AUGUST 199 



XLVI 



The advent of the motor car has been hailed by a large 

 proportion of the community with as much AliA j ll ^ aA 

 dissatisfaction as the earliest railway promoters British 

 had to encounter. The tranquillity of country shrine 

 life has been destroyed, they say, and dust renders way- 

 side dwellings uninhabitable. It cannot be denied that a 

 good deal of alarm and discomfort has attended the 

 introduction of this kind of locomotion; but there is 

 reasonable hope of remedies being devised for both these 

 disadvantages. Meanwhile, it is permissible to be grateful 

 for the opportunity created of visiting out-of-the-way 

 parts of the country, and of making acquaintance with 

 scenes which, but for motor cars, must have remained 

 unknown to all except persons of unlimited leisure. And, 

 depend upon it, the better travellers become acquainted 

 with the beauty and interest of rural scenes, the more 

 solicitous they will show themselves to respect their 

 peaceful charm. But for the facilities of motor travel, 

 there is no probability that I should ever have beheld, as 

 I did lately, one of the most venerable and primitive 

 places of worship in England. It is the parish church of 

 Greensted, a hamlet between Chipping Ongar and Epping 

 Forest in the county of Essex, consisting of a wooden 

 nave, tower, and spire, and a small brick chancel. The 

 tower and chancel present no peculiar features of 

 interest, the latter dating probably from the sixteenth 

 century, and the former being somewhat more ancient. 

 Wooden church towers are by no means uncommon in 

 Essex; there are good examples of fourteenth and 

 fifteenth century work of this kind at Chipping Ongar, 



