Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex Circular walk 13th September 2021

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On Monday the 13th of September 2021 I drove for just under an hour to Tolleshunt D'Arcy and parked up in a small layby just past St Nicholas Church on Church Street.

The name Tolleshunt originates from the Anglo-Saxon Tolleshunta which means Toll's spring. Toll was an Anglo-Saxon chief who settled in large areas of forest, establishing clearings where water was readily available.

William the Conqueror gave the manor to Ralph Peverell for services rendered during the Conquest. The latter part of the village name altered as female heirs changed the name to that of their husbands. It became known as Tolleshunt Tregoz, Tolleshunt Valoines and Tolleshunt de Boys. John D'Arcy married a daughter of the De Boys family. By this match the estate came to the D'Arcy family in the 15th century. It remained in the family until the death of Thomas D'Arcy in 1593.

During that period, D'Arcy Hall, an early 16th-century building, was built as the family home and still remains. The interior is made from wood panelling bearing Anthony D'Arcy's initials and the date 1540. The bridge on the moat dates from the Elizabethan period as does the dovecote in the grounds. The russet D'Arcy Spice apple originated from the gardens in 1840. In the centre of the village is a Maypole which is a listed monument, and is one of the only genuine Maypoles remaining in the country. The base is now protected by a wooden cage.

I planned to see the maypole at the end of the walk back into the village, but the route I uploaded to the GPS didn't take me pass sadly.

I walk from the car up a short way to Beckingham Road where I turn right and up a bit to Festival gardens and onto a footpath at the end over farm fields.

I pass a pretty pond on Hill Farm as I walk across fields full of Pheasants that suddenly burst out of the hedgerows into the air.

Cornflowers line the footpath.

I continue walking across farmland with not a lot to see apart from the flocks of Pheasants running down the path and bursting skywards from the long grass and flowers.

I walk out onto Tudwick Road turn right and walk a 100m before taking another footpath on my right.

I walk across Tucketts Farm and past a few haystacks.

As I approach Oxley Green Farm, a water tower comes into view.

This large concrete water tower situated to the south of Tiptree forms part of the water supply network in the area. It is at 50m above sea level and is home to a pair of breeding kestrels.

I leave the farm and join Oxley Hill in Oxley Green and I turn right and walk on down the road.

I turn left onto a footpath on my left and pass a sign 'WILKIN & SONS LTD PRIVATE CARAVAN SITE'. No sign of any caravans here. Wilkin & Sons Ltd is of course the famous jam makers up the road in Tiptree.

I walk through a small wooded area, the shade is appreciated. 

I exit onto Blind Land in Tolleshunt Knights, cross a bridge over a dismantled railway and turn right at the top into Rectory Road.

From 1904 to 1951 the village was served by a small station on the Kelvedon and Tollesbury Light Railway.

TNotables residents of Tolleshunt Knights include the Cottee Family who have inhabited the small village and it’s neighbouring village, Tiptree, for over 400 years. They finally decided to settle in the village after leaving the Kingdom of France, they later decided to Anglicise their surname to the more English sounding Cottee from the French Lescot

I reach St John The Baptist Monastery here in Tolleshunt Knights. There were signs saying Monastery closed. I assume due to the Covid pandemic.

But not knowing if I'll ever walk this way again, I decided to walk in and look at the outside. It'd be shame to miss it. Apparently in normal times, they welcome visitors and are happy to show you around.

Archimandrite Sophrony

The Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist is a monastic community for both men and women, directly under the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It is located in Tolleshunt Knights, near Maldon, Essex, in England, and is the oldest Orthodox religious community in the UK.

The religious community was founded in 1958 by Elder Sophrony, under the jurisdiction of Metropolitan Anthony, Metropolitan of Sourozh and ruling Russian bishop in England, with six monastics from a number of nations; soon after, in 1965, the Monastery moved under the direct jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

The community consists of men and women living the monastic tradition of a Christ-centred prayer life. Currently, there are just under 40 monastics in the community, the majority of whom are nuns, with a smaller number of monks.

When founding the monastery, Elder Sophrony wanted to be sure that his community would not just have outward conformity, but have its focus on inner asceticism. The typikon of the monastery, consisting of repetition of the Jesus Prayer for approximately 4 hours per day and Divine Liturgy three or four times per week, found inspiration in Elder Sophrony's experience in the Athonite desert, and precedent in Athonite skete practise, St Nicodemus and St Paisius Velichkovsky.

