High Country History Group

Some 24 members visited the windmill on Sunday 16 September and spent two hours being shown round the mill.

Built in approximately 1760, it is a large post mill on 4 floors, now restored to working order with fascinating wooden and iron machinery and fantail. Privately owned, the mill was leased to the Essex County Council in 1940 and who are the only Local authority in England and Wales to employ a full time Millwright to look after the mills in their care.

In the year 1819 a generous and celebrated non-conformist benefactor, Thomas Wilson, gave a cottage on the main London Road at Little End and arranged for it to be fitted up and opened as a place of worship for dissenters. A Sunday school was attached to the chapel. At the opening service sermons were preached by the Rev. James Stratten of Paddington and the Rev. Edward Andrews of Walworth. Arrangements had been made for the supply of preachers from Hoxton Academy.
On 27 June 1820 a new chapel, specially built and seating for 300 people, was opened in place of the converted cottage. Stratten and Andrews were again the preachers at the opening. Two local residents had each contributed £100 towards the cost of the chapel.

In 1827 the site, chapel, and vestry, with a stable and outhouses, were conveyed to trustees, among whom were Stratten, then of Maida Vale, and Thomas Kingsbury of Stanford Rivers. The trust deed stipulated that the buildings should be used for
'a congregation of Protestant Dissenters usually denominated Calvinists of the Independent Denomination'.

Stanford Rivers - First Series Ordnance Survey Map 1805
The Essex Incorporate Congregational Union has in its possession a Deed of Lease dated 19th June 1827 “Thomas Wilson of the first part- Joshua Wilson, John Remington Mills, James Smitherman, Wm Eve, Daniel Dewdney of the second part”. The consideration was 5 shillings and the property consisted of “Chapel, Vestry, Stable, Outhouse and Land”.
In 1829 the congregation numbered 150 and the Minister was William Temple
In 1839 David Livingstone, then a student at Chipping Ongar, was requested to preach in the chapel, the minister of the chapel being taken suddenly ill. The young Scotsman was called upon to take the evening service, and all went well until the sermon, when Livingstone slowly read out his text - and paused. He said afterwards that it was as if midnight darkness had descended upon him. The sermon, so perfectly memorised until a moment before, had fled, and his mind was filled with blank terror. “Friends,” he haltingly said, “I have forgotten what I had to say,” and abruptly he left the pulpit, and fled.

From about 1854 the chapel was served mainly by ministers from Chipping Ongar. Isaac Jennings formerly the minister at Ongar had charge at Stanford Rivers during his retirement in 1863. A new trust was formed in 1877.In 1904 there were 34 Sunday School children with 2 teachers.
On Sunday, January 2nd, 1927, Mrs Howard Kenniford, who was to have conducted the service, accidentally overturned an oil lamp. Fire spread rapidly and destroyed the building, including a Bible which was originally the property of David Livingstone.
Prior to its destruction the Chapel had been a rectangular stucco building with a pedimented front. After the fire an ambitious scheme of world-wide appeal for funds was made with a view to rebuilding. The appeal for £3000 was not successful, less than £400 being received and the Church Authorities appointed the Charity Commissioners to be Trustees of the site and fund. No nucleus for a reasonable congregation could be found in the area and ultimately the funds were used for another Chapel in Essex.

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.