Archive Assistant Neil Wiffen takes a look at how peas became so ubiquitous on the dinner tables of the nation.
Frozen peas must be the most accessible vegetable known to 21st century shoppers – such an easy convenience food to reach for all year round. Peas throughout history have been an important food source, and catalogue entries from Essex Archives Online are littered with references to them. During the middle-ages and early modern period they were grown as field crops for drying and use over winter, as an easily stored, high protein food source. Historians believe that ‘garden’ peas for eating freshly picked were an introduction from the Low Countries in the seventeenth century (T. Musgrave, Heritage Fruits & Vegetables (London, 2012), p.106). The kitchen gardens of the large country house would have produced them for the table along with market gardeners operating around towns, and it is quite probable that general gardeners, from a fairly early date, would have also done so once seed became readily available.
Through the nineteenth century the consumption of fresh(ish) peas increased, and the expansion of the railway network allowed Essex producers to send vast quantities of all sorts of fresh produce up to London – by 1850 3,900 tons of peas from surrounding counties were sold through the markets there (G. Dodds, The Food of London (London, 1856), p.387). And how were many of these peas harvested in a pre-mechanised age? Well, school log books of the period are littered with references to pupils being absent for all sorts of harvest work, not least that of pea picking, probably there alongside their mothers. The income that families made from seasonal work was not to be underestimated, and full advantage was made of these opportunities.
Note in Coggeshall school log book about pupils absent due to pea-picking, 9 July 1873 (E/ML 310/1)
And it was not just women and children who helped bring in the peas. Many itinerant workers also relied on various crops, and growers were glad of the extra labour to bring in the harvest. David Smith, farmer, author and broadcaster of Broomfield, wrote of the ‘grey tattered figures of all types and ages [as] they trudged along slowly in the bright June sunlight … They would come, every year … just as they came to thousands of other farms … And so to Hill Farm, with near it the brilliant green of two to three fields of picking peas … for a fickle London market.’ (D. Smith, The Same Sky Over All (London, 1948)*, p.116).
As to quite how ‘fresh’ hand-picked peas were in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is debatable. It wasn’t until freezing was first developed in the 1920s that the possibility of something akin to freshly picked peas became available to most consumers. However, without the advent of retailers with frozen sections and domestic home freezers, frozen peas eaten widely would have to wait until well into the second half of the twentieth century. In the meantime, and as with most vegetables, peas would have probably been well boiled!
If you wanted to eat peas fresh from the garden then, as indicated above, you had to grow them, and it is the same today. The joy of podding peas is one of the highlights of summer – so much so that sometimes more end up being eaten before they even make it to the cook! There are lots of varieties to choose from, not least the well known and locally raised Kelvedon Wonder which harks back to the 1920s. An older variety is Ne Plus Ultra from the early nineteenth century. Perhaps you know it from the BBC television series The Victorian Kitchen Garden (1987)* when Harry Dodson and Peter Thoday resurrected the variety from some very old seed. It was alleged to reach 7 foot in height, which is probably why it waned in popularity – modern varieties are generally all dwarfing which is an advantage to growers.
There used to be many more pea varieties grown in the past, partly because there would have been regional varieties that were only available locally, but also because of the proliferation of seed companies – something which, as with many businesses, has reduced over the last 50 years or so. If we take Chelmsford based Cramphorns, they listed 15 varieties of just the second early and maincrop varieties, including Ne Plus Ultra, in their 1898 catalogue. Along with the early sorts of peas, growing a lot of different varieties meant that if one failed there were others to come along and, in a pre-refrigeration era, it extended the length of the season in which to enjoy fresh peas.
The ornate cover from Cramphorn’s 1890 catalogue (ERO A10506 Box 7)
‘New Plus Ultra – one of the best; pods large and well-filled with dark green peas. Peas of delicious flavour – Height 6ft’. (From Cramphorn Ltd’s Catalogue of Vegetable and Flower Seeds (Chelmsford, 1898), (ERO A10506 Box 7) .
So as it is the time of year to start sowing peas I thought it might be fun to have a go at growing some Ne Plus Ultra peas – just as past gardeners in Essex would have done. I have also so challenged some colleagues and friends of the ERO to grow some to see if any of us can get them to 7 foot – all for a bit of fun I hasten to add. I’ll grow some Kelvedon Wonder as well by comparison and, weather and pests being kind, I’ll update you on how we’re all getting along as well as ruminating on other points of gardening that ‘crop’ up over the summer. For the moment though, keep your fingers crossed for a spell of dry weather as I’ll need to get on in the garden to prepare the soil.
