Greenstead

"GREENSTEAD, a parish in the hundred of ONGAR, county of ESSEX, 1¼ mile (W. by S.) from Chipping-Ongar, containing 131 inhabitants. The living is a rectory, in the archdeaconry of Colchester, and diocese of London, rated in the king's books at £6. 13. 4., and in the patronage of the Bishop of London. The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, is a small edifice, the chancel of which is of brick, and the nave very remarkable, being walled with upright trunks of trees supported by brick buttresses, with its roof rising to a point in the centre, and a wooden steeple at the west end; it is supposed to have been erected about 1013, as a shrine for the reception of the corpse of St. Edmund, on being conveyed back from London to Beodricsworths, or Bury, whence it had been carried away in 1010, by Bishop Ailwin, in consequence of the invasion of the Danes under Turkil." [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) - copyright Mel Lockie 2016]