About the Book

Blazons, Beams and Bells tells the story of All Saints Church in the Essex village of Messing, from the Norman Conquest to the Great War.

Drawing on original archival research across the Essex Record Office, Hertfordshire Archives, and the National Archives, it traces the families who built, funded, and shaped the church: the Baynards, the Chibbornes, the Luckyns, the Grimstons, and their descendants the Earls of Verulam.

Along the way it debunks the romantic myth of a cross-legged crusader, corrects heraldic errors that have persisted since Morant's county history of 1768, uncovers a Georgian scandal never before fully told, and solves the mystery of the solitary hatchment that hangs not in the chancel with the others, but on the west wall of the nave.

The heraldry of All Saints is not mere decoration. It is a record of dynastic marriage, personal loss, religious conflict, and the long interplay between Church, Crown, and the Essex gentry across nine centuries of English history.