A tray of Ne Plus Ultra peas grown by Neil for the ‘competition’, just before potting on.
*If you don’t know the work of David Smith then his books are well worth a read. There are copies of them in the ERO Library. If you haven’t seen The Victorian Kitchen Garden then it is available on DVD.
Dr Herbert Eiden is the research assistant of The People of 1381 project (https://www.1381.online/) and former assistant editor of Victoria County History of Essex.
Where is your ‘office’?
I have a dedicated downstairs office containing my reference
library, a laptop and a desktop because I work from home regularly.
Do you have a view out of a window when you are working? What is it and
is it a distraction?
My view is into our side garden south-east facing with a big shrub (currently in white blossoms) in front of me.
What Essex research are you catching up on? Will this result in
something published?
I am building up Excel sheets of relevant manorial documents for five counties; Essex is one of them. I took lots of images of Essex manorial court rolls before the ERO closed and can work with those now (at least for a few weeks).
Do you set yourself a strict timetable to work to or just pick up your
research as and when?
I normally start at 8.30am, have a lunch break (cooked
lunch!) and finish around 4.30pm.
Do you have a favourite online resource?
Manorial Documents Register; ERO online catalogue; NROcat; The National
Archives Discovery catalogue; British Library Manuscript catalogue.
What is your favourite research beverage and snack?
Nuts, sweet chilli
crisps; juice, peppermint tea.
Apart from the news, is there anything that distracts you from your research?
My children
What are you most looking forward to when you are able to visit ERO
again?
Manorial court rolls (late 14th century) and, of course, the
staff, who are always friendly, extremely helpful and hugely knowledgeable.
While the Essex Record Office might be closed to physical researchers it is still open for remote users via our Essex Archives Online (EAO) service that contains over three-quarters of a million digital images of parish registers, wills and some other records. This service has been up and running since 2011 and in that time researchers from across the globe have made use of the service. And it is a dynamic service as new images are added as and when relevant documents have been deposited and digitized.
In this Blog post EAO user Ian Beckwith has kindly shared some of his research that he has undertaken whilst using our parish register digital images. Ian is a seasoned user of the service and has been using it for several years but if you are new to research and are thinking of possibly taking out a subscription then it is worth considering the wonderful breadth of what is available. So, to begin with Archive Assistant Neil Wiffen discusses how to get started.
During
the 20 years that I have worked at ERO I have been advising researchers on how
to start making use of the digital images that are on EAO and here are some of
my tips.
Firstly, I would strongly recommend that before you take out a subscription you familiarize yourself with the EAO catalogue. It is completely free to search the catalogue as much as you wish. There are several ‘User Guides’ which are located at the bottom of the home page (https://www.essexarchivesonline.co.uk/) so scroll down and have a read of these.
The cover of the Gt Burstead Parish Register – D/P 139/1/0
Secondly, have a go at searching the catalogue by trying out a simple search – try typing in the wide white text box (which contains ‘search the archive’) the name of the parish you are interested in and ‘church register’ and click ‘Search’. This will bring up instances of all sorts of registers, not just church, or parish, registers, for a certain place. Some of these won’t have digitized images associated with them so this is why it is essential to check that what you want to look at has digital images before taking out a subscription. It will, however, give you an idea of the range of documents that the ERO looks after. All the Church of England parish registers deposited in the ERO, except for a few of the most recent ones, have been digitized, so you should find that they all have the a picture frame icon at the end of their entry in the search results.
By clicking on the ‘Reference’ or ‘Description’ you will be taken to the full catalogue entry for a document which might well give you further information. You might find that it isn’t really what you’re looking for. But if it is, remember to check for the photo frame icon to find out whether there is a digital image associated with the document .
A quick way to search for parish registers in particular is to look at the ‘Parish Register’ section of EAO (top right-hand corner). Here you will be able to refine your search to the parish you are interested in. If what you are looking for isn’t there (or if it is there but doesn’t have ‘Digital images’ next to it) then don’t take out a subscription. It is worth remembering that not every parish will have records going back to 1538 so do check the catalogue before subscribing to avoid disappointment.
Every
parish has its own unique number assigned to it. Great Burstead, for example,
is D/P 139 and registers of baptisms, marriages and burials come under
D/P 139/1. The first register, which covers 1559 to 1654, is then catalogued as
D/P 139/1/0. Take time to familiarize yourself with the catalogue before taking
out a subscription.