Also, another distinctive part of this monastery is that it is a double monastery; that is, the community has both monks and nuns. This is rare, but is not unheard of, in Orthodox monasticism.

A nun walked towards me saying "You shouldn't be here, there are signs outside". I apologise and leave.

I continue on down Rectory Road before taking a footpath on my left and across Manifold Wick Farm.

I exit out and turn right onto Barnhall Road.

Its a mile of this busy road now, not pleasant and I'm hopping on and off the verge frequently to let cars pass.

I cross the Colchester Road and down another thankfully quieter road into Salcott-Cum-Virley.

The Old Post Office in Salcott-Cum-Virley.

Memory Tree in front of The Old School House.

The Parish Church of St Mary Salcott.

Salcott is recorded in 1317 as being a market town with paved streets. Its people felt they should have a Rector of their own. so in 1372 a request for this was made to the Bishop of London - Essex was then in that Diocese. A commission was set up, depositions were made by local inhabitants but no change appears to have been made - Salcott remaining a chapel to Great Wigborough until the 19th. century. About 1480 a Chantry was founded in the Church by John Baron with a Chantry Priest to sing Mass and administer the Sacraments, but this was all dissolved circa 1550 in the reign of Edward VI. The plate was confiscated and the chantry lands were given to John Raynforth who also stole the Church bells. It is stated that at that time there were 140 'Houseling people' (communicants).

I walk on to the end of the road and take a footpath over March Farm to the Marshes at Salcott Creek.

I follow the footpath along the marsh and mudflats.

After a while I take a path on my right across Old Marsh Hall Farm.

This then joins the Marshes at Old Hall Creek.

After more walking along the creek, I take a path away from the Saltmarshes and across farmland.

I continue across more farmland and then alongside a house with a lovely lake in its garden.

I walk up a the road a short way before taking another path across fields.

I walk out onto Tollesbury Road and back into Tollesbury D'Arcy.

I reach the junction below, if you turn right here onto South Street, you'll find the pub ,the Maypole and D'Arcy House. Hindsight is a beautiful thing! Oh well I continue back onto Church Street.

I now reach St Nicholas Church in Tolleshunt D'Arcy.

Parish Church of St. Nicholas stands in the village. The walls are of rubble with dressings of limestone or clunch; the roofs are covered with tiles and slates. The lower part of the West Tower has an early 14th-century window and may be of this date but it with the nave was remodelled or rebuilt late in the 14th century. Early in the 15th century the Chancel was rebuilt and later in the same century the North Chapel and South Porch were added. Early in the 16th century the North Vestry was added. The church was restored in the 19th century when the vestry was reduced in size by rebuilding the E. wall further West.

I am now back at the car at just under 11.5 miles, ready for the drive home.

London: History & Mystery - Knockings of Belgravia 2nd September 2021

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On Thursday the 2nd of September 2021 I got the train/underground to Victoria Station. I left the station and walked into The Shakespeare pub outside. Not a great range of drinks, but I choose one beer, sorry it's out. Okay I'll have this cider, Sorry that's off too! Okay I won't bother than and left.

I am following a route from the AA London History and Mystery book. Published 2009 so hoping it was still accurate. 

From the Shakespeare Pub I crossed over Buckingham Palace Road and head over to Grosvenor Gardens.

Here on the other side of the road is a statute dedicated to Foch.

The Equestrian statue of Ferdinand Foch stands in Lower Grosvenor Gardens, London. The sculptor was Georges Malissard and the statue is a replica of another raised in Cassel, France. Foch, appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces on the Western Front in the Spring of 1918, was widely seen as the architect of Germany's ultimate defeat and surrender in November 1918. Among many other honours, he was made an honorary Field marshal in the British Army, the only French military commander to receive such a distinction. Following Foch's death in March 1929, a campaign was launched to erect a statue in London in his memory. The Foch Memorial Committee chose Malissard as the sculptor, who produced a replica of his 1928 statue of Foch at Cassel. The statue was unveiled by the Prince of Wales on 5 June 1930. Designated a Grade II listed structure in 1958, the statue's status was raised to Grade II* in 2016.

In the green garden behind the statue are two shell covered huts.

The shell huts were built in 1952 as part of a re-landscaping of the Lower Grosvenor Gardens in a French style to commemorate Marshal Foch and Anglo-French understanding. The gardens already had a statue (by Georges Malissard) of Foch – the French hero of the First World War – which was erected in 1930. During the Second World War, Grosvenor Gardens was covered with air raid shelters and littered with dust and debris, so a clean-up was in order.

