6o EPPING FOREST. 



from the nearest part of the Forest, the interest 

 which attaches to this church, both from an anti- 

 quarian point of view, and for the lover of the 

 picturesque, perhaps justifies its mention here. 

 Situated near Ongar, the terminus of the Wood- 

 ford railway, it is best approached on foot from 

 that town by a wide and straight grass avenue 

 about a mile in length, which is terminated by the 

 red brick gables of Greensted Hall, close to 

 which the church stands. The structural curiosity 

 of the church lies in the walls of the nave, which 

 are built of solid stems of oak-trees set upright, 

 and tied together by tongues of wood let into 

 perpendicular grooves at the edges of contact, a 

 form of construction which, in the opinion of the 

 learned, supports the belief that this part of the 

 church dates from the Anglo-Saxon period, and 

 renders it improbable that any part of it could 

 have been taken out and renewed. The interior 

 of. the solid wooden wall thus formed has been 

 brought to a plane surface by the adze, the marks 

 of which are clearly traceable. Outside, the whole 

 round sections of the trees are left rough, and 

 their exposed surfaces are furrowed by the action 

 of the weather into ridges and deep grooves in the 

 direction of the grain, but are otherwise uninjured 

 by the thousand years of exposure which they have 

 probably endured, except that when the church was 

 under repair in 1848 their lower ends were found 

 to be partially decayed, and were cut off and re- 

 placed by a brick sill. The church is dedicated to 

 the martyr-king St. Edmund, whose body rested 

 here for one night, when, more than a hundred 

 years after his death, it was carried to Bedrickes- 

 worth, now called Bury St. Edmunds, from London, 



