Glimpses of Essex #2 - Gestingthorpe on a Saturday Morning

Gestingthorpe is a hamlet tucked inside the northern county boundary, but estate agents prefer to say Suffolk borders. The pace of life is unhurried. I watch the vicar tacking posters to the church noticeboard as sunlight spears through medieval glass exposing arcs of dust. Thatched Tudor cottages surround a tidy green, coated in pretty pastel colours and overhung with winter roses. “No to Stanstead Expansion” says a handwritten sign in a ground floor window and as if on cue, the throaty buzz of airplane engines pass over.

A Georgian manor house stands on higher ground at the end of a narrow lane. A century ago, Titus Oates became Lord of the Manor, but itchy feet led him all the way to Antarctica and he died in 1912 on the way home from the South Pole. His memorable final words are inscribed on a polished tablet in the church nave, “I’m going out, I may be some time.”