BRENTWOOD (28th JULY 2012)

INTRODUCTION

The end of July 2012 saw a busy 24 hours for me, as I mixed sports with religion, but not at the same time. I had already planned a Saturday visit to Brentwood, but a belated decision took me off to Maldon on the Friday night to the football. At that time I was quite friendly with the parents of current first teamer at Colchester United, Alex Gilbey, who then was a member of their Under 18’s youth team, and on a few occasions, I managed to get lifts to away games. Now I had a thought, that I might get a lift, but to keep the story short, his dad, Scott, when I rang was on a train back from London to North Station, and I was told, if I could get to Nat West Lexden, in about 30 minutes, I could have a lift, it was a breathless me who just about made it, and a lift was secured. Coincidentally Colchester won the match 2-1. Part two of the story, was that Colchester had another match the next day in Brentwood, he said that I could have a lift back, but not there, as he had some building work to do in the morning. Hence i have a story to tell, about my morning there in the town.

THE JOURNEY DOWN

From what I can recall, I had never been to Brentwood, I had been around it on the A12, I had been through it, when going to girls football match in Brentwood, and further down in Aveley. We had driven in part of the main road in, but had then branched off, I had even been through it on a train, but this I thought, was my first ever actually visit. As is my custom, I wanted to make a day of it. First a visit to the town, then a walk to the Football ground, which was near to the Brentwood Leisure Centre. It was a bus leave from home about 730, two buses to North Station, then a train to Shenfield, and the local service train to Brentwood. As usual I did a map, but when you do a map, and there is an exit out of a railway station, you are never too sure, whether it be left or right, I went right, thought after a while, I was wrong, went back, asked someone, and my first thoughts were right, it was about a five minutes’ walk to the main street, and I elected to give Subway a miss, and having checked, where there was an M & S, I thought I would cash in one of my M & S coffee vouchers. However to my dismay, Brentwood M & S did not have a café inside it, so I had to go back to Subway, for a coffee and a sub roll. I then made a walk down the main street, it really was the only main street that I saw, but there were a fair number of shops and I set about looking in these.

MEMORABLE PLACES

For some reason, there was something, I not sure what know, but I believe it was a Robert Dyas shop I went inside and bought some household goods.

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Now I asked the shop assistant, were there any famous places to see in the town, the answer I got was that next door was the Sugar Hut”, which was featured on the TV programme, the only way is Essex, and a pub across the road was owned by a celebrity. The more interesting thing that I had seen was a church across the road, now that was more to my liking, but before I tell you more of my tale, It would be interesting to give an account, shown on Wikipedia, about the town of Brentwood. How my morning was to be in the town follows later.

HISTORY OF THE TOWN

Brentwood is a town and the principal settlement of the Borough of Brentwood, in the county of Essex in the east of England. It is located in the London commuter belt, 20 miles (30 km) east north-east of Charing Cross, and near the M25 motorway. Brentwood is an affluent suburban town with a small but expanding shopping area and high street. Beyond this is extensive sprawling residential development entirely surrounded by open countryside and woodland; some penetrating to within only a few hundred yards of the town centre. Brentwood is twinned with Roth (since August 1978) and Montbazon (since March 1994) respectively in Germany and France.

The name was assumed by antiquaries in the 1700s to derive from a corruption of the words 'burnt' and 'wood', with the name Burntwood still visible on some 18th century maps. However, "brent" was the middle English for "burnt". The name describes the presumed reason for settlement in the part of the Forest of Essex (later Epping Forest) that would have covered the area, where the main occupation was charcoal burning. An alternative meaning of "brent" is "holy one", which could refer to the chapel dedicated to Thomas Becket, for the use of pilgrims to Canterbury.

Early history

Although a Bronze Age axe has been found in Brentwood and there are clear signs of an entrenched encampment in Weald Country Park it is considered unlikely that there was any significant early settlement of the area which was originally covered by the Great Forest covering most of Essex at that time. Rather it is believed that despite the Roman road between London and Colchester passing through, the Saxons were the earliest settlers of the area. Robert Graves, in his book I, Claudius, refers to Brentwood as the site of the battle where Claudius defeated the Ancient Britons in 44 AD. However, Graves also states that names and places in the book are sometimes fictitious.