And do bear in mind that even if a parish register survives then early registers have baptisms, marriages and burial scattered throughout them so you will probably need to go hunting through the register for the entry that might be there – or might not . In the Tudor, Stuart and Georgian period it was very much down to the individual incumbent, or his deputy, as to how much effort was put into keeping the registers up to date. Not every vicar, rector or church clerk was as assiduous a record keeper as we might have liked him to have been. Fortunately, if you have a subscription to Ancestry, we have worked together with them to create a name index, which can take a lot of the leg work out your research. You can even buy digital images of what you find directly from Ancestry.
Handwriting
can also be difficult to read, although some incumbents like Rev Thomas Cox in
Broomfield and the famous Essex historian Rev Philip Morant, have beautifully
clear handwriting. Sometimes the writing is faint or illegible and the register
itself might be damaged. Remember these were working documents that have spent
several centuries in damp and cold churches before being deposited at ERO.
One
last thing, if you have identified that there are parish registers that you
want to look though that have digital images associated with them, and you take
out a subscription, then make sure that you take down the reference of what you
have looked at and what you have found as you work your way through them. This
will save time in the long-term and if you share your research with others you
can tell others in what document you found the information.
I
hope I haven’t put you off after all that but I do have one last warning:
historical research can be addictive. You might start out looking for one thing
but get distracted by something else. After 20 years of working at ERO I know
there’s always another new topic of interest just lurking over the page!
Neil Wiffen – Archive Assistant.
If you require any assistance, having taken out a subscription, then you can contact the Duty Archivist at ero.enquiry@essex.gov.uk. While the Record Office is shut, emails are being monitored remotely during the present crisis. Please bear with us though.
Parish Registers – Researching Remotely
I, like many others of my age and with
underlying health conditions, am in self-isolation. But this doesn’t mean that I can’t get on with
research. Thanks to the digital age
there’s so much available on-line for the local historian to work on, e.g.
Essex parish registers, which, thanks to the wonders of the ERO, are at my
finger-tips on my laptop. There’s a subscription
to pay, but once you’re registered., you can log-in, click on ‘Parish
Registers’ in the top bar, scroll down the page until you find ‘Choose a
letter’, then ‘Choose a parish’ and finally ‘Choose a church’. Up will come a table, telling you when your
chosen registers begin, click on ‘View’ in the right hand column, and the
register will appear. You need to know
that in the case of the earliest registers, the baptism, marriage and burial
entries were written up in one book, sometimes in different sections of the
book, sometimes together as they occurred through the year. Later registers record baptisms, marriages
and burials in dedicated volumes. When
the image of your selected register appears, click on the rubric ‘To enhance
this image… ’ and the image will expand to fill the screen. Away you go!
D/P 139/1/0
In September 1538, King Henry VIII’s Vicar General, Thomas Cromwell, issued an injunction to every parish priest in England requiring him to keep a record of all baptisms, marriages, and burials in his parish. In Essex at least seventy-five parishes have registers beginning in about 1538. Most of these survivals are copies made in the reign of Elizabeth I, either by the incumbent or the parish clerk, from the old book, which was then apparently discarded.[i] Many other registers begin in the reign of Elizabeth I. Apart from the marriages, baptisms and burials that are the building blocks of family reconstitution, what else can we learn from scrutinising parish registers?
In rural Essex as elsewhere in the
sixteenth century it was taken as a given that God existed. No one’s head was bothered by whether the
earth was the centre of the universe (it obviously was) or whether God was in his
heaven up above while hell was down below (they undoubtedly were).[ii] The only issue was whether God was Protestant
or Catholic. The wrong choice could cost
you your life in this world and your salvation in the next. When it came to making this choice, parishioners
in England had been on something of a roller-coaster ride since 1538. Four years before Cromwell issued his
injunction introducing parish registers the Pope’s authority over the English
Church had been abolished and the King had made himself Supreme Head of the
Church in England. Between 1536 and 1541
the Dissolution of the Monasteries had seen the closure of over 900 monastic
foundations, the dispersal of the monks and nuns who occupied them, and the
sale of their vast landed estates. Yet
the parish registers that survive from this period show that, while these
upheavals were taking place, baptisms, marriages and burials carried on as
normal. The services of the Church
continued to be said in Latin, in the form in which they had been since time immemorial. It was not until 1549, two years after the
death of Henry VIII, that the mass was first said in English. Four years later the Protestant Edward VI was
succeeded by his half-sister the Catholic Mary Tudor, Henry’s daughter by
Catherine of Aragon, and during the next five years England returned to
obedience to Rome, the services in the parish churches reverted to Latin, the
traditional rites and ceremonies were restored, and images and treasures that
had been hidden were brought out again, only for all this to be reversed in
1558 when Elizabeth I came to the throne: again the Pope’s authority over the
English Church was abolished and the Queen was proclaimed Supreme Governor of
the Church.[iii] On May 8th 1559 the Act of
Uniformity, authorising the use of the new Book of Common Prayer, received the
Royal approval. The new prayer book,
which replaced all other service books, came into use on 24th June
1559.
