HCT 2025 - Gems of Essex

Learn more about the rich heritage and architecture of Essex, visiting churches set in farmland, market towns and the old port of Colchester.

Holy Trinity Church, Halstead is one of the first examples of a Gothic Revival church in the Early English style and a prominent and handsome feature of this north Essex market town.

St Mary's Old Church, West Bergholt This remote church, believed to have Saxon origins, is predominantly Fourteenth Century with two intriguing Royal Arms.

Church of St Mary the Virgin, Little Bromley This delightful country church set in Essex farmland is made up of a Norman nave, chancel from around 1300 and a sixteenth century porch features an octagonal font, carved with charmingly rustic emblems of the four Evangelists and Tudor roses.

St Leonard-at-the-Hythe Church, Colchester This old port church boasts a medieval door bearing holes from the English Civil War, an elegant sixteenth-century hammerbeam roof and eighteenth and nineteenth-century screens and furnishings, a 1901 mural, and an array of saints in stained glass creating a handsome and devotional interior.

Travel: Depart Cholchester train station at 10:00, returning by 16:45.