Hmmm – nearly two months since my last post on this blog.  Sorry, that’s really not good enough of me.  However, my writing is continuing frantically away in the background whilst I work my forthcoming book Bishop’s Stortford Through Time for Amberley Publishing.

I’m also writing a monthly post on Worldwide Genealogy – a collaboration of genealogists and local historians from all round the world. On that blog, I have been posting articles about my paternal grandmother’s family, the Gurney family of South London. You may be interested in reading my posts

– Who do you think they were?
– Family History Show and Tell
– Family History is like a box of chocolate – you never know what you’re going to get

My work on Bishop’s Stortford Through Time is going very well.  If you live in the area and are around on a Sunday morning, you will see myself and my husband walking the length and breadth of the town and river, taking photographs for the book.  Mind you, you will have to get up extra early, as we’ve discovered that the only time the roads are safe enough to take photos is very early on a Sunday morning!  A couple of times my husband has had to stand in the middle of what were once sleepy rural country roads but are now super-fast highways, where he has had to take his life into his hands for my precious book. Hockerill crossroads and the Causeway to name just two roads which were once sleepy quiet backwaters but now have lorries, cars and other assorted vehicles thundering through on them.

So, now for an update on my book:-

I have to write 96 pages comprising of 90 vintage postcards alongside 90 modern-day photographs.  Having exhausted that well-known internet auction site (plus several others not so well known), and plundered the stocks of my local friendly postcard dealer at Battlesbridge Antiques Centre, I now have 75 postcards to be used in my book.

So I am missing an elusive 15 postcards…

Can you help me?  I am looking for postcards (preferably pre-1920) particularly of the following areas of Bishop’s Stortford.  If you are out and about at antique fairs during these beautiful Spring weekends, please keep a look out for me.

– Bishop’s Stortford train station (or trains in the station)

– South Street by the publisher Wrench (or any postcards of South Street except any which show the Methodist Chapel)

– South Road – particularly the almshouses (but not the Rhodes Museum)

– Holy Trinity Church, South Street

– The Workhouse

– The Corn Exchange

– Market Square

– The Cemetery

– Any roads in Newtown (eg Portland Road, Apton Road)

– Any real photographs of The Wharf or the Hockerill Cut (real photographs only though)

And here’s one I found earlier… A photograph by Bishop’s Stortford photographers H & A Gurton (who were active during the First World War).  I do not know what the uniform is – someone has suggested that it could be a Sunday School uniform.  If you know, please do drop me an email.

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You may also be interested in the following
– The Tudor rat-catcher of Bishop’s Stortford

© Essex Voices Past 2014.

At the moment, I am knee-deep in postcards, papers and books relating to the Hertfordshire town of Bishop’s Stortford, whilst I research and write my forthcoming book Bishop’s Stortford Through Time for the publishers, Amberley Publishing.  During my quest for material, I happened across a book from 1882: The Records of St Michael’s parish church, Bishop’s Stortford, edited by J.L Glasscock, Jun.  This book has verbatium transcripts of various manuscripts, which, at that time, were held  in the parish chest within the church at Bishop’s Stortford. These manuscripts included various churchwardens’ accounts – which start in 1431. My regular readers will know that I am just ever-so slightly obsessed with churchwardens’ accounts, having spent a great many years researching and analysing the Essex town of Great Dunmow’s Tudor churchwardens’ accounts.  Great Dunmow’s accounts start in the 1520s, when Henry VIII was on the throne and still married to Katherine of Aragon, and England was still a staunchly Catholic nation.  Bishop’s Stortford’s, although incomplete, start in 1431 – nearly a hundred years earlier, when the boy-king King Henry VI had been on throne 10 years, and the main protagonists of the bloody War of the Roses from the Royal Houses of Lancaster and York had either not yet been born, or were still peaceful law-abiding young men. Pretty impressive for medieval manuscripts – regarding the workings of a small English parish church – to have survived for so long.

