The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
St John of Jerusalem (medieval)
Parish church
Little Maplestead is a village in the Braintree district of N Essex, 8 miles NE of Braintree itself. The village is clustered around a network of minor roads W of the main A131 Braintree to Sudbury road, with the church and the hall alongside it at the W end of the village. The present church is of flint and pebble rubble with limestone dressings, and is of c.1335. It consists of an aisleless chancel with a semicircular eastern apse and a S vestry, and at the W end a circular nave carried on 6 piers. Above the nave is a wooden belfry with a pyramid roof. There is a W porch of 1851. The church is of c.1335 with no earlier fabric surviving. It was the subject of a drastic restoration by the architect R. C. Carpenter in 1851-57. The only Romanesque feature is the font.