The Essex Way Section 5: White Notley to Coggeshall 15th July 2016

I left home for Coggeshall on Friday the 15th July 2016 and after just under an hours drive I arrive and park up outside the church on Church Street. After a short while Dan arrived and we left my car in Coggeshall and drove his back to White Notley for the start. But first we diverted to see the Cressing Temple Barns nearby.

Cressing Temple is an ancient monument. It was amongst the very earliest and largest of the possessions of the Knights Templar in England^. It is the location of three Grade I listed Medieval barns, one of which is the oldest standing timber-framed barn in the world.
It is free entry unless a event is happening, as it happened they were setting up for the Essex Festival of Food and Drink  for this weekend.

We strolled around looking at exhibits and the barns. This was only a flying visit, I'll have to return one day for a better look.

Cressing Temple was the earliest settlement of the Knights Templar, the legendary Order of warrior-monks. They were given the Manor of Cressing in 1137. Two remarkable barns survive: the barley barn and the wheat barn. This internationally important site was purchased by Essex County Council in 1987.

The Granary is the largest granary in Essex.

Templar Well

The Wheat Barn was built in around 1280 in the Romanesque style, and was altered in the early 1500s and 1700s.

The Wheat Barn

We hopped back in the car and drove to White Notley where we started the walk. We crossed back over the Ford.

We turnt left onto the Essex Way and up towards Fambridge Hall.

Fambridge Hall is situated on the northern outskirts of White Notley.
It is placed in a 'sugar bowl',which protects it from the north winds, provides good views to the
south and yet is high enough above the river not to be flooded. This would have been why the site was chosen.We know that there has been a house on the site for a very long time.
 Found in the garden of the house such as a 4000 year old flint arrow head, a Roman coin and an 18th century coin. In the records of the 11th and 12th centuries there are a number of French sounding names linked with 'Fam(or Fan)Bregge'.
Thomas de Walton is one of them and Fan means Fen and Bregge means
Bridge.

Rare Plum Pudding Pigs

This pig is one of the oldest British pig breeds and is on the endangered list with fewer than 200 breeding sows according to the 2006 survey.

We walk on through some farmland before walking under the train track by means of a tunnel.

A unusual large arched tunnel did a railway once run underneath?

More farmland walking and jumping out of tractors paths were on the cards now.

We emerge on Church Road at The All Saints Church Cressing.

Cressing can trace its roots back to a late Iron Age settlement, which was established close to the present village church.Excavations in the churchyard have discovered Iron Age pottery, and also Roman tiles.

War Memorial

We take the path next to the church and pass Egypts Farm before emerging onto Boars Tye Road. Here we walked past Wright Farm pictured below.

The map showed the path is a short way past this, however the signpost is hidden in the overgrown hedge and we missed and walked a good few hundred yards past before having to head back.
Anyway we were back on track and walking through more farmland. Three buzzards were circling and crying overhead,beautiful!

We then had a lovely walk through a path overgrown with dried rape. It was hard to tell where the path was, passing Jubilee Plantation we scramble through some undergrowth and out onto Sheepscote Lane and across into a wooded area.

We then cross pass the quarry.

Now the walk is featureless and pretty horrible to be fair, nothing to look at ,at all.

We emerge out onto a road and walk up to Bradwell Church (A short diversion) .
In the wall are 12th century oak "put log" hole covers and horizontal lines on the walls outside which shows where scaffolding was erected when the church was built. The door was locked, but could just see some of the 14th century wall paintings.

So we head back down the road and take a footpath through a wooded area next to the River Blackwater. However it turns out this isn't the Essex Way and it quickly becomes overgrown, so we fight our way out onto a field and join the Essex Way further up.

Passing The Slades, there were quite a few  Alpacas? They were pretty reluctant to get too close though.

Research shows these belong to Blackwater alpacas and Pygmy goats.

After a long walk along a path we are now approaching Coggeshall. Just before the Grange Barn we pass an house and an old petrol pump outside.

We reach Coggeshall Grange Barn. This 13th century timber framed barn is now owned by The National Trust. The barn is 130ft long and was probably built for the monks of the nearby Abbey.