Windhill and parish church of St Michael’s, Bishop’s Stortford in the 1900s

Unlike Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts – which were beautifully bound in a tooled leather volume – Bishop’s Stortford’s accounts were loose-leaved and lying scattered in the parish chest.  Amongst the churchwardens’ accounts were other manuscripts, including the “reckonings” (accounts) of the vermin catcher(s) for the years 1569 to 1571.  They make fascinating reading – so I have reproduced them here – exactly as J.L Glasscock, Jun, transcribed them over hundred years ago in 1882.

St Michael’s parish church, Bishop’s Stortford in the 1900s

The Destruction of Vermin
The Accounte and Reconynge of me Edward Wylley of Stortford, Collectore of all man’ of veyrmane of ij [2] yeres past both of Charge and Dyscharge as here aftr folloth frome the xij [12] daye of App’lle in a° [i.e. Anno Domino]1569 to this yere of a 1571.

On the first page is what he terms his “charge,” which is an account of moneys received by him from various persons “at v [5] tymes;” he received altogether “lij.s. vij½d” [52 shillings and 7½ pence]. Then follows his “Dyscharge,” which consists of various payments made by him to the destroyers of vermin :

He paid for:

• Hedge hoggs heads . 2d each
• Crose [crows] eggs 2d per doz
• Pyse [magpie] eggs 2d
• vj [6] crose [crows] hedds 1d
• vj [6] hawkys hedes 1d
• xij [12] Ratts hedes 1d
• 1 mowlle [mole] ½d
• xij [12] myse [mice] heddes 1d
• xij [12] starlyngs hedes 1d
• a wysells [weasel] hede 1d
• v [5] hedds of the kyngs fyschers [king fishers] 5d
• a powlle cats [pole cat] hed 2d
• 1 boulle fynches [bullfinches] hed 1d

During the two years over which this account extends I find that vermin was destroyed within the parish of Stortford to the following extent, viz :

141 hedgehogs, 53 moles, 6 weasels, 202 crows’ eggs, 128 pies’ [magpies’] eggs, 18 young crows, 80 rats, 18 crows, 2 bullfinches, 5 hawks, 24 starlings, 5 kingfishers, 1 polecat, 1,426 mice; and besides these there are 118 heads of crows, hawks, and “cadows” (jackdaws).

Note: “There used to be a standing committee in every parish for the destruction of ‘noyfull fowles and vermyn.’ The practice still exists in some rural parishes. But many readers may be surprised to learn that this object was formerly felt to be so important that the practical use of it already then existing in many parishes received the express sanction of general suggestion by statute. A committee, consisting of the churchwardens together with six other parishioners, is named with power to tax and assess every person holding lands or tythes in any parish yearly at Easter, and whenever else it may be needful, in order to raise a sum of money to be put in the hands of two other persons, who are to distribute it. And these distributors are to pay this money in rewards for the different sorts of vermin brought in. The record is curious, and interesting enough on its own account to be rescued from forgetfulness, if only for its bearing on the natural history of the country.” Toulmin Smith, “The Parish and its Obligations and Powers“, 1854 p. 232.

The Records of St Michael’s parish church, Bishop’s Stortford,
edited by J.L Glasscock, Jun, 1882, p156-157

Some of the English wildlife captured and killed by the vermin man of Tudor Bishop’s Stortford 1569-1571

As someone who was brought up listening to the bedtime English tales of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, The Wind in the Willows, and The Little Grey Rabbit – along with the American tales of Thornton W Burges and Old Mother West Wind  – I find Tudor tales of killing these creatures thought-provoking. Some, now as then, still vermin; whilst others are now much loved members of the English countryside’s wildlife.

A Tudor Rat Catcher

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Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Pre-Reformation Catholic Ritual Year

It is early summer sometime in the mid-1890s. The flowers are in bloom and the leaves are in their full glory on the trees. A young bride poses with her new husband on their wedding day. She is dressed in the fashion of the time – a dress with full leg-of-mutton sleeves with a long train at the back of the dress. She clutches her beautiful spray of fresh flowers, and poses with her wedding party for the camera-man, Stacey of Great Dunmow.

