William Byrd Festival. Stondon Massey. May 2011

The ‘William Byrd Festival’ will take place in May 2011 at St Peter & St Paul Church, Stondon Massey, where this great Elizabethan composer was buried in 1623.

The ‘William Byrd Festival’ exists to:
- raise funds towards the upkeep of the ancient St Peter & St Paul Church, Stondon Massey (Essex), and its immediate surroundings
- raise the awareness and appreciation of William Byrd (c1539/40 – 1623), the Elizabethan composer, who died in 1623 having spent the previous 30 years as a resident of the village of Stondon Massey.

The Festival will be organised by local people and St Peter & St Paul Church PCC, the body responsible for the fabric of the building.

It is planned that the Festival will be held over one weekend in May 2011. The programme is in an embryonic stage and will be published in due course. Tickets will go on sale early in 2011.

Would you like to help with the event?

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William Byrd: Memorial in Stondon Massey Church

"To the Glory of God and in memory of WILLIAM BYRD who lived at Stondon Place in this Parish for the last thirty years of his life. He died 4 July 1623 aged eighty. This tablet was erected in 1923 in celebration of the tercentenary of his death".
The memorial is on the south wall of St Peter & St Paul Church, Stondon Massey.

(Photo by Michael Harris)

Book in Stondon History Series. 'William Byrd: Some Notes'

A 28 page booklet about the William Byrd, written from a local perspective, is available priced £2.00 + P&P (£3.00 to UK addresses) in aid of St Peter & St Paul Church, Stondon Massey.

Stondon Massey: Church Roof Appeal

Rising prices mean that the small congregation at Stondon Massey church is faced with a £5,000 shortfall following completion of essential work to retile the nave roof.

Roofing Contractors have advised that the heating oil used to fire the new tiles and the price of the imported lead has been the main reason why costs have risen since the indicative estimate given last year. More work to the roof structure also proved necessary once the old tiles were stripped off.

The Norman Grade I listed church of St Peter and St Paul has stood on the “stone hill” on the outskirts of Stondon Massey village since about 1130. It has long been associated with the Elizabethan composer, William Byrd, an ardent Catholic who lived in Stondon Massey for the last thirty years of his life, dying on 4 July 1623. Although he probably never crossed the threshold to receive an Anglican communion, inevitably his body was laid to rest in the churchyard, as requested in his last Will and Testament. Byrd’s memorial, unveiled nearly 100 years ago, is on the nave wall. We have the Edwardian Rector of the village, Revd. Reeve, to thank for his bringing to local and national recognition this great composer, who is now remembered at the annual William Byrd Memorial Concert held at the church by the Stondon Singers.

Re-roofing the nave will ensure that the small country church is watertight for generations to come. The present Rector, Revd. Toni Smith, is appealing for funds to bridge the gap.

It is our turn to remember and protect this legacy and honour those who have worshipped in this little church over many centuries, through both bad times as well as good.

£5,000 is urgently needed.

Do help if you are able, as have the many generations who have gone before us. Do come and see for yourself. The church is open for services, usually held at 9.00am Sundays, and on the 2nd Sunday in the month until September for visitors from 2.30 to 4.30pm.

Donations would be welcomed. Please send cheques payable to St Peter & St Paul Church PCC to Blackmore Vicarage, Church Street, Blackmore, Ingatestone, Essex. CM4 0RN.

Thank You.

Stondon Massey Church

St Peter & St Paul Church: "Nave and chancel are Early Norman. Two original windows remain on the north side and two on the south. The only later medieval addition of importance is the belfry, which is placed a little further east than the west end". (Pevsner. The Buildings of England. Essex. 1954).

(Photograph by Michael Harris)

A Living Church in an Ancient Building

To find out more about the people who go to St Peter & St Paul Church visit http://www.stlaurenceblackmore.org.uk/

Stondon Massey

The following is taken from ‘Durrant’s Handbook For Essex’ (Durrant & Co., Chelmsford, 1887).

Ston’don Massey. A. 1155; P. 261; Rectory, value £500; 3 m. S.E. from Ongar.

Literally Stone-dune Marci, the stony or gravelly hill of the Marci, or Marks, its owners in former times. The Place is a good mansion. The Church (SS. Peter and Paul), though small, is a remarkable example of a Norman church. It consists of a nave and chancel, to which a modern N. aisle and mortuary chapel with vaulted stone roof have been added. A timber framework in the W. end nave supports a tower with 3 bells and a spire. On the N. side were, until recently, two round-headed Norman loopholes, placed very high in the wall. Opposite were two similar windows, one of which, in the 16th cent., was replaced by a large square-headed 3-light (Perp.) window. In the chancel are two more loopholes like the others, not more than 2½ in. wide externally, but splayed internally to 3 ft. The S. door is a rude, plain, round-arched one, with square capitals, of Norman age, or possibly older. The rood-screen and pulpit (both perfect) are of fine 16th cent. carved oak. The E. window is poor; that at the W. is Perp., with a narrow lancet window over it, which is possibly original. The font is octagonal, with rose ornaments. There is a floor brass, with effigy and long inscription to John Sarre [Carre](1570), citizen of London ironmonger and merchant venturer, who was born in the parish ; and another to Rainold Hollingworth (1753). The Register begins in 1708.

Sacred Music TV Series: Tallis, Byrd and The Tudors

Programme three in the series 'Sacred Music' has just had its first broadcast on BBC FOUR (written 4 April 2008). Entitled 'Tallis, Byrd and The Tudors', we learned about these two Elizabethan Catholic composers who lived and worked in Essex.