One of Europe's oldest timber-framed buildings, it has a cathedral-like interior and is linked to a local Cistercian abbey.
Inside the barn hosts an exhibition of local woodcarving, tools and a collection of agricultural carts.

Coggeshall Grange Barn has a history dating back eight centuries, from the time when the Abbeys were all powerful and communities paid their King's Tax as tythes. Tythes mean 'one tenth' because people were supposed to give the church one tenth of all the income they earned.

We cross Grange Hill and into Abbey Road opposite. 

Along Abbey Road we stop at St Nicholas Chapel.

The chapel of St. Nicholas is the latest and the most complete of the abbey buildings. It was built around 1220 and is a simple rectangular building (as were all Cistercian gatehouse chapels), but one thing makes this chapel unique and that is the use of locally made brick which is the earliest post-Roman brick in England. Especially uncommon is the use of moulded bricks and fine examples of this early work can be seen around the windows. These bricks (called tiles) were made in the abbey's own kilns at Tilkey, the name is a corruption of tile kiln, and have a distinctive almost black core.

Following the Dissolution the chapel was used as a barn/cowshed and fell into serious disrepair, but in the late 1800s the chapel was restored and tiles replaced the thatched roof. A curate was appointed and St. Nicholas was used for services for the parishioners of Little Coggeshall. 
The door was locked so we couldn't have  a nose about inside. Apparently outside is a Essex Way milestone marking the halfway point that we missed!

 

Following the lane we pass Abbey House. 

There is little to see of Coggeshall's abbey save the gate-house chapel (more of which follows) but a walk along the Essex Way footpath which runs through the farmyard provides the visitor with a chance to see the 16th Century farmhouse and the remaining portions of the abbey outbuildings. No visible trace remains of the once great church of St Mary which belonged to the Cistercian order who worshipped and farmed the land at this site on the banks of the River Blackwater from the 12th Century until the Dissolution of the monasteries in the time of Henry VIII. The farm and the remaining abbey buildings are in private ownership.

Coggeshall Abbey are now ruins of a Cistercian Abbey founded by King Stephen in 1140. The Abbey church was destroyed during the Reformation, but there are some remains of the monastic buildings. These incluse the gate-chapel of St Nicholas, a small guest house,parts of the dormitory and the Abot's lodging which is connected by a corridor to another Paycocke family house built within the Abbey ground.

We pass Abbey Mill which stands where the monks diverted the River Blackwater not long after the Abbey was founded in 1140. Whether the monastic houses always founded their mills for grinding corn, or whether the mills were sometimes set up to serve the clothing trade, we do not know. However, we do know that a fulling mill (for treating the woven cloth) stood on this site after the Dissolution of the monasteries. 
 

The present mill, over 100 feet of white weatherboard with a mansard crown of rose-red tiles, may date back to the 17th century. Because it was a textile works for many years, the front Abbey Mill is patterned by "weaver's windows" which tell the story of cottage rooms used for weaving and spinning throughout the Eastern Counties. In about 1820 it became a silk throwing mill for John Hall, who had set up a branch of his Coventry ribbon-making business in Coggeshall in 1818. Finding plenty of labour made redundant by the decline of the cottage wool trade, and willing to work 72 hours for 1s. 6d (8p) per week. Around 1840 it was equipped as a four-stone corn mill by the Applefords.

The last of Robert's ten sons, Wyatt Appleford (who was a noted local sportsman) died in 1947 at the age of 82, leaving the mill to be run for a dozen years by Mr Bonner. It closed in 1960 and was acquired by its present owner, Mr Roy Ward, who after fighting off a River Board plan to rob it of its water, has succeeded in keeping the wheel and its millstream in working order.

We follow the path pass a pumping station before walking out on East Street, I stopped to look at the beautiful house below called Starling Leaze if I remember correctly.

Now we walk through the village to take a look at Paycockes house.

We pass a hardware shop paying reference to the classic Two Ronnies Sketch Fork 'andles!