Stacey of Great Dunmow – late Victorian wedding party

One of the female guests lightly rests her hand on the seated older gentleman. Father and daughter? Sister of the bride or of the groom? Is the elderly gent the father of the bride or groom? The bride has two bridesmaids who are both wearing matching dresses and hats, and are holding sprays of flowers (the second bridesmaid’s bouquet is hidden behind the bride’s head). Who are they? Unmarried sisters of the bride and groom, or childhood friends? Who is the woman sitting next to the groom? Is she the mother of either the bride or groom – she’s not wearing a corsage. Or is a corsage for the mothers, a modern-day tradition?

So many questions. The main question being: whose wedding is this? It looked to have been a beautiful sumptuous wedding with all the wedding party in all their full splendor.

That well known internet auction site yielded up this picture but with no clue as to who these people were – apart from the signature of the photographer, Stacey of Great Dunmow. In the Victorian era, Stacey the photographer was also a nurseryman, so it is highly possible that it was his shop who made up the beautiful floral bouquets for the bride and her two bridesmaids, and made the beautiful buttonholes for the males of the wedding party. A beautiful summer’s event captured over a 100 years ago. Someone’s great-grandparents (or great-great?) consigned to the anonymity of the modern age’s internet. It always saddens me when I see these photos of families from long ago times. They had probably been kept by the bride and groom’s descendants for 100 years, but now thrown out with the rubbish in a house clearance. The picture is excellent condition so has been stored safely for over 100 years – but probably not put out on display because age has not marked the picture.

Here they are now out on display into the modern world of the 21st century. The Great Dunmow wedding party of summer sometime in the mid-1890s – captured forever by Stacey’s of Great Dunmow.

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If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– The Victorian ladies of Great Dunmow
– The Victorian Gentlemen of Great Dunmow
– The Victorian Wedding of Great Dunmow

You may also be interested in my post on the
WordWide Genealogy blog about my great-grandparents wedding
– Family history is like a box of chocolates… You never know what you’re going to get

© Essex Voices Past 2014

I have written before on my blog about the aerial photography taken of the town and environments of Great Dunmow by a small aircraft flying high in the skies of East Anglia in 1928.  During the same flight, the small airplane also flew over the tiny village of Little Dunmow and captured for posterity one of the area’s main employers, the factory of the Anglo Scottish Sugar Beet factory. This part of Essex and East Anglia has a long history of the refining of sugar beet and it is incredible to see an aerial photograph of a factory in it’s inter-war heyday.

Anglo-Scottish Sugar Beet Factory, Little Dunmow, 1928. This photo is from English Heritage’s Britain from Above project. Click the photo to be taken directly to a zoomable image of this photo from their website.

During a recent rummage around an antiques shop in Lavenham, Suffolk (a small beautiful town which also has a history of small sugar beet factories), I found the 1976 book Essex and Sugar by the local historian Frank Lewis. It is to him I turn to now regarding the Anglo-Scottish Sugar Beet Factory in Little Dunmow, Essex. In his book, Mr Lewis refers to the factory as being in Felsted, the neighbouring village to Little Dunmow.  As the two villages are so near each other, the location of the factory changes in documents/books between Little Dunmow and Felsted.  The factory also appears to have changed name over time and at points in its history was known as the “Anglo-Scottish Sugar Beet Factory” or the “British Sugar Corporation Sugar Beet Factory”.

Our main Essex interest in beet sugar lies now with the Felsted factory of the British Sugar Corporation. With Mr. and Mrs. Chartres, I spent a full and interesting day at the village, now for over three decades [i.e. by the time of the book’s publication in 1976] associated with sugar production, but famed more for its ancient school [Felsted School]. In the morning at Princes Farm Mr. Gordon Crawford showed us the “Forecaster” at work, the most advanced beet-harvesting machine, and far from the days of hand-digging of obstinate roots is the operation of this mechanical giant, also an advance on machine harvesters needing an accompanying lorry in which to deposit the uplifted beet. The Forecaster is an Essex development, and is constructed as a compact unit, carrying the extricated beets to a receiving space at the top of the machine, detaching earth or mud en route, at the same time slicing off the tops of the next row of beets preparatory to lifting. Only when full did the harvester go off to deposit its contents in a lorry, thus one man only was needed for the actual harvesting; in the early days, several laboured at an arduous and unpopular toil. The crops, destined for the nearby factory are grown from seed supplied by the buyers to ensure uniformity and quality. Mr. Crawford harvested his first sugar beet with a pair of horses in 1930, and he is a member of the family formerly of Suttons Farm, Hornchurch, the site of the R.A.F. Station.

