Mistley Towers are the twin towers of the now demolished

Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * C ...

of St. Mary the Virgin at Mistley in

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

(sometimes known as Mistley Thorn(e) Church). The original Georgian parish church on the site had been built in classical style early in the 18th century following the death of Richard Rigby Esquire. Later in that century there was a grandiose plan by his son, the wealthy politician

Richard Rigby Richard Rigby PC (February 1722 – 8 April 1788), was an English civil servant and politician who sat in the British House of Commons for 43 years from 1745 to 1788. He served as Chief Secretary for Ireland and Paymaster of the Forces. Rigby ...

, to transform Mistley Thorn into a

spa town A spa town is a resort town based on a mineral spa (a developed mineral spring). Patrons visit spas to "take the waters" for their purported health benefits. Thomas Guidott set up a medical practice in the English town of Bath in 1668. He ...

Enlargement

Rigby wished to see a church from the windows of his mansion and a suitably grand church was required for the affluent visitors expected to patronise the new spa. Thus in 1776, the renowned architect

Robert Adam Robert Adam (3 July 17283 March 1792) was a British neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam (1689–1748), Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him. With his ...

was commissioned to enhance the church. His design was in the neoclassical style, with a tower at both the east and the west ends of the church, and full height porticos to the north and south of the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

Demolition

After just under a century in this form, the nave was demolished in circa 1870, when the new parish church of Church of St. Mary and St. Michael was built in New Road. Columns from the porticos were reused at the inner corners of the towers, and the towers are now all that now remain of the once magnificent structure.

Remainder

The square symmetrical towers are in the neoclassical style, resembling tall

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

s rather than towers, with each facade pedimented and the whole surmounted by a

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, fro ...

decorated with blind windows interspersed by Ionic columns. At ground floor level two unfluted ionic columns at each corner support a decorative cornice. The columns are decorative only, and appear to serve no structural purpose. The design of the towers creates the impression that the building was once more of a miniature

cathedral A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denominatio ...

than a

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one o ...

church. However, the main body of the church was small and occupied the (now empty) site between the two towers. It was a single storey structure with a simple hipped roof and entrance porticos at its centre. This was the part of Adam's church which was demolished in 1870. The remaining towers are Grade I listed and a scheduled monument.

References

External links

Mistley Towers Teachers' resource pack:English Heritage History Mistley Towers: English Heritage
{{coord, 51.94594, N, 1.07739, E, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Churches in Tendring English Heritage sites in Essex Mistley History of Essex Robert Adam buildings