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The ruins of the Chapel of Thomas Becket in the town centre

The borough began as a small clearing in the middle of a dense forest, created by fire, giving it the name of Burntwood, or 'the place where the wood was burned'. People began to settle there and, because it was on the crossroads of the old Roman road from Colchester to London and the route the pilgrims took over the River Thames to Canterbury, it grew into a small town. A chapel was built in or around 1221, and in 1227 a market charter was granted. The new township, occupying the highest ground in the parish, lay at the junction of the main London- Colchester road with the Ongar-Tilbury road.

Its growth may have been stimulated by the cult of St. Thomas the Martyr, to whom the chapel was dedicated: the 12th century ruin of Thomas Becket Chapel was a popular stopping point for pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. The ruin stands in the centre of the High Street, next to the tourist information office, and the nearby parish church of Brentwood retains the dedication to St. Thomas of Canterbury. Pilgrims Hatch, or 'Pilgrims' gate', was probably named from pilgrims who crossed through on their way to the chapel. It is likely, however, that Brentwood's development was due chiefly to its main road position, its market, and its convenient location as an administrative centre. Early industries were connected mainly with textile and garment making, brewing, and brickmaking.

During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, Brentwood was the meeting place for some of the instigators, such as John Ball and Jack Straw. They, apparently, met regularly in local pubs and inns. The first event of the Peasants' Revolt occurred in Brentwood, when men from Fobbing, Corringham and Stanford were summoned by the commissioner Thomas Bampton to Brentwood to answer as to who had avoided paying the poll tax. Bampton insisted that the peasants pay what was demanded of them. The peasants refused to pay and a riot ensued as Bampton attempted to arrest the peasants. The peasants moved to kill Bampton, but he managed to escape to London. The rioters then, fearing the repercussions of what they had done fled into the forest. After the event, the peasants sent word to the rest of the country and initiated the Peasants' Revolt.

The Essex assizes were sometimes held here, as well as at Chelmsford. One such pub was The White Hart (now a nightclub called Sugar Hut Village and showing little of its original historic interest), which is one of the oldest buildings in Brentwood; it is believed to have been built in 1480 although apocryphal evidence suggests a hostelry might have stood on the site as much as a hundred years earlier and been visited in 1392 by Richard II, whose coat of arms included a white hart.

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The ground floor was originally stabling and in the mid-1700s the owners ran their own coach service to London. On 13 September 2009, the building and roof suffered significant damage during a fire.

Marygreen Manor, a handsome 16th century building on London Road, is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diaries and is said to have been often visited by the Tudor monarch Henry VIII when Henry Roper, Gentleman Pursuant to Queen Catherine of Aragon, lived there in 1514. It is now a hotel and restaurant. In 1686, Brentwood's inns were estimated to provide 110 beds and stabling for 183 horses. There were 11 inns in the town in 1788.

William Hunter monument at Wilson's Corner

Protestant martyr William Hunter was burnt at the stake in Brentwood in 1555. A monument to him was erected by subscription in 1861 at Wilson's Corner. Brentwood School was founded in 1557 and established in 1558, in Ingrave Road and behind the greens on Shenfield Road by Sir Anthony Browne and the site of Hunter's execution in commemorated by a plaque in the school. Thomas Munn, 'gentleman brickmaker' of Brentwood, met a less noble end when he was hanged for robbing the Yarmouth mail and his body was exhibited in chains at Gallows Corner, a road junction a few miles from Brentwood, in Romford. A ducking stool was mentioned in 1584.

As the Roman road grew busier, Brentwood became a major coaching stop for stagecoaches, with plenty of inns for overnight accommodation as the horses were rested. A 'stage' was approximately ten miles, and being about 20 miles (32 km) from London, Brentwood would have been a second stop for travellers to East Anglia. This has not changed; there is an above average number of pubs in the area - possibly due to the army being stationed at Warley Barracks until the 1960s. Some of the pubs date back to the 15th and 16th centuries. Brentwood was also significant as a hub for the London postal service, with a major post office since the 18th century. The most recent major post office on the high street was recently closed in the 2008 budget cuts; Brentwood residents now must rely on sub-postal offices.

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Daniel Defoe wrote about Brentwood as being "...full of good inns, and chiefly maintained by the excessive multitude of carriers and passengers, which are constantly passing this way to London, with droves of cattle, provisions and manufactures."

The 'Brentwood Ring', the earliest Christian ring ever to have been discovered in Britain was found in Brentwood in the late 1940s. It now resides at the British Museum in London. The only other ring of its type in existence can be found at the Vatican Museum in Rome.

