Greensted: The London and Bury St Edmunds Road

The London and Bury St. Edmund’s Road - Riding to the meet nearly twenty years ago, at or
near Dunmow, an old friend of my father’s, long since dead, told me that the original road
from London to Bury ran through Ongar and Dunmow. What evidence is there of this beyond
the fact of St. Edmund’s body having rested one night at Greensted and one at Stapleford
Abbots? I admit this is pretty strong for that period, before the Conquest, and I know the road
from about High Roothing [High Roding] Street to well above [Great] Dunmow is in parts at
all events known as Suffolk Way. When, therefore, did this road give way to that through
Chelmsford and Braintree? That it did many years ago is evident from the following. In Moll’s
British Atlas (1753) the road is shown in the Essex map through Ongar, High Roothing,
Dunmow, Thaxted, and up to Clare, and also the road through “Braintry” [Braintree] and
Halstead. When I turn up, however, the map of Suffolk I find no road whatever from Clare to
Bury [St Edmunds], only one from Sudbury to Bury. Then several road books (Ogilvy, 1804,
Paterson, 1785 and 1822, and Cary, 1802), give the road between Ongar and Dunmow as
Moreton, Matching Green, and Hatfield [Broad Oak]; while Owen (1796 and 1827) adds:
“There is another road to Dunmow through the ridings four or five miles nearer, but being a
bye-road is very bad.” When did this Suffolk Way give place to the road through Braintree?
and when did this “ bye-road ” through the ridings ” give place to one through Hatfield ? The
“bye-road” appears to have been the one in use in Moll’s time between Ongar and Dunmow,
but even then was not the main road to Bury.