The two shell huts – and indeed the rest of the park – were designed by the then architect-in-chief of the National Monuments and Palaces of France, Jean Moreux, who also designed the Institut Francais library in South Kensington. Some of the shells adorning the huts were brought over from France, while it was thought that others would also be sourced from English beaches – making for a very cross-cultural construction indeed. The huts were said to be ‘in the style of those small pavilions that were known as fabriques in eighteenth-century France’ – the old French term for what is known as a folly in the U.K.

I walked up Grosvenor gardens before turning left into Ebury Street where up at no 22B Ebury is street is where Ian Fleming lived from 1936 to 1939.

Ian Fleming the creator of James Bond lived in the building that was once a 19th century chapel, this appealed to Fleming and the fact it is reputed to be haunted. He turned it into a avant-garde bachelor pad in which he pursued his hobbies of collecting first editions and surrealist art, seducing women, gambling and gourmandizing.

I walk back down onto Lower Belgrave Street and over into The Plumbers Arms.

I order a Beavertown Neck Oil beer and sit down. 

At 9.45pm on the night of 7th November 1974, a distressed and bloodstained woman burst into the bar of The Plumber’s Arms, Lower Belgrave Street, crying out "Help me, help me, help me. I’ve just escaped from being murdered. He’s in the house. He’s murdered the Nanny!" She was the Countess of Lucan, who had fled from her home at number 46, leaving behind her three children. She was obviously the victim of a serious assault, and the police and an ambulance were called to the scene. The police officers who arrived to investigate found a substantial house with a ground floor, a basement and four upper floors. Forcing open the front door, they searched the premises, and found the children in their bedrooms, unharmed. The door to the basement was open. There was no light in the hall, so they fetched a flashlight. They descended the stairs to the breakfast room, and found the walls splashed with blood, a pool of blood on the floor, with some male footprints in it, and, near the door connecting the breakfast room to the kitchen, a bloodstained sack. The top of the sack was folded over but not fastened. Inside was the corpse of Sandra Rivett, the children’s' nanny. She had been battered to death with a blunt instrument. In the hallway was a length of lead piping, covered in surgical tape, very bent out of shape and heavily bloodstained. The back door was unlocked.

When Lady Lucan was able to make a statement to the police she named her husband as her attacker and the murderer of Sandra Rivett. Of Lord Lucan, there was no sign.

Shortly after 10pm, Mrs. Madeleine Floorman, a friend of the Lucans, who lived a short distance away, was dozing in front of the TV after a tiring day when she was awoken by someone pressing the doorbell insistently. Assuming it was a local youth, who had done this kind of thing before, she ignored it and went back to sleep. Some time later, the phone rang. She was sure that the caller was Lord Lucan, but he sounded distressed and became incoherent. She put the phone down and went back to sleep. (Later, some spots of what appeared to be blood were found on her doorstep).

At approximately 10.30 that evening, Lord Lucan telephoned his mother who lived in St John’s Wood, telling her there had been a catastrophe at the house, and he wanted her to collect the children. She went straight there, found the place occupied by police, and informed them that the Lucans were separated, the children were wards of court, and that Lord Lucan currently resided at a nearby flat. She then took the children to her home. The police searched Lord Lucan’s flat. He was not there, but they found his car keys, passport, chequebook, driving licence, wallet and glasses. His blue Mercedes car was parked outside. The battery was flat. (It had been suffering from battery trouble for some time).

Lord Lucan was driving another car that night, a Ford Corsair he had borrowed from a friend some 2-3 weeks previously. (He had, in fact, insisted that he wanted the car for that particular evening.) It was about 11.30pm when he arrived in Uckfield, Sussex, at the home of his friends Ian and Susan Maxwell-Scott. The house was 42 miles from Lower Belgrave Street, a journey of about an hour at average speed, though he was a fast driver and might have taken less time. Ian Maxwell-Scott was away, but his wife admitted Lord Lucan and was surprised to see him in disheveled daytime clothing. His flannels looked as though they had been stained and something sponged off.

This was Lord Lucan’s story, as told to Susan Maxwell-Scott. He had been walking past the Lower Belgrave St house, and had peeped in through the basement window. He had seen someone struggling with his Lady Lucan in the basement kitchen. He let himself in through the front door and ran down the stairs. He slipped and fell in a pool of blood, and the man had run off. He had calmed Lady Lucan down and taken her upstairs to try and clean her up, but while he was in the bathroom she had run out of the house shouting "Murder!". He had panicked, realizing things looked very bad for him, and decided to get out.