The Forecaster in 1976

…

During the day we had observed the lofty buildings of the British Sugar Corporation establishment with its plume of white smoke, and later its dominance in the scene when lit up at night. One writer has remarked that with a favouring wind the factory smell carries for miles around, and a former woman member of the office staff recalled her strongest memory was of the ‘sickly sweet smell you couldn’t get away from’, but though beet processing has its characteristic odour, as does a refinery, our party were not conscious of strong odours, either in or out of the buildings, though I questioned a girl on this point, knowing from experience how responsive young women are to sugar smells, pleasant or unpleasant. The warmth of the building was felt by her, not to a too trouble-some extent. On commencing this conducted tour, we were made aware of the fact that this was a factory in the country when we were informed that the visiting party in which we were included would be the last for a long period, as a precaution against the foot and mouth epidemic appearing in that region.

The factory tour showed the cleansed beets pass to machines slicing them into strips, a glimpse of the revolving drums in which the strips yielded their sweetness into water (diffusion), the resulting thin syrup of ‘juice’ charged with lime and carbonic acid gas which combined to form a precipitate trapping impurities in the juice (Carbonatation) the extraction by filtering of this precipitate, a second carbonatation and filtering, the juice treated with sulphur dioxide to a neutral reaction, the concentration of juice containing 15% sugar to syrup containing 65% sugar under vacuum in huge boilers or vessels called evaporators, another close filtering, no char, and the rest of the process as described in a refinery with vacuum pans, centrifugal machines, final drying.

…

This huge Essex successor to the ventures of Marriage and Duncan treats annually over 300,000 tons of beets from 23,000 acres spread over Essex and surrounding counties from Cambridge to Kent, and each day can process 2,500 tons of beet to yield 350 tons of white sugar, 250 tons of dried pulp or pulp nuts for cattle food and 130 tons of molasses for industrial and other uses. (An acre of beet will yield from 38 to 40 cwt of sugar against 8 to 12 tons per acre from cane; and the sugar content of the beet is 15% to 16%, the cane about 13%.) The personal of 325 men and women operate the process continuously day and night for approximately 120 days, each season or campaign from about late September to the end of January; and this seasonal labour force is recruited from the surrounding locality and from Ireland. Delivery of beets to the factory is by road, though in the past some cargoes in sailing boats travelled from Walton to a suitable point for Felsted. 

…

Mrs B. McArdle, who mentioned the ‘sickly smell’ has provided me with some other early memories of the Felsted factory where in her early 20s she was employed as a compotometer operator in the 1927 and 1928 campaigns. In those days no refining plant existed and she recalls the piles of brown sugar to be sent to Tate and Lyle. The small office had a canteen attached for the clerical and similar staff of 12; she can remember that wellington boots were worn for the necessary journeys to muddy and wet floors where the beet was washed and writes of having to work out prices for the farmers according to sugar content of beets, and allocating molasses on the amount of beet sent in. She lodged at a farm near the Flitch of Bacon [a pub still in existence today] in Little Dunmow, where only one shop existed, and without public transport the journey to and from the factory was a fair walk, unless a lucky car picked her up. Apparently there was little time for amusements as she worked ‘fairly late’, also Saturday and Sunday mornings when the beets were coming in; but a hard tennis court was outside the office, there were whist drives and dances in surrounding villages, a cinema at Braintree where you had to book your seat and the music was supplied by one tinny piano, and the manager sprung a party at his home for the staff. She was young and evidently found her situation not uncongenial, for both in her letters to me and to the Essex Countryside [a monthly local interest magazine] she writes of a ‘happy time of long ago’ and ‘pleasant memories of the happy time I spent at Felsted’.

