Patrick Comerford
During our recent visit to Colchester, I visited some of the churches in the town centre, including the ruins of Saint Botolph’s Priory and the neighbouring Victorian Saint Botolph’s Church, which I wrote about yesterday (23 March 2025), as well as the castle, the Roman and Norman walls, the town hall, the former Jewish quarter in Stockwell Street, and the sites of the town’s synagogues.
Colchester is in the Diocese of Chelmsford, and the centre of mediaeval Colchester once had eight parish churches, of which six survive: Saint Runwald came down in 1878; Saint Nicholas was rebuilt by George Gilbert Scott in 1876 but was demolished as recently as 1955.
By comparison with some other towns in East Anglia, the centre of Cambridge has nine surviving mediaeval parish churches, Ipswich has 12 and Norwich has 29 – but each is a larger town than Colchester.
Colchester’s buildings suffered significant damage with the Civil War siege in 1648, most notable Saint Botolph’s Priory, and suffered again in an earthquake in 1884. In a reorganisation of the town centre parishes after World War II, Saint Peter and Saint James at each end of the High Street became the key churches – one Low and one High. St Martin was declared redundant in 1953.
During our visit to Colchester, I missed some of the town’s mediaeval churches, including Holy Trinity Church on Trinity Street, said to be the oldest surviving church in Colchester. But I visited Saint Botolph’s Priory and Saint Botolph’s Church, which I wrote about yesterday, and there were short opportunities to see six churches in the town centre, including ‘Low Saint Peter’ and ‘High Saint James’:
1, All Saints’ Church, High Street:
All Saints’ Church, a 12th-century church on the High Street, faces Colchester Castle and is one of the earliest churches in the town. The High Street roughly follows the line of the principal East-West street of the Roman town and aligns with the Roman gates that were at either end of it. But it was deflected south outside All Saints when the castle was built in the 11th century.
All Saints’ Church predates this and is aligned with a nearby Roman building. The foundations of the church may have made use of the walls of Roman buildings that were already on the site.
The church was originally a two-cell apsidal church. The nave was added in the 12th century by the Normans. The chancel dates from the 14th century and the aisle from the 15th. The tower was built in the 14th century and rebuilt ca 1500, but it retained the arch of the earlier tower.
A 14th century rector was fined for felling hazel trees growing on the town wall, another was fined for assault and a third was fined for obstructing the highway with a ‘whirlegigge’, which was probably a type of turnstile.
When Saint Botolph’s church was badly damaged by cannon fire by besieging Parliamentarians in 1648, the parishioners were welcomed at All Saints and they continued to worship there for almost 200 years until 1837 when the present Saint Botolph’s Church was built.
All Saints’ Church was heavily restored in the 19th century and is a fine example of gothic architecture. It was declared a redundant church in 1956 and became Colchester’s Natural History Museum in 1958.
2, Saint James the Great, East Hill:
Saint James the Great Church on East Hill dates from the 12th century. The nave, tower and two aisles were built between the 13th and 15th centuries. The radical priest John Ball, a leader of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, preached in the church.
The chancel and the chapels of Our Lady and Saint Peter and Saint Paul were added ca 1500. The church was restored by Samuel Sanders Teulon in 1870-1871. It was designated a grade II* listed building in 1950.
The parish is in the Traditional Catholic tradition of the Church of England. It rejects the ordination of women and receives alternative episcopal oversight from the Bishop of Richborough.
3, Saint Martin’s Church, West Stockwell Street:
Saint Martin’s Church on West Stockwell Street in the old Dutch Quarter is a 12th-century church that survives in its original Norman form. The nave and the tower of the church date from the 12th century, and the aisles, transepts and chancel were added in the 14th century. Many Roman stones were incorporated into the walls of the tower and the nave.
Inside, the chancel has an early 14th century cross beam and support that formed a frame and canopy for the high altar. At the apex of the chancel arch is a carving of a green man.
The tower was damaged the Civil War in 1648 and was never repaired. The church fell into disrepair, and 100 years later (1748) it was in a ruinous condition and no services were held there.
When George Gilbert Scott was rebuilding Saint Nicholas in 1876, he visited Saint Martin’s and was so excited by the cross beam that he repaired the entire chancel roof at his own expense to protect it.
The Revd Ernest Geldart (1848-1929), master craftsman, architect, stained glass artist and parish priest of Little Braxted, furnished and decorated the church in his Arts and Craft style as part of an ambitious restoration plan that was never realised. Two glazed plaques of encaustic tiles in the aisles are reminders of his efforts.
The church was neglected again, and it was declared redundant in 1953. It was used by a theatre group from 1957, but had become structurally unsafe by 1987. Emergency repairs in the 1990s were financed by English Heritage, and further repairs were completed by 2003.
The church was sold in 2022 and today the Orthodox Parish of Saint Martin and Saint Helen is an active Orthodox church in the Antiochian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland. It is a Grade II* listed building.
4, Saint Peter’s Church, North Hill:
Saint Peter’s is the only church in Colchester recorded in Domesday, when it was the richest church in Essex. It stands at the west end of the High Street at the junction with North Hill. Rodwell and Rodwell (1977) suggest it was an Anglo-Saxon minster, based on its prominent location and the Domesday reference.