Tallis worked for the Anglican Church following the dissolution of Waltham Abbey where he was organist between 1538 and 1540. He composed such pieces as 'If Ye Love Me', simply because as a musician this was the art professionally required of him at the time. The Church was the only place for his creativity.

Byrd, the younger of the two men, was quite a different character. He was a closet Catholic writing subversive liturgy for families such as the Petres at Ingatestone Hall. The present Lord Petre was interviewed at his home and viewers were shown paintings of William Petre, the first Baron and canny Tudor Secretary to the monarchs, then John, William's son and patron of Byrd. The Petre family were keen musicians and invited Byrd to Ingatestone Hall at Christmas 1585 for merrymaking and the odd secret Catholic mass. Byrd's settings of the Mass for Three, Four and Five Voices (part of the Mass for Four Voices sung by The Sixteen at Ingatestone Hall) are deliberately written for an intimate, domestic area. This is dangerous music.

The choice of Byrd's home at Stondon Massey, after the London Plague of 1592, seems to have been a deliberate hideaway from prying villagers and a walk across country to what was a hotbed of recusancy in the nearby village of Kelvedon Hatch.

Byrd is portrayed as a 'protest singer' in the composition of 'Why do I with paper, ink and pen' - a reaction to Edmund Campion's execution / martyrdom at Tyburn - and in the writing of 'How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land' (in Latin) to that Psalm 'By the Rivers of Babylon' (no don't mention Boney M please!).

These were indeed turbulent times! Repeated fines for recusancy and maybe anonymous burial at night fall in the churchyard at Stondon Massey.


Harry Christophers, director of The Sixteen who appears in the programme, told the 'Early Music Show' (BBC Radio 3, 6.4.08) how very much he enjoyed performing Byrd's intimate music at Ingatestone Hall.

William Byrd (1543 - 1623) made no bones about the fact that he was a Catholic, and had powerful friends to protect them. His family and close friends were often in trouble and even imprisoned for recusancy. He became a close friend of the Petre family at Ingatestone and, while living at Stondon Massey, embarked on the Gradualia and Masses. This music was to be sung in private Catholic chapels such as that of the Petre family.

He devoted himself to projects during the last 30 years of his life while in Essex. There are two Byrds – the private one in retreat in Essex and a more European one, linked with De Monte across in Vienna. De Monte sends ‘By the rivers of Babylon’ Byrd replies in opening text ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land’, a poignant response.

The composer's body was laid to rest in Stondon Massey churchyard in July 1623. Local people re-enacted his secret burial in the closing scenes of the programme.

Andrew Smith
Written and posted on http://www.blackmorehistory.blogspot.com on 4 April 2008, the date of the first transmission of the programme ‘Tallis, Byrd and The Tudors’, and 22 December 2008, when the programme was repeated.

William Byrd: Introduction

Thomas Tallis and William Byrd were the great composers of Elizabethan England. In 1575 they were granted the exclusive right to produce printed manuscripts. Byrd, we know, lived for the last thirty years of his life at Stondon Massey. He was one-time organist at the Chapel Royal and Court Composer to the Petre family at Ingatestone Hall.

A Catholic in a very Protestant era, Byrd was an unpopular man in the parish. The Churchwardens, who had significant power in those days, presented his name before the Essex Archdeaconry courts for failing to attend church and take communion, and for failing to pay church rates. This was a compulsory local tax intended to pay towards the upkeep of the church building and to provide for the poor of the parish.

It is highly unlikely that Byrd’s work was performed in the Church of England at the time and it is only during the twentieth century that his work has been rediscovered. We know that Byrd wished to be buried at Stondon Massey, but there is no evidence since no headstone was erected – in common with the early seventeenth century – and the Parish Registers for the period, unlike Blackmore, have been lost. St Peter and St Paul’s Church has a memorial to him commemorating the tercentenary of his death: he died on 4th July 1623. It bears the inscription “The Father of Mvsic”.

Andrew Smith
First published in ‘Church Matters’, July 2004

William Byrd: The Recusant

Britain celebrates some important anniversaries this year: VE Day (1945); the death of Sir Winston Churchill (1965); the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) and, the plot by Guy Fawkes to blow up the Houses of Parliament (1605).

The year 1605 marked a period of continued anti-Catholism in this country, for their doctrine threatened the establishment and the Crown. Queen Elizabeth I’s, stand against the Spanish (Catholic) threat to the Crown (1588 – the “Armada”) demonstrated how wary the English were of “foreigners”. Catholics were rooted out by Churchwardens and fined heavily, for it was illegal to not attend communion in the Church of England.

One such offender was William Byrd, who lived in Stondon Massey until his death in 1623. The village churchwardens were zealous in their pursuit of Byrd through the Ecclesiastical Courts. In 1605, at (Great) Baddow, it is recorded:

“William Bird et Ellen

“For Popish Recusants. He is a gentleman of the Kings Maties Chapel, and as the minister and churchwardens do hear the said Will Bird with the assistance of one Gabriel Colford who is now in Antwerp hath been the Chief and principal seducer of John Wright son and heir of John Wright the Elder. And the said Ellen Bird as it is reported and as her servants hath confessed have appointed business on the Saboth Day for the servants of purpose to keep them from church and also done her best endeavour to seduce Thoda Pigbone her now mayd servant to draw her to popery as the mayd has confessed and believes hath drawn her mayd servant from tyme to tyme those 7 years from coming to church and the said Ellen refuseth conference, and the minister and churchwardens have not as yet spoke with the same Wm Birde because he is from home”.

Andrew Smith
First published in ‘Church Matters’, July 2005