Modern history

Brentwood originated as an ancient parish of 460 acres (1.86 km²). In 1891 the population was 4,949. Under the Local Government Act 1894, the Brentwood parish formed part of the Billericay Rural District of Essex. In 1899 the parish was removed from the rural district and formed the Brentwood Urban District. In 1934 the parish and district were enlarged by gaining Hutton, Ingrave and South Weald. The district was abolished in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972, and Brentwood urban district was joined with the parishes of Ingatestone and Fryerning, Mountnessing, Doddinghurst, Blackmore, Navestock, Kelvedon Hatch, and Stondon Massey to form the Brentwood district with a total area of 36,378 acres. In 1976 the new district was divided into 18 wards, with 39 councilors. In 1993, Brentwood gained 'borough status.

In 1917, the parish church was awarded cathedral status, then between 1989 and 1991 the building was modified to appear in an Italianate Classical style. Brentwood Cathedral is currently the seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Brentwood.

Incidentally, Ingatestone Hall, noted for its Roman Catholic connections through the Petres, is a 16th-century manor house built by Sir William Petre at Yenge-atte-Stone. The staunch Petres played a significant role in the preservation of the Catholic faith in England. Sir William was assistant to Thomas Cromwell when Henry VIII sought to dissolve the monasteries and ascended to the confidential post of Secretary of State, throughout the revolutionary changes of four Tudor monarchs: Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Queen Mary, in 1553, on her way to claim her crown in London, stopped at Ingatestone Hall; later, Queen Elizabeth I spent several nights at the hall on her royal progress of 1561.

Today, Ingatestone Hall, like all other large Tudor houses, is an expression of wealth and status and retains many of the features of a 16th-century knightly residence, despite alterations by descendants who still live in the house. Ingatestone Hall represented the exterior of Bleak House in the 2005 television adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel, and also appeared in an episode of the television series Lovejoy. It is open to the public for tours, concerts, and performances; the hall and grounds can be rented for weddings and other occasions.

Brentwood was the location of Warley Hospital, a psychiatric hospital, from 1853 to 2001. A British East India Company elephant training school was based in Brentwood and this remained an active army base as a depot for the Essex Regiment until 1959, when much of the site was redeveloped as the European

- 6 - headquarters for the Ford Motor Company. A few buildings remain from the Barracks - the regimental chapel, the gymnasium (now home to Brentwood Trampoline Club) and the officers mess (now Marillac Hospital).

Looking east down Brentwood's high street in 2007.

The town is increasingly suburban, but it does have a very rural feel, with trees, fields and open spaces all around the town; Shenfield Common is also less than one mile from town centre shops.

Brentwood's high street has also been subject to major redevelopment works costing between £3 million and £7 million. This included the demolition of the Sir Charles Napier pub to build an additional lane to improve traffic flow at the west end of the high street, and re-laying the pavements and road surface in the high street itself.

Education

Secondary schools include Brentwood County High School, Brentwood School, Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School (RC, girls), and St Martin's School.

Primary education is provided by a mixture of state schools, parochial schools (Church of England and Catholic) and independent prep schools.

Business

The Ford Motor Company's United Kingdom headquarters are located in the suburb of Warley, as are the property developer Countryside Properties. Hinge manufacturers NV Tools are based in the commuter suburb of Hutton.

From the financial services sector, Equity Insurance Group, comprising Equity Red Star (Lloyd's syndicate 218), affinity provider Equity Direct Broking Limited and motorcycle insurance broker Bike Team, is headquartered in the town centre. General insurance broker Brents Insurance established in the town in 1963. The Bank of New York Mellon also have a substantial presence in the town.

LV= also has a major office in the town, employing 350 people at present.

The previous and current headquarters of electronics company Amstrad are located in Brentwood. The television show The Apprentice used overhead views of the Canary Wharf business district in London as an accompaniment to interior shots of

- 7 - the previous Amstrad offices, Amstrad House, which has since been converted into a Premier Inn hotel. Amstrad's current headquarters are located directly opposite the old Amstrad House.

Well-known businesses that used to operate in the town include vacuum flask manufacturer Thermos, and Nissen whose UK factory and headquarters were established in the town by Ted Blake in the mid-1960s but closed in the 1980s.

Brentwood's town hall

Brentwood forms part of the larger Borough of Brentwood which also encompasses the surrounding smaller suburbs and villages. For elections to Westminster, Brentwood forms part of the Brentwood and Ongar constituency. In the 2010 General Election, Conservative Eric Pickles retained his seat in parliament, a position he has held since taking office in 1992.