The mediaeval church had a large rood screen with a rood loft and the churchyard had a large stone cross from which the Gospels were read during the Palm Sunday procession. The vestry with a ‘bone-hole’ below was added in the early 16th century.
The church retains some mediaeval fabric, but it was damaged in the earthquake of 1692. It underwent a major remodelling in 1758, when the central tower was removed, the north and south arcades were extended using older materials, and the west tower was added. Soon after the chancel was reduced to half its width by extending the nave arcades eastward and at the same time the south aisle was extended.
The church was restored and remodelled in in 1895-1896, when the clerestory was added and the chancel arch built. The graveyard probably faced onto the High Street originally and the frontage buildings on Red Row are encroachments that probably date back to the Middle Ages.
5, Saint James the Less and Saint Helen Church, Priory Street:
The Roman Catholic Church of Saint James the Less and Saint Helen is in Priory Street, near the junction with East Hill. The Roman Catholic community in Colchester at the end of the 18th century consisted mainly of exiles from the French Revolution. In the early 19th century Irish Catholic soldiers were stationed in the town. In 1814, a French priest, Father Amand Benard, served both the community and the local garrison.
The church mission there was funded by Alfred Stourton (1829-1893), 23rd Baron Mowbray, who was related by marriage to the Prestons of Gormanston Castle. The site for a church was donated by James Hoy, a farmer from Stoke-by-Nayland.
The church was built in 1837 and was designed by Joseph John Scoles (1798-1863). He designed the church in the Romanesque Revival style and was inspired by the ruins of Saint Botolph’s Priory nearby. He used a similar plan when he designed Saint John the Evangelist Church in Islington four years later.
A community of Sisters of Mercy moved into the parish in 1891 and built a school next door in 1891.
The church was originally dedicated to Saint James the Great, but it was renamed Saint James the Less in 1900 to avoid confusion with the Anglican Saint James the Great Church nearby on East Hill. Two years later, in 1902, the church name was changed again to Saint James the Less and Saint Helen. Local tradition says Saint Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, was born in Colchester, and a statue of Saint Helena crowns the top of Colchester Town Hall.
The north aisle and sacristy were added in 1904 and the south aisle was added in 1907. Charles Edward Butcher was the architect for these additions. The church hall was built next door in 1911, when the architect was Canon Alexander Scoles, a son of Joseph John Scoles. The church was reordered in 1975. The stained-glass windows added to the Blessed Sacrament chapel in 1987 came from a redundant church and were originally designed by AWN Pugin.
6, Saint Runwald’s Church, High Street:
Saint Runwald’s Church in Colchester was one of only a handful of churches in Britain that were dedicated to Saint Runwald. Saint Rumbold, Rumwold, or Runwald, was an infant saint said to have lived for only three days in the year 662. But, it is said, he was full of piety, able to speak from the moment of his birth, asked for his own baptism, and preached a sermon before he died. The reputed site of his grave is in the old churchyard in Buckingham.
Saint Runwald’s Church in Colchester stood on an island in the middle of the High Street, part of ‘Middle Row’, until it was demolished along with the other buildings in the row in the 1860s and 1870s.
The church had a rectangular nave and a square chancel. The dedication, the thickness of the walls and perhaps its location in the middle of the High Street suggest Anglo-Saxon origins, perhaps in the late ninth century. However, the earliest documented record for the church is from 1254. The church was ‘Georgianised’ during its restoration in 1760 and much of the earlier detail was obscured.
During the installation of a gas main in 1927, several wall foundations and some burials on the site of Saint Runwald’s Church were recorded. All that remains of the church today is the graveyard 40 metres north, on the corner of Saint Runwald’s Street and West Stockwell Street, behind Colchester Town Hall.
I also took time to remember John Ball (1338-1381), the priest who took a prominent part in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Ball was born in Colchester. He preached in Saint James the Great Church on East Hill and may have lived in the area between East and West Stockwell Street in Colchester.
In an open-air sermon during the Peasants’ Revolt, he famously said: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, He would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.’
Ball was taken prisoner at Coventry, given a trial during which, unlike most, he was allowed to speak. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at St Albans in the presence of King Richard II on 15 July 1381.
John Ball later became a hero for radicals, revolutionaries, socialists and communists, and he is a recurring figure in literature. In Hamlet (Act V Scene 1), Shakespeare has the Gravedigger discuss the line ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?’ but in a reversed sense: in Adam’s time there were none but gentlemen, as through Scripture was being quoted.
William Morris wrote a short story, A Dream of John Ball, that was serialised in the Commonweal in 1886-1887 and published as a book in 1888. Sydney Carter wrote a song about John Ball, and the question, ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?’ is also the epigraph to Zadie Smith’s novel NW (2012).
The local historian Brian Bird identified Saint James the Great as Ball’s home church in Colchester and persuaded Colchester Council to name walkways after John Ball and Watt Tyler on a housing estate in the old Dutch Quarter that Bird identified as the area where Ball lived. A plaque on the corner of John Ball Walk was unveiled on John Ball Day, 15 July 2017.
