High Country History Group

Firstly I must apologise for the delay in issuing this newsletter. Having moved house in July I have at last found time to sit down and put it all together. I can assure you that I will meet our target of four newsletters each year.

Built 1820. Destroyed by fire 1927.

The Chapel stood on the corner of London Road, Stanford Rivers and Church Road. All that remains today is the boundary wall and a headstone from one of the graves. It had an undistinguished history for the 107 years of it existence. Its claim to fame lies with the explorer David Livingstone.

In 1839 Livingstone, then a student at Chipping Ongar, was requested to preach in the chapel. He is said to have suffered from ‘stage fright’ and to have been unable to finish his sermon. He quoted his text and said “Friends, I have forgotten all I had to say” and stepped down from the pulpit.

In 1904 there were 34 Sunday School children and 2 teachers. On Sunday 2nd January 1927, an oil lamp was accidentally overturned and the building destroyed.

Repton was a pioneer in the field of landscape architecture. He was also the most famous landscape gardener of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He created, transformed or improved over two hundred places in England. His ideal was natural beauty enhanced by art. This is embodied in our own urban public parks such as Central Park, Regent’s Park and Goethe’s Weimar Park.

However, Repton’s most lasting contribution to his profession lies not in his actual landscaping but in his writings on his art which were derived from his famous Red Books.

In the process of designing a landscape for a client Repton would create a Red Book of the estate. This was a slim volume bound in red leather. It contained his proposals for changes outlined in neat copperplate handwriting and embellished with maps, plans, drawings and water-colours to illustrate his ideas.

Repton’s published writings were the distillations of the most valuable material from the Red Books. Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1798), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1805), An Enquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening (1806), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816) are not merely theoretical works but the result of ‘hands on’ experience.

Repton lived in a cottage on the corner of Main Road and Belgores Lane, Romford (now Lloyds TSB Bank) from 1783 until his death in 1818. The plaque below appears on the site.

Collects and preserves the county’s written heritage. The archives of countless local organisations, families and individuals are stored there, ensuring that they can be studied by present and future generations of researchers.

The archives can help you to explore:

Family history
Local history
The history of your house
Local geography
Archaeological sites and historic buildings
Any aspect of Essex life past and present
National events from a local perspective
Sources

The Record Office’s collections are the prime evidence for the history of Essex and its people over a thousand years. They include records from:

Local authorities
Churches and chapels
Poor Law Unions
Schools
Local businesses
Landed families and estates
Local clubs and societies

The collections include:

Parish registers
Wills
Title deeds
Rate books
Maps and plans
Photographs, prints and drawings
Sound and video recordings
Census returns
Newspapers
Electoral registers
Books and pamphlets

The Essex Record Office in Chelmsford is on the riverside at Wharf Road. It is five minutes’ walk from the High Street, along the riverside path from the Meadows shopping precinct. If you are coming by car there are public car parks in Wharf Road.

You will need to apply for a readers’ ticket unless you already possess a County Archive Research Network ticket.

[Take proof of identity containing your name, address and signature, such as a UK driving licence]

[Report from the Poor Law Commission in 1838]

“The Governor is a retired supervisor of excise; his former occupation has accustomed him to accuracy in accounts, and his services on the Kent and Sussex coast have inured him to the firmness required in his present situation; and the most refractory have given way to the discipline of the house.

The building is in general judiciously planned. The Governors apartments in the centre, between the male and female wards, and overlooking the two yards.

The number of inmates at present is 62, principally aged, deserted children, and a few children of parents who are unable to maintain them.

The able bodied, who are sometimes sent in are soon induced by the order, the cleanliness, the abstinence of fermented liquor, and the general restraint, to quit as soon as possible and seek work for themselves. Nearly 200 persons are sent into the house in the course of the year.

The able bodied are employed in raising and drawing gravel and in the repair of roads. The cheapness at which they can be maintained is a material object; for the charge is heavy. Some obstinate paupers frequently use that as a means of wearying out their parish and obtaining their own way.