Arts and media

The Brentwood Theatre and The Hermitage are the main cultural buildings in Brentwood; located on the same site in the town centre, the yellow and blue theatre and the historic brick buildings are difficult to miss. Owned and maintained by an independent charity, Brentwood Theatre receives no regular arts funding or subsidy. However, through careful management and with the support of a team of volunteers it is able to keep costs low so that hire rates are good value for a 100- to 176-seat professional venue. The Hermitage is used as the centre for Brentwood Youth Service.

Brentwood Theatre is a fully fitted community theatre that serves more than 40 non- professional performing arts groups. With high-quality lighting and sound, set design and production, and flexible staging, it is also an ideal venue for touring professional troupes, like Eastern Angles, who recently staged Return to Akenfield to critical acclaim.[30] Audrey Longman, the retiring chair of Brentwood Theatre Trust, and patron Stephen Moyer led a fundraising campaign to build on much-needed backstage facilities. The "Reaching Out, Building On" campaign, well publicised by local radio station Phoenix FM, enabled the theatre to build on an entire back wing, enhancing the theatre with dressing rooms, a kitchen, office space, lifts, and the Audrey Longman Studio, a 40-seat multi-purpose room outfitted with dance mirrors, staging, seating, lighting, and sound for intimate performances, rehearsals, workshops, classes, and community meetings and ceremonies.

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Brentwood Theatre

Local involvement provided support for Brentwood Theatre's renovation, but the campaign received a significant bump when a fan-based fundraiser became known to American fans of actor Stephen Moyer, the first patron of the theatre.

The theatre has also become known for its month-long Annual Holiday Children's Production every December. In 2008, local families enjoyed Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox with Stephen Gunshon, Deborah Leury, and Katie-Elizabeth Allgood; the theatre presented Dahl's The Twits in the 2009 season.

NOW I TURN RELIGIOUS

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Now when I go out, I nearly always end up in a church somewhere, and a church where you can get a coffee is better, and you get some good chat in there too, and this town was to be one of those. I discovered that refreshments were available in the building and there was a card stall, where I was able to buy some Get Well and some Condolescence cards. Also I met the clergy there and was allowed to look in the building and capture some very good photos, but I will begin, with the ones outside first.

After my coffee and biscuit, it was inside the cathedral itself and there was a very impressive view to see, which had a good collection of the stations of the cross, but from I gather came from the Cathedral Catholic. It seems that the new modern Catholic cathedral did not think the stations fitted in with their new building.

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It was a good look around and photograph session for me, as I tried to select my best shots when I got home. Sadly a few errors did occur, one step of Jesus’s last walk was missing, and some shots not the best, but the photos do give a good image of the station boards on view, which were part of the church. I believe the light glare through the window, affected some of the photos. Having bid my farewell to the church people, I was pointed in the direction of the Catholic Cathedral.

Whilst writing this article, I have now come to realise that I had been misguided that this impressive building was not in fact a Cathedral at all (but just a church), but it was still a very fine building, but it had the name of St Thomas of Canterbury Church. The history of this can be summarised by the following words - Brentwood began as a clearing made in the woods by burning trees (hence 'burnt wood' which became Brentwood) to provide a stop-off point about one day's journeying from the Thames for pilgrims en route from East Anglia to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. The first church building dedicated to St Thomas in Brentwood was a chapel built around 1221 to serve these pilgrims.

The ruins of the original chapel are still to be seen in the High Street. Brentwood remained part of the Parish of South Weald until 1873, but in 1835 a new church was built on the site of the present church to cater for the growing population in Brentwood. The new building had a short and unhappy history, being poorly designed and structurally unsound. Not long after Brentwood became an independent parish, the church was demolished to make way for the third St Thomas's in Brentwood. On 14th February 1881 the local MP, Octavius Coope (a member of the brewing family), laid the foundation-stone in the west wall of the present church. Two years later the main part of the church had been completed, and it was consecrated on 26th April 1883 by the Bishop of St Alban's (in whose diocese Brentwood then was). A total of seven services were held between 5.00am and 9.00pm that day.