Essex and Sugar by Frank Lewis, 1976 pp107-p111

Sugar Beet Factory in 1976

Sugar-beet harvesting in 1948.  Click on the image above to be taken to British Pathe’s website to see a short film of Felsted’s sugar-beet harvesting in 1948.

In February 1999, the Sugar Beet factory was demolished and now in its place is a large housing development.  The estate was originally known as Oakwood Park, but in very recent years has now been renamed to Flitch Green – a throw-back to the days of the Dunmow Flitch, when it was originally held in Little Dunmow.

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Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in
– The Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory
– Interwar Great Dunmow from the air
– The Dunmow Flitch – Bringing home the bacon
– The 2012 Dunmow Flitch
– Berbice House School, Great Dunmow
– War and Remembrance: Great Dunmow’s Military Funeral 1914
– Great Dunmow’s 1914 Military Funeral: A followup
– The Willett family of Great Dunmow

© Essex Voices Past 2014.

Dunmow* is known throughout the world and history as being the English town where the curious but ancient custom of the Dunmow Flitch takes place.  This ancient ceremony is when couples come into the town, and, in front of a judge and jury, try to persuade a court of law that for a year and a day they haven’t wished themselves unwed.  If they win the court case, and persuade the judge and jury of their love for each other, then they win a ‘flitch of bacon’ (a large side of cured pig).  The court is quasi-formal with a proper judge, jury and barristers.  However, all is not as it seems as the legal proceedings are very light-hearted with  one barrister defending the Pig, and the other for the couple.  Any couple who wins the Flitch is said to be ‘bringing home the bacon’ and is carried aloft on the ancient Dunmow Flitch chair by the town’s ‘yeomans’ in a parade through the streets of Great Dunmow.

The last Dunmow Flitch – in 2012 –
carrying the flitch of bacon through the town
before the Flitch Trials

This ancient custom was mentioned in medieval literature by both Geoffrey Chaucer  and William Langland towards the end of the 14th century.  Chaucer’s Canterbury’s Tales – The Wife of Bath’s Tale states

The bacon was nat fet for hem, I trowe, 
That som men han in Essex at Dunmowe.

William Langland’s Piers Plowman states

Though they go
to Dunmow,
they never fetch
the Flitch.

In the 20th century, the Dunmow Flitch – the side of cured bacon – was provided by the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory.  This was a large factory and employer of many people within Great Dunmow and surrounding areas until its closure in the 1980s.  Sometime in the 1920s or the 1930s, the owners of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory commissioned Willett’s of Great Dunmow to take photos of the workforce in action at the factory and thus create a unique set of postcards of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory.  As one of my readers pointed out on my post about Great Dunmow’s Berbice House school – why were these postcards produced? Who were they aimed at?  I cannot answer these questions, but I can show you the postcards of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory and flitches of bacon produced in the factory.

Dunmow Flitch of Bacon Factory (Exterior)

Dunmow Bacon Factory  – Pig Killing

Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Hanging Hall I. The child at the left of the picture looks to be about 12-14 years of age.

Dunmow Bacon Factory – Cleaving the pigs

Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Employees.  Is the person 3rd from the left a woman?

Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Hanging Hall II

Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Manager and Irish Employees. It is interesting that the Irish Employees are in a photograph separate from the other employees.

These postcards are incredible pieces of 20th century social history showing us the employees and the inside of the factory.  In addition to the inside of the factory, there are also in existence external photographs.  In 1928, an aeroplane flying the skies of Essex and Suffolk took the photo below of Great Dunmow.  The large building in the centre is Hasler’s Corn and Seed mill, and the low-lowing buildings to the right-edge of the photo is the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory.

Hasler and Company Corn and Seed Merchants, Great Dunmow. This photo is from English Heritage’s Britain from Above project. Click the photo to be taken directly to a zoomable image of this photo from their website.

Close-up of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory from the air in 1928.
To the left of the factory are the railway sidings running to
the factory from Dunmow’s station.

