Britain's What's On Event Guide
St Martin's Church, Colchester
Heritage Open Day: St Martin's is a medieval church with an impressive 14th century roof, wall paintings and a Norman tower damaged in the 1648 Siege of Colchester. The chancel roof so impressed the leading church architect Sir Gilbert Scott on a visit in 1876 that he paid for its restoration. The wall paintings are a small part of a Doom painting of the early 16th century; figures from Hell on the south side, with demons tormenting the damned, and the saved on the north side. There is an exceptionally fine stained glass window of the six miracles of Christ by the firm of Heaton, Butler and Bayne, 1865. The church was partially restored in 1891 in an Anglo-Catholic style by Ernest Geldart, the clergyman-architect. In the churchyard is the grave of Jacob Ringer, a cloth weaver or bay maker in the 17th century, and a large Neo-Greek sarcophagus memorial to William Sparling, a lawyer and twice Mayor of Colchester who died in 1816.
The building is now a Greek Orthodox Church.
Sat 14 Sep:1000-1600; Sun 15 Sep:1300-1600; Free Entry.
West Stockwell Street, Colchester, Essex CO1 1HN
Sat 14 September and Sun 15 September