St Peter & St Paul’s Church, Foxearth, Essex

St Peter and St Paul’s Church in Foxearth presents some challenges to the graffiti hunter. For a start, it’s difficult to find. It is not visible from the road. The postcode and GPS will put you on the wrong street anyway. When you do find the correct unlabelled side road, off The Street (yes, the village has a street called ‘The Street’), you have to go through the rectory garden to get to it. Once inside, you find that the second challenge is that this 14th century church has fallen victim to a rich, Victorian rector who wanted to improve things.

The ‘improvements’ have left behind a decorated roof and some lovely high Victorian wall paintings but very little graffiti.

The graffiti consists of a faint Marian W, a dot pattern and some initials, mostly around the west door arch. For the amusement of the more puerile-minded, an individual named W Cock has inscribed their name above head-height on one of the north pillars. 

St Peter & St Paul’s Church 

The Street

Foxearth

Essex

C010 7FF

Report by Anthea Hawdon