Occasionally, however, in the midst of
the routine recording of rites of passage, the registers provide glimpses of
the impact of these changes at parish level.
In July 1599 the Great Burstead register recorded that
Elizabeth Wattes Widdow sume tyme the wife of Thomas Wattes the blessed marter of god who for his treuth suffered his merterdom in the fyre at Chelmesford the xxij day of may in A[nn]o D[o]m[ini] 1555 in the Reigne of queen mary was buryed the 10 day 1599 so she liued a widow after his death xlviij yeres & fro[m] the 22 of may to the 10 july & made a good end like a good Christian woman in gods name.[iv]
D/P 139/1/0
Thomas Watts was one of almost eighty Essex men and women who were burned at the stake in the reign of Mary Tudor for refusing to recant their Protestant beliefs.[v] A full account of Thomas Watts’ martyrdom is provided in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, more correctly titled Acts and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, first published in 1563 and greatly expanded in 1570.[vi]Described as a linen draper of Billericay, then part of the parish of Great Burstead, Thomas Watts had, according to Foxe ‘daily expected to be taken by God’s adversaries’. Accordingly he had assigned his property to his wife and children and donated his stock of cloth to the poor. He was arrested on April 26th 1555 and brought before Lord Rich at Chelmsford, accused of not attending church, i.e. hearing mass. Interrogated by Sir Anthony Browne, who, with Rich, had been appointed to purge Essex of heretics, as to why he had embraced his heretical views, Watts replied that
You taught me and no one more than you. For, in King Edward’s days in open sessions you said the mass was abominable trumpery, earnestly exhorting that none should believe therein, but that our belief should be only in Christ.[vii]
It seems that Watts had also spoken
treasonable words against the Queen’s husband, King Philip.[viii] Unable to persuade Thomas Watts to recant, he
was sent to Bishop Bonner, ‘the bloody bishop,
…’.[ix]
Essex was then within the diocese of London and Edmund Bonner was its bishop,
first under Henry VIII and again under Mary.
He remained staunchly Catholic during the reigns of Edward VI and
Elizabeth. Although usually depicted as
sadistic and merciless, it is worth noting that even Foxe acknowledges that
Bonner made several attempts to persuade Watts (and others) to recant, ‘gave
him several hearings, and, as usual, many arguments with much entreaty, … but
his preaching availed not, and he resorted to his last revenge – that of
condemnation’. ‘I am weary to live in
such idolatry as you would have me live in’, Watts is alleged to have said, and
signed the confession of heresy. Faced
by his refusal, Bishop Bonner had little choice but to consign Thomas Watts to
the secular arm, the Church not being allowed to take life, to suffer the
penalty prescribed by the Statute De
Heretico Comburando (Concerning the Burning of Heretics) of 1401,
originally intended to deal with Lollards.[x]
Returned from the Bishop of London’s
prison to Chelmsford, Thomas Watts was lodged at ‘Mr Scott’s, an inn in
Chelmsford where were Mr Haukes and the rest that came down to their burning,
who all prayed together’. Watts then
withdrew to pray by himself, after which he met his wife and children for the
last time, exhorting them to have no regrets but to glory in the sacrifice he
was making for the sake of Jesus. So
powerful were his words that, it is said, two of his children offered to go to
the stake with him. At the stake, after
he had kissed it, he called out to Lord Rich, who was supervising the
execution: “beware, for you do against your own conscience herein, and without
you repent, the Lord will revenge it”. ‘Thus did this good martyr offer his
body to the fire, in defence of the true gospel of the Saviour’.[xi]
It seems unlikely that Rich, a man whose
name is a byword for cruelty, sadism, dishonesty, ruthlessness and treachery,
possessed a conscience. Born about 1496,
Richard Rich was a lawyer who entered the service of Thomas 1st
Baron Audley of Walden,, who assisted Rich to become MP for Colchester.[xii] In 1533 Rich was knighted and became
Solicitor General. In this capacity, he
used selective quotations from a private conversation with Thomas More in the
Tower in evidence at More’s trial. In
1536 he was appointed Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations, charged with
the disposal of former monastic estates, a position that he used to enrich
himself. In 1546 he personally tortured
the Lincolnshire Protestant martyr, Ann Askew, in the Tower. During the reign
of Edward VI, as Lord Chancellor, however, he presented himself as a reformer,
taking part in the trials of Bishops Gardiner and Bonner. Yet in Mary’s reign
he helped restore the old religion, actively persecuting those like Thomas
Watts of Billericay who refused to conform. Under Elizabeth he sat on a
Commission to enquire into grants made during the previous reign and was called
upon to advise on the Queen’s marriage. Richard Rich died on 11th of
June 1558 at Rochford and was buried at Felsted on the 8th of
July. The entry in the Felsted register
gives only the bare facts. For those at Felstead who had dealings with him,
Richard Rich, first baron Rich, must have been terrifying.[xiii]
In Elizabeth’s reign, others submitted to
the Religious Settlement but made their resistance covertly, like the parson of
Great Baddow who recorded the burial of Joan Smythe on May 1st 1572
‘being the purificacion even of o[ur] lady St Mary’ (i.e. the evening preceding
the feastday).