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*I use the word “Dunmow” with great care, because the medieval Dunmow Flitch originated in the tiny village of Little Dunmow and its pre-Reformation priory.  But in modern times – certainly since the Flitch’s revival in the nineteenth century – the ceremony has moved to the neighbouring larger town/village of Great Dunmow some three miles away from its original location.  There are two Dunmows – Great and Little.  In the Tudor records, Great Dunmow  was called “Much(e) Dunmow” and Little Dunmow was called “Dunmow Parva”. During my research on Great Dunmow, I have read many many accounts about the medieval/Tudor Dunmow from many commentators and even from well-known historians who fail to realise that there are two Dunmows. It annoys me intensely when I read “facts” about Tudor Great Dunmow, but the events actually took place in Little Dunmow (and vice versa).

An artist’s impression of Dunmow Priory in 1820 (now part of Little Dunmow’s church) – the original home of the Dunmow Flitch.

Update February 2014: That well-known internet auction site currently has for sale the card “The Hanging Hall II”.  On that card, there is a postmark: 1 July 1910.  So my estimate (above) that these cards were from the 1920s is totally incorrect!  The set dates must date from sometime around 1910.

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If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in
– Interwar Great Dunmow from the air
– The Dunmow Flitch – Bringing home the bacon
– The 2012 Dunmow Flitch
– Berbice House School, Great Dunmow
– War and Remembrance: Great Dunmow’s Military Funeral 1914
– Great Dunmow’s 1914 Military Funeral: A followup
– The Willett family of Great Dunmow

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Remember the men of this place who died for freedom and honour A.D. 1914-1918

Percy Charles Archer: died 15 July 1917
John Lewis Pasteur Armstrong: died 22 June 1916
Frederick Attridge: died 9 October 1916
Frank William Bacon: died 4 December 1918
Amos Alfred Barrick: died 31 December 1916
George Henry Barrick: died 11 June 1918
Frederick John Bartley: died 26 March 1917
George Henry Beard: died 7 September 1916
Albert Brand: died 8 October 1915
Frederick J Burchell: died unknown
Alfred Richard Burton: died 5 April 1917
Harold Vincent Burton: died 22 December 1916
Thomas F Burton: died 29 November 1918
Edwyn (Edwin) Bush: died 24 April 1917
David William Button: died 8 December 1918
William Henry Carter: died 24 July 1918
Alfred Thomas Caton: died 13 April 1918
Frederick Chapman: died 6 December 1918
Frederick George Clarke: died 30 July 1916
Alfred Coates: died 21 May 1918
Stanley Richard Coates: died 2 September 1918
George Cock: died 4 January 1918
William Coppin: died unknown
Sydney Cox: died 13 August 1918
Albert Crow: died 1 November 1914
William Frederick Crow: died 5 October 1917
Benjamin Thomas De Voil: died 1 July 1916
Ernest Cecil Freshwater: died 8 May 1915
Arthur Edwin Greenleaf: died 3 August 1916
George Frederick Gunn: died 18 July 1917
Arthur Gypps: died 16 October 1917
Harry Hines Halls: died 26 March 1917
Ernest Edward Harris: died 8 August 1918
Frank Harris: died 21 November 1916
Leonard Melsome Hasler: died 21 September 1917
Stanley Howland: died 21 October 1916
Thomas David Jarvis: died 16 July 1916
Gordon Parnall Kemp: died 26 September 1917
Harold James Nelson Kemp: died 28 May 1916
George Henry Ledgerton: died 2 November 1917
Frederick James Watson Lines: died 12 December 1915
Frank J Lodge: died 26 March 1917
Arthur Thomas Lorkin: died 26 March 1917
Hayden Lyle: died 6 November 1918
Llewellyn Malcomson: died 5 October 1916
Leonard Frederick Mason: died 12 September 1918
Ralph Milbank: died 23 March 1918
George Nelson: died 3 November 1917
George William Perry: died 17 November 1916
Francis Louis Pitts: died 15 June 1915
Bertram James Porter: died 2 September 1918
George Rawlings: died unknown
Arthur T Reed: died unknown
Harry Charles Edwin Robinson: died 28 March 1918
Henry Alfred Robson: died 28 April 1917
Frederick Isaac Rootkin: died 22 August 1915
Frank Edward Sams: died 1 November 1914
William George Saunders: died 26 March 1918
William Sayer(s): died 29 March 1915
Harold Mackenzie Scarfe: died 3 May 1917
Charles Edwin Sewell: died 24 March 1915
Frank Sewell: died 18 May 1917
Sidney Sharp: died 1 October 1918
Walter Sharp: died 9 April 1915
Arthur Smith: died unknown
Sidney J Smith,unknown
Victor Spurgeon: died 8 October 1918
Percy A Stock: died 9 December 1917
Arthur George Stokes: died 26 October 1914
Ernest Archibald Stokes: died 19 February 1919
Edward Charles Stone: died 23 August 1918
William Matthew Stovold: died 6 November 1914
Montague Beavan Tench: died 10 August 1916
Harry Turbard: died 12 November 1915
Joseph A Turner: died unknwon
John S Wackrill: died 12 October 1918
William Waite: died 11 July 1917
John Joseph Walsh: died 19 November 1917
Edward Warner: died 21 March 1918
Hubert John Welch: died 29 September 1918
Arthur Albert Willett: died 25 February 1916
Frank Willett: died 23 October 1916
James Wilson: died 10 September 1915
A Edgar Yeldham: died 10 November 1917
Arthur William Young: died 21 November 1915

