In St Mary's Churchyard, Leyton

Image: © Marathon Taken: 7 Jan 2015

Domesday Book records two priests in Leyton in 1086, so the current church almost certainly occupies the site of a much earlier building. The red brick tower of St Mary the Virgin, Leyton dates from 1658. It has an 18th century clock turret on top. Other parts date from the 17th and 19th centuries, although the church was much altered and enlarged in 1932. Ian Nairn in Nairn's London (1966) says of Leyton Church: "A huge surprise in the endless late-Victorian bow fronts of London-across-the-Lea. A village church that gradually got bigger, and one that has never been rectified. A pre-war west porch adds itself unselfconsciously to the bits of 1830 and 1750, all shapes and sizes, as diverse as the characters in a saloon bar. This is something far more important than architectural style, and the kind of thing that was swept away in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred for the sake of 'correctness' or 'tidyness' - like cutting inches off people's heads to make things consistent." The churchyard is certainly like a country churchyard dropped down into densely-packed east London. The northern half is maintained as a nature reserve, although the whole is of great ecological and historical interest. In this view, the houses beyond the churchyard are in Goldsmith Road.

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