Between that time and arriving at the Maxwell-Scotts he said had made three phone calls, one to Mrs. Floorman, one to his mother, and he had also tried to telephone Bill Shand Kydd, who was married to Lady Lucan’s sister but there was no reply. Mrs. Maxell-Scott said that he did not tell her where he made these calls from, but she got the impression they had been made after he left the house. At 12.15 he rang his mother from the Maxwell-Scotts house to check that she had the children, and rang Bill Shand Kydd again, but there was no reply.

Lord Lucan then wrote two letters, both addressed to Bill Shand Kydd at his home in Bayswater. (They were posted the following day. The envelopes were found to have smears of blood on them. ) Mrs. Maxwell-Scott tried to persuade him to remain so they could go to the local police the next morning, but he said he had to "get back". He drove away. There has been no validated sighting of him since.

Three days after the murder, the Ford Corsair was found abandoned at Newhaven. Bloodstains were found inside of both type A and type B, also, a piece of bandaged lead piping, unstained, but very similar to the one found in the murder house.

I leave the pub and continue up Lower Belgrave Street and stop outside no 46, where the gruesome murder took place.

I continue along Lower Belgrave Street cross Hobart Place and over to St Peters Church on the corner of Upper Belgrave Street.

St Peter's was built between 1824 and 1827 during the first development of Eaton Square. The interior was, as was common at the time, a "preaching box", with galleries in three sides and the organ and choir at the west end. James Elmes called the effect "chaste and simple".

Further along Upper Belgrave Street I stop outside 10 where between 1809 and 1881 was the home of the poet Tennyson.

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson FRS was a British poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu".

I continue along and turn right into Chester Street and then left into Groom Place.

Here are very pretty mews type properties once the living quarters for the coachmen who attended the grand houses of Belgravia. The ground level double doors gave access to the stables where the horses and coaches were kept, while the coachmen and families lived in the rooms above.

Here at the Horse and Groom Public House where I order a Shepherd Neame Whitstable Bay Blonde Lager and a Shepherd Neame Orchard View Cider.

The walls are covered in pictures of The Beatles and the barman told me they drank regularly in here, as their manager loved nearby.

I leave the pub take the next left and into Chapel Street where I stop outside no.24.  Where The Beatles Manager Brian Epstein lived.

He bought the house in December 1964 and hosted many showbiz parties here, including the 196t7 launch for The Beatles album Sgt Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band. The Beatles attended and posed for photographs on the doorstep here.

Epstein however was feeling the pressure of managing The Beatles and the stress of coming to terms of his homosexuality unbearable and started a  drink and pills downward spiral. He was found dead in his bedroom here on 22nd August 1967, a victim of a overdose. Accidental death was recorded although some suggested suicide or even murder. 

I walk on into Belgrave Square.

Here is a bronze sculpture depicting Venezuelan military and political leader Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), by Hugo Daini. The statue was unveiled by James Callaghan, then Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in 1974.

On the plinth are the words:

I am convinced that England alone is capable of protecting the world's rights as she is great, glorious and wise

The names of countries liberated by Bolívar are inscribed on the base.

Just around the square at no.33 is the HQ of the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain. One of the treasured possession of theirs is the chair in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (A committed Spiritualist) wrote many of his Sherlock Holmes books. Sadly it was behind hoarding and the door closed.

I walk around the square cross over and into Halkin Street by the statue of Sir Robert Grosvenor, the first Marquess of Westminster.

I walk on into Grosvenor Crescent and its amazing buildings.

I walk on and into Wilton Crescent  and first right into Wilton Row.

The Grenadier is patriotically painted Red, White and blue. A red sentry box sits outside. Inside you'll find sword, bayonets and other military memorabilia.

This was once the officers mess for the Duke of Wellingtons regiment.

It is said to be haunted by the ghost of a young subaltern caught cheating at cards, who either killed himself of flogged to death by by his fellow officers.

Here I stop at the Grenadier Pub for a Cedrics Debt Bitter and a Grenadier Pale Ale.

I leave the pub and take the red gate next to it into Old Barracks Yard.

Here is a stone horse mount, said to have been used by the Iron Duke himself!

I walk through the arch at the end, right along Knightsbridge and to the finish at Hyde Park Corner Tube Station. A easy 2 mile walk , full of history, mystery and beer!