In 1623 the manor of Stanford Rivers was sold to William 3rd Baron Petre. He settled the estate on his second surviving son, William Petre, who occupied the manor house known as Bellowes or Bell House. Though the house was demolished in the early 1800s, its elevated site - mid way between the original Stanford Rivers rectory and Murrells Farm - is still obvious today from the large amounts of brick, tile and slate in the plough soil, as well as from a scattering of mature trees on what had been the garden (lime, London plane, horse chestnut and a massive sycamore). William’s son, grandson, great grandson and great great grandson inherited the estate in due course, but after the last male heir died in 1762 it reverted to Robert 9th Baron Petre, the builder of new Thorndon Hall near Brentwood.
One constant feature of the Petre family was their adherence to the Roman Catholic faith. The Stanford Rivers branch were no exception and were presented at intervals through the seventeenth century in the archdeacon’s court for recusancy. They shared their faith with two near neighbours -the Wrights at Kelvedon Hall, and the Waldegraves at Navestock Hall. It is possible that a symbolic gesture of alliance was established with the latter family in the form of a spectacular piece of landscape gardening.
The Waldegraves built a new mansion at Navestock in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, on higher ground than the old manor house which still stands near the church. The surrounding land to the west and north was laid out as a park, the most spectacular feature of which was an avenue of trees, nearly two miles in length, running from the new hall to the Stanford Rivers road just south of the Woodman PH. Grand axial vistas like this became unfashionable later in the eighteenth century and it had disappeared by the time Chapman and Andre made their map in 1777.
However, what the Chapman and Andre map does show is that there was another avenue running from Bell House to a similar or identical point on the other side of the Stanford Rivers road, just south of the Woodman. This too has now vanished, presumably cleared when Bell House was demolished and the area reverted to farmland. No map has been found which shows both avenues in existence, and it is not possible to be sure from visiting the site today whether they did exactly line up. Even if they did not, it would have been a very near miss and the combined avenue would have dominated the view from both houses.
There is no way of telling which avenue was planted first, though it is more likely that the Waldegraves pioneered it when laying out their park. The Petre addition (if this was the order of things) would have misled the uninformed visitor into thinking that the Bell House estate was considerably larger than it really was! But could this avenue have had a symbolic meaning as well, by linking two recusant families at a time when being a Roman Catholic was difficult and dangerous, and excluded its adherents from public office? If this was so, the avenues must have been planted before 1719 when the Waldegraves became protestant. Even if no religious symbolism was intended, it was still highly unusual for one landowner to extend the line of another’s avenue.