Not on the town’s war memorial but commemorated
on the Congregational Church’s memorial
Walter Vosper Jakins: died 10 July 1917

Buried in St Mary’s Churchyard but not
commemorated on the town’s War Memorial
Charles Henry Parham: died 30 June 1918
C Spiers: died 7 November 1918

They whom this tablet commemorates, at the call of King and country left all that was
dear to them to endure hardships and face dangers. And then passed out of the
sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice giving up their lives
that others might life in freedom.
Let those who come after see to it that their names be not forgotten
(War Memorial in St Mary’s Church, Dunmow)

Their Name Liveth For Evermore

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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in
– War and Remembrance: It’s a long way to Tipperary
– War and Remembrance: Military Funeral 1914
– War and Remembrance: Great Dunmow’s Emergency Committee
– Postcard home from the front – The Camera never lies
– Postcards from the Front – from your loving son
– Memorial Tablet – I died in hell
– Memorial Tablet – I died of starvation
– Memorial Tablet – I died of wounds
– The Willett family of Great Dunmow
– Postcard from the Front – To my dear wife and sonny
– War and Remembrance – The Making of a War Memorial
– Great Dunmow’s Roll of Honour
– For the Fallan
– Aftermath

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

In 1928, an aeroplane flying above the skies of East Anglia, took these incredible aerial photographs of Great Dunmow

St Mary’s Church, Churchend, Great Dunmow.  The churchyard is in the top left of the photo; the vicarage is opposite the entrance to the church.  Bottom right is the cluster of houses in Church Street.

The junction of Market Street and High Street, Great Dunmow.  The building at the top of the photograph (facing towards the camera) is the Starr Inn.  The Tudor Town Hall (dating from the 16th Century) is the large building (with 3 windows facing the camera) on the right just after the junction .

Hasler and Company Corn and Seed Merchants, Great Dunmow.  The tracks of the Bishops Stortford to Braintree branch line visible at the front of Hasler’s building. Chelmsford Road is the line of houses running horizontally across the photograph – with the fields & trees of Dunmow Park immediately behind the road.  Great Dunmow Park is the far edge of the site of the original medieval manor of Great Dunmow.  This manor was dower land given to Katherine of Aragon by Henry VIII when he married her in 1509.

Hasler and Company Corn and Seed Merchants, Great Dunmow.  The railway line was closed to passengers in 1952, and freight in 1971.  Great Dunmow’s bypass (the B1256) now follows the route of the railway line and the Flitch Way Country Park runs alongside.

All photos on this page appear by kind courtesy of English Heritage’s Britain from Above project. Click each photo to be taken directly to the Britain from Above website.

