HIDDEN in the darkest corners of our castles and churches lurks a little known but strangely familiar face.

Known as the Green Man, he has been around for hundreds of years, yet his reason and purpose has been long since lost in the mists of time.

Now a new book by a Billericay author seeks to discover more about the mysterious character.

Susan Hegedus, a freelance journalist, has been searching for the Green Man around Essex for several years, trying to track down examples of the leaf-covered countenance that appears in architecture.

She said: "I've been fascinated by the image for a while now – I saw something on television about it and it just caught my interest.

"At first I didn't set out to write a book about it, but I was soon finding so many I wanted to record them."

Soon, Mrs Hegedus was exploring the county's abundance of medieval churches, and finding examples of the face carved into fonts, beams and pillars wherever she looked.

She said: "As soon as you start looking, you realise how common they are.

"There are usually far more demons and monsters looking down on you in medieval churches than there are saints wrapped up in prayer.

"I would look round by myself or with my children. I thought they might be bored stiff, but they absolutely loved trying to find him."

The name Green Man was first coined by folklorist Lady Raglan in 1939, in an article called "The Green Man in Church Architecture" in The Folklore Journal.

She associated the figure with the "Jack in the Green" character of pre-Christian tradition, a symbol of fertility rites and woodland mischief who the masons added to churches as a secret symbol.

However, as study has continued, opinions on the leaf-entwined face have developed, and Mrs Hegedus sees a number of explanations behind the face.

She said: "It is part of the language of churches, and has changed over the centuries.

"Some of them are quite repulsive and are seemingly there to repel evil.

"But mostly they seem to be there to reinforce Christian teachings, showing that people come from the earth and will return to the earth.

"Whenever I'm in an old church I try to see it as a medieval person would.

"It's nice to imagine masons smuggling in pagan symbols but the priests and landowners who built the churches probably had more control than that."

She added: "People travel miles to go and see museums and big tourist attractions, but we have this wealth of churches all around us with these interesting elements."

To find out more about the book, The Hidden Green Man in Essex, visit www.susanhegedus.com