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The present church is Victorian Gothic in the early English style, and it was designed by Mr EC Lee, also responsible for the design of St Paul's Bentley, a nearby parish. A generous gift from the Revd Charles Belli, a former vicar of South Weald, made it possible to rebuild the chancel, and the following five years saw further collections and gifts towards the building fund. The tower was completed in 1887 and dedicated by the Bishop on 19th October. The following year saw the installation of a peal of bells, and the old organ was replaced in 1897. A beautiful reredos depicting the crucifixion was bequeathed by George Larkin in 1896. Originally uncoloured, colour was added during as a memorial to those who died in the second world war during the redecoration of the chancel by Laurence King in the late 1950's. The church centre was added in 1988, to replace the old church hall which was located on Queens Road near the present vicarage. The centre contains the foyer where refreshments are served during the day, a hall, kitchen, sacristy, choir vestry, office and meeting rooms.

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And so I headed into the next road to find the Catholic Cathedral, this was to be a very modern building, from where a few booklets were bought, but I felt it lacked a little bit of the character that you felt when you were in St Thomas of Canterbury.

Brentwood Cathedral began in 1861 as a parish church built in a gothic style. This relatively small building was raised to Cathedral status in 1917. Between 1989 and 1991 the church was enlarged in an Italianate Classical style by Quinlan Terry. The original church building on the south (liturgical east) side was retained

The new Brentwood Cathedral was dedicated by Cardinal Basil Hume on 31 May 1991. The donors chose to remain anonymous and the money was given solely for this purpose.

The Cathedral

Architecturally, Quinlan Terry took his inspiration from the early Italian Renaissance crossed with the English Baroque of Christopher Wren. This, it was felt, would be appropriate for the town and its conservation area, but above all it would provide the right space and light for the liturgy to be celebrated. The cathedral was designed along a square plan, focused on the high altar, placed in the nave to accommodate the changes in liturgical fashion after the Second Vatican Council.

Work began in 1989 and was completed two years later. The north elevation consists of nine bays each divided by Doric pilasters. This is broken by a huge half- circular portico, which was inspired by a similar one at St Paul's. The handmade traditional Smeed Dean brick of the clerestory leads up to the octagonal lantern, or cupola, the high point both of the outside and inside.

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A conscious decision was taken to retain part of the Gothic revival church of 1861 alongside the new classical cathedral. The east elevation juxtaposes the old and the new, linking them through the scale of the 1991 building and the sympathetic use of ragstone and Welsh slate roof tiles. All the Classical architectural orders are represented in the interior - the four giant Doric pilasters, the Tuscan arcade of arches, the Ionic pilasters of the Palladian windows in the east and west aisles, the Corinthian and Composite influences evident on the cathedral and the organ case. While the interior of the cathedral has a deliberately 'restrained' feeling to it, richness is to be found in the ceiling. The Roman key pattern and the double guilloche pattern, picked out in gold leaf, are dominant here. All the round-headed windows are in the Classical-Wren style, with clear leaded lights of hand-made glass.

With clear windows on all four sides, the cathedral is flooded with light at any time of the day. This, together with the white walls and stone floor, combines to give a translucent effect which uplifts the spirit and conveys its own sense of the presence of God. The cathedral is lit by brass English Classical chandeliers (one of which was formerly in the church at Epping) and, above the cornice, concealed lighting. The processional cross is a copy of a medieval design. The figure represents a transitional period in the theology of design where Christ still wears the crown of the Risen Lord, but the corpus is that of the crucified Saviour. The Bishop's chair or cathedra is a tangible sign of his presiding over the diocese. It was made in Pisa, in Nabrassina stone, and has steps of Portland stone. In the centre is the coat of arms of the diocese. The base of the seat is inlaid with slate, to match the floor.

Consecration crosses are incised into the stone of the Doric pilasters that hold up the clerestory. They were anointed like the altar, as a sign that the whole building is dedicated to God. On the feast of the Dedication the candles in front of the gilded crosses are lit. In the east aisle, there are two rooms set aside to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation or Confession. Opposite them is a crucifix, formerly in the church at Stock, Essex. Around the arcade are terracotta roundels representing the 15 Stations of the Cross. These were modelled by Raphael Maklouf, the well- known sculptor, who was responsible for the Queen's head on Commonwealth coinage from 1985 to 1997. Their milky glaze perfectly complements the subtlety and intimacy with which the familiar scenes have been expressed.

AND TO END MY STORY

At a sit down and read and a sandwich eat, I set off via my map reading and then headed towards the football ground. It was to be a fair walk, of about two miles but I found I had plenty of time to spare and my arrival on what was a very hot day, saw me go for a coffee in the Leisure Centre. It was another football win, and it was to be a lift home too, as we chatted over the 2-1 score line for our team and so ended another good day out, in the fresh air.

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