 Coggeshall folk have gained a legendary reputation for odd behaviour. These eccentricities have become known as "Coggeshall Jobs". It is said that when the church clock struck only eleven times at mid-day, and the villagers heard that nearby Lexden the clock struck two at one o'clock, someone was sent to Lexden top retrieve the missing stroke!
Coggeshall folk carried buckets of water six miles to collect fish from a lake in Gosfield, not realising they could have filled the buckets when they arrived! Coggeshall had two windmills, but during a period of calm the locals demolished one because they concluded there wasn't enough wind for both! When a calf got its head stuck between the bar of a gate, the farmers solution was to saw off.... the calfs head!

We reach Paycockes House. An attractive half timbered house. Built by clothier Thomas Paycocke at the turn of the 16th century, the house serves as a reminder of the wealth which Coggeshall  enjoyed at that time.
An ermine's tail, the family's merchant mark (which would have been stamped on their cloth bales) is evident in the rich carving of Paycockes House. There is evidence that suggests Paycockes may have once had three storeys.

The gardens at Paycocke House were beautiful , so much so we stopped off to play croquet!

We walked back through the village and walked past the Victorian Clock tower.

One of the most iconic sights in Coggeshall is the blue and white painted Clock Tower, just a few steps up from the market place This weatherboarded building was built in the 14th century. By the 17th century it was called Crane's House, after Samuel Crane left rent from the property to the poor of the parish in 1669. In 1787 Sir Robert Hitcham left money to set up a school for poor people, and rooms were rented inside Clock House for this purpose until 1859. When the medieval Market House in the market place was pulled down around 1795 the clock and bell were installed in Crane House. Then in 1887 the tower was raised and a new clock added to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.

Coggeshall was granted a market charter by Henry III in 1256. The market was held at the bottom of Market Hill (at the junction of East Street and Church Street). In the centre of the market place stood a small chapel and a market house.

The Coggeshall Gang
The Doubleday's would have worshipped at the Friends Meeting House, built in 1878, which now serves as the town library. Another historic place of worship on Stoneham Street is Christs Church, formerly the Congregational Church, built in 1715. At the bottom of Stoneham Street is the site of Black Horse, once an inn frequented by the Coggeshall Gang, a band of violent criminals whose grip over the town in the 1840s has been described as a 'reign of terror'. The gang was broken when a captured member informed on his fellows, and they were transported to Australia.

We stop in The Woolpack for a half of Greene King IPA.

By its very name, the Woolpack is inextricably linked with Coggeshall's former industrial prominence as a wool town. The wool and cloth industry was made possible by the establishment of a Cistercian abbey in the town in 1140, the monks from the abbey being extensively sheep farmers. The Woolpack was built in the 15th century and although its original owner is not known, it is likely that this large and fine timber-framed building once belonged to one of Coggeshall's rich merchants. In 1665 the Rev. Thomas Lowery was ejected from the Church of England after the Reformation and purchased the property, using it as a chapel from where he ministered to non-conformists. He died in 1681 and the house passed to his son Jeremy, a London apothecary. On his death in 1708, the house was sold, and in this year became an Inn known as the Woolpack.

It is worth reflecting that the Woolpack was standing here next to the parish church of St. Peter ad-Vincula before America was discovered, and from within its rooms past patrons may have talked about Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, the conflicts at Waterloo and Balaclava, discussed the latest novels by Dickens or chatted excitedly about the latest invention. The Inn is now a Grade 1 listed building and has therefore undergone very few changes in recent years.

I reach the Church of St Peter and Vincula where my car is parked. I had already visited this morning whilst waiting for Dan to arrive.

Worship has been offered here since Saxon times, and the Domesday Book mentions a priest incumbent here at the time of the survey in 1068.  The church we see today was constructed in the perpendicular style in the early 15th century (when Coggeshall enjoyed the prosperity of the wool trade).  A German bomb destroyed much of the north/west end in 1940, and the restoration was completed in 1956.  St Peter’s is one of the largest in Essex and is Listed Grade 1. There are two side chapels (Lady Chapel and St. Catherine’s Chapel) which are regularly used for prayer, and the north west corner near the north door provides a play area for pre-school children. (A loop system is used during services for the hard of hearing.) The tower has a ring of ten bells which are rung regularly.

The Woolpack PH

All in all a walk of about 8.5 miles and a lovely one at that!