The monument includes the buried and upstanding remains of St Mary the Virgin’s Church, situated on low-lying land some 120m to the west of Salcott Channel. The remains of the church are a Listed Building Grade II. The church ruins are within the parish of Virley located in the garden of the rectory, next to Virley Hall. A scatter of farms and cottages surround the church, but Salcott to the south on the other side of the creek is the nearest village. The monument includes a roofless nave and slightly narrower chancel. The west wall of the nave no longer survives above ground, however, its foundations lie between the surviving nave walls and a grave located some 3.5m to the west. The original church comprising a nave and chancel dates to the 13th century, its walls built primarily of Roman tile and brick, septaria, peg tile, flint and Kentish Ragstone. The principal surviving features of this original construction are the narrow chancel arch and the buttresses at regular intervals which have two weathering tables with imported Caen stone dressings. The chancel arch (of Reigate stone), is rounded, rather narrow, and has octagonal responds with moulded capitals. The church underwent various modifications during the 14th and 15th centuries. The surviving windows were all inserted into the walls of the church during this period. The window in the north wall of the nave is probably 14th century. It has a head of Reigate stone, jambs of Caen stone and would originally have had two pointed lights in a two-centred head, as would the less well-presented window in the south wall. The windows in the chancel are clearly of a different date to those in the nave; they are thought to date to the 15th century, each having two lights with tracery in a four centred head. In and around the standing structure of the church is a great deal of loose stonework. Several of the stone fragments are recognisable as window heads, mullions and sills; some are early Perpendicular in style and may be dated to the late 14th century. Before the final abandonment of the church at the end of the 19th century, several efforts were made to repair the fabric, the most obvious of these being the brick buttresses on the north wall and south east corner of the nave. Documentary sources refer to the Verli family holding the parish during the late 13th century; and 18th century description of the church noted that there were no coats of arms or monuments in the church apart from those of the Atte Lee family, lords of the manor in the 14th century. Descriptions of the church written in the 18th and 19th centuries record that the church had a tower which had collapsed by the 18th century and was superseded by a timber enclosure containing a bell. A 19th century novel of marshland life in Essex (Mehalah – a story of the salt marshes by S Baring-Gould) gives a graphic description of a rustic wedding held there and the church seems to have been in an advanced state of decay by that time. The last service was held in the church in 1879 when an Order in Council was issued uniting the parishes of Salcott and Virley. The famous Essex earthquake of 1884 split the walls of the church and the roof collapsed. In 1893 a faculty was issued making Salcott the parish church. <1>