GREENSTEAD, a parish in the hundred of ONGAR,
county of ESSEX, lj 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 Beodrics worths, or Bury, whence
it had been carried away in 1010, by Bishop Ailwin,
in consequence of the invasion of the Danes under
Turkil.