As children can be maintained here for 1/6d per week, the parishes avoid the evil of the large allowances usually made for bastards which operate as a premium on immorality.”

There is something about country-church graveyards that their town and city counterparts lack. Usually tucked away from the community they serve,they offer an atmosphere of calm and tranquillity that can soothe away the stresses of everyday living; and, as we wander amongst the stone memorials of people who have lived before us, we can put our own lives in perspective of eternal existence.

We gathered by the old Norman church on a lovely late-spring evening, under a clear blue sky with only a faint whisper of the cold north-easterly of previous days still with us; and it was easy to imagine that peace and tranquillity had been here throughout the centuries. So it was something of a shock to be told by Brian Pugh, our very knowledgeable guide that it was quite otherwise, and early in its history there had been quarrelling between the monks of the Priory attached to the church, and the parishioners, so acrimonious and violent that Richard II ordered a brick wall to be built to separate the Priory from the church. This still exists as the east wall of the church. However, in 1066, before all this tumult a Saxon church made of wood and measuring 80ft by 40ft. stood on the site until in 1135 Alberic de Vere first Earl of Oxford, founded a monastery and attached it to the existing Saxon structure. The Priory was of the Benedictine (Black Monks) Order.

In 1230 fire destroyed parts of the Priory, and Henry 3rd. granted oaks from Hatfield Forest to assist with necessary repairs. The monastery was extended in the 14th century by benefactors Robert Taper, and his wife, Millicent, and measured 230ft in length.

Parishioners thereupon decided to restore the parochial church. A quarrel followed, and in 1376 the parishioners attacked the monastery. The monks appealed to Richard 2nd and he ordered the building of the dividing wall. The church was then largely rebuilt. The wall on the North side is Norman and 4ft thick.

In 1534 the Monastery was surrendered to the King’s Commissioners, and the monastic church was dismantled. In 1708 the Vestry was built to house the library founded by the then Rector, Revd George Sterling. The books cover a range of philosophy, theology, history, and biography, and include a Breeches Bible and a Vinegar Bible. Later, in 1782 the present peal of eight bells was installed in the Tower, and around 1843 extensive repair work to the church was carried out. The pews of today were installed at the same time.

The only surviving part of the medieval Rood Screen, stands across the entrance to the Barrington family chapel. They, with the de Veres are the most notable families linked with the church, and the village. A stone effigy of Robert de Vere, 3rd Earl Of Oxford in chain armour, stands near the altar.

A very enjoyable evening of discovery culminated in a climb up a narrow, spiralling stone stairway to the top of the 81ft tower. My legs protested for a few days afterwards, but the effort was rewarded magnificent view over Essex.

The windmill at Aythorpe Roding is a type known as a post mill. The earliest kind was a fixed structure usable only when the wind was blowing in the right direction. Originally it had no roundhouse beneath it, to protect the trestles upon which the mill was supported from decay, but later types had an exterior housing which helped to preserve the trestles and provided storage space within.

In the Middle Ages the body of the mill, which contained the machinery which drove grinding stones and sails, was balanced on a central post and could be turned into the wind by means of a pole at the back of the mill. The oldest surviving example of this kind is at Bourn, Cambridgeshire, and was erected in 1636. In 1745 a method was patented which used a fantail and gears for keeping the mill facing into the wind. Many post mills were built upon a raised mound to gain extra wind-power.

Other types of mill are smock mills in which only the cap with the sails revolved and tower mills. The difference between the two was that the former was constructed of wood whereas a tower mill was constructed of either brick or stone.

On June 29, 1926, the Queen honoured Sir Robert and Lady Hudson by driving from Buckingham Palace to Hill Hall. Her Majesty arrived in time for luncheon and stayed until after tea. The Queen made a thorough examination of the house and grounds, planted a copper beech, and visited the little church of St Michael’s. The Rector, the Rev. S.M. Stanley who there awaited the royal visitor, had the honour of pointing out the ancient monuments of the Smythe family and explaining to Her Majesty the nature of the repairs and alterations in the church. The Queen cordially approved of the contemplated works.