religious houses in 1539-40. The property
was eventually acquired by Sir Nicholas Wadham, who was married to Dorothy, daughter of Sir
William Petre, and it was this couple who founded Wadham College, Oxford in 1613. The college
is still patron of the parish and owned - at least until recently - considerable areas of land in the
vicinity including the three major farms that formed the estate - Howlet's Hall, Fryerning Hall and
Ray Farm. Uppity Saxons apart, the old church has seen many a verbal battle over the centuries
between the various incumbents, the church authorities and their tithe-paying parishioners, squabbles
which viewed from this distance in time often seem trivial, as indeed do many of those that bedevil
the Anglican Church to this day.
The ridge on which the church stands is an outcrop of the Bagshot Beds, acidic sands and gravels,
overlying the London Clay. A characteristic feature of these soils, particularly noticeable where the
land has been ploughed, such as at nearby Fryerning Hall Farm, is their extremely stony nature.
They must have been the banc of many a farm-worker in the past, when ploughshares had to be
honed by hand. The original churchyard was extended at the tail end of the Victorian era and again
in the 1960s, and a further extension is now under way. A broad swathe of land to the south was
incorporated during the autumn of 2001, a fence erected and a boundary hedge - of native species
- planted. The reason for this is that so many people desire to be buried there, many of them with
only a tenuous connection to the village; an understandable last wish as it is a peaceful spot - the
kind of churchyard where it would not seem amiss to picnic. Even in this supposedly secular age,
though, the Anglicans, Catholics and Non-conformists all have their separate plots!
Although the grass between the graves in all parts of the churchyard has probably always been
mowed (or grazed) on a regular basis, it has never, as far as I am aware, been treated with cither
fertiliser or herbicides. Consequently, a flower-rich sward has developed in both the original
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 19 (2002)
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