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You may also be interested in the following
(These posts have early 20th Century real photograph postcards of the areas covered in this page’s aerial photographs)
– Queen Elizabeth’s Visit to Great Dunmow
– Postcard home from the front
– Medieval Wills and Religious Bequests
– The Willet Family of Great Dunmow
– Tudor Administration within Great Dunmow

When fellow local historian, Austin Reeve, read my post about Great Dunmow’s Through all the changing seasons and the comments about the local boarding school, Berbice House, it prompted him to get in touch with me and send me 6 postcard images of the school. Adding his images to my own collection means that today I can bring you 9 photographs of Berbice House boarding school from the 1950s.

This boarding school was located on Great Dunmow’s Causeway at the place where today’s roundabout to Godfrey Way is located. The school building was demolished during the 1970s or the 1980s – and now, in its place is Godfrey Way (named after one of the heads of Berbice House School), a large winding road to the top of a hill containing hundreds of houses. There is turning off Godfrey Way, called ‘Berbice Lane’ – named after the school. Prior to the school being located in the building shown in the first photograph, during the 1940s, it was located in the Clock House.

Then

The Clockhouse – sometime during the early part of the 19th century.

Now

The Clockhouse – Summer 2013 – from the same location as the Edwardian postcard.

The top of the church steeple – visible from the highest point on Godfrey Way. The sun-scorched yellow fields of Stebbing in the distance.

Godfrey Way – looking back down the hill to where Berbice House once stood.

Godfrey Way and the fields of Stebbing in the distance.

Do you have any photos of your time at Berbice House School?
If so, please do contact me

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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following

– Great Dunmow – Through all the changing seasons
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Pre-Reformation English church clergy
– Medieval Essex dialect
– Henry VIII’s Lay Subsidy 1523-1524
– The Tudor witches of Essex
– Building a medieval church steeple
– Great Dunmow’s Medieval manors

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

During the stress of the last few months with my recent legal action against Essex County Council, Victorian photos – particularly those known as carte de visite photographs – have haunted my waking moments.  This is perhaps a strange hobby for anyone to have – not least for it to manifest itself during a legal confrontation with an education authority and coping with their very modern-day shenanigans of denying a vulnerable child an education appropriate to his needs.  However, pondering the stories of long dead people and searching out interesting Victorian portraits in the flea markets of London and on-line from that well known auction site has given me some small comfort during the utter madness of the last few months.

Even as a small child, I have always loved looking at photographs of long dead people in their Sunday finery.  I can pinpoint my fascination back to early childhood when I first saw Victorian photos of my own ancestors.  I am pleased I can give names to the photos of my ancestors, but it always greatly saddens me when I see photograph upon photograph of long dead unknown people.  These people were someone’s much loved father, mother, child, granny, grandfather.  Now their names and families are lost forever – all that remains is a shadowy image that they once existed – a single moment in time captured forever.

Today’s image is a carte de viste of two Victorian children in their Sunday best, playing with a very well-dressed and expensive horse-haired doll, captured through the lens of Great Dunmow’s Victorian photographer, William Stacey.

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.”

Four Quartets by T.S Eliot, 1935

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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– The Victorian ladies of Great Dunmow
– The Victorian Gentlemen of Great Dunmow

© Essex Voices Past 2013.

Who are these men in this picture?  Why did they have their photo taken?  Why are they wearing similar clothing? Where were they – in Great Dunmow or elsewhere?

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This photo was taken sometime between the 1860s and the 1880s by the Victorian photographer and nursery man of Great Dunmow, William Stacey.  It is intriguing and offers up so many unanswerable questions. Can you help? What are the clothes they are wearing? Is a uniform or sports clothes? Are they really in front of a tree or bush – or is it something else? I ask this strange question because it seems that there are supports and pegs to the right of the photo (similar to tent ropes and pegs) which appear to be leading directly to the ‘tree’ – or is it just a trick of the camera angle?

Please do leave me a comment below if you can help out with some of these quandaries I have for this Essex boys from Victorian Great Dunmow…

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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
– The Victorian ladies of Great Dunmow

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.