Ian Beckwith
[i] It
is not necessarily clear by whom the registers were kept. Although the entries for the preceding week
were supposed to be read to the congregation at the principal service on
Sunday, there are indications that some were written up at the year’s end (24th
March), possibly from notes on slips of paper.
The penmanship of the entries remains generally of a very high standard
until the last decade of the sixteenth century, when it often becomes slapdash
and much less legible.
[ii] The
realisation that the world was not flat, as the circumnavigation of the globe
by Magellan and Drake demonstrated, did not shake the belief in this
three-decker image of the universe.
[iii] The
change from Supreme Head as Henry VIII was designated, to Supreme Governor, it
has been claimed, reflects the opinion that a woman could not be ‘Head’ of the
Church. However, when Elizabeth was
succeeded by James VI of Scotland, the title ‘Governor’ was retained and
continued to be used by every subsequent monarch, male and female.
[iv] ERO, D/P 139/1/0, Image 49. However, the
length of her widowhood seems to have been miscalculated.
[v] J
E Oxley, The Reformation in Essex to the
Death of Mary, Manchester University Press, 1965, pp.210-237. Coincidentally, my copy was withdrawn from
Billericay Public Library in about 2013.
[vi] I
have drawn upon an edition of 1860, published in Philadelphia. The account of Thomas Watts’ martyrdom is on
p.367. The Book of Martyrs has been
blamed for inciting anti-Catholic sentiment in England.
[x] Several
Essex Lollards were burned at the stake in Henry VIII’s reign. The purpose of burning was to act not just as
a deterrent but also as a purgative, to rid the realm of disease. See David Nicholls, The Theatre of Martyrdom in the French Reformation, Past &
Present, Vol 121, Issue 1, November 1988, pp 49-73.
[xii] Thomas
Audley (1488-1544), formerly MP for Colchester, a member of Cardinal Wolsey’s
household, Speaker of the Commons during the Reformation Parliament and Lord
Chancellor of England from 1533-1544
[xiii] Born
about 1496, Richard Rich was a lawyer who entered the service of Thomas Audley,
who assisted him to become MP for Colchester.
In 1533 Rich was knighted and became Solicitor General. In this capacity, he used selective quotations
from a private conversation with Thomas More in the Tower in evidence at More’s
trial. In 1536 he was appointed
Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations, charged with the disposal of former
monastic estates, a position that he used to enrich himself. In 1546 he personally tortured the
Lincolnshire Protestant martyr, Ann Askew, in the Tower. During the reign of
Edward VI, as Lord Chancellor, however, he appeared as a reformer, taking part
in the trials of Bishops Gardiner and Bonner, yet in Mary’s reign he helped
restore the old religion, actively persecuting those who refused to conform.
Under Elizabeth he sat on a Commission to enquire into grants made during the
previous reign and was called upon to advise on the Queen’s marriage.
I’ve
recently been at the Essex Record Office looking for evidence that will help me
tell the story of the “St Osyth” witches of 1582 in a new book. I say “St
Osyth” in inverted commas because although the witchcraft accusations that
engulfed north-east Essex in 1582 started in St Osyth, in fact there is far
more evidence of their impact on surrounding communities than there is on the
village itself.
In
February 1582, a servant of Lord Darcy at St Osyth Priory complained that her small
son was being attacked by witchcraft. Once she had accused a neighbour, Ursley
Kemp, and Ursley had confessed to witchcraft then more people came forward to
make accusations. More villages in the manors and parishes controlled by the
Darcy family – Little Oakley, Beaumont, Moze, Thorpe and Walton le Soken, Little
Clacton and others – were drawn in. At least two people were executed and four
others died in prison, with multiple other imprisonments too. One woman was
released as late as 1588.
This
story has fascinated me since I read it as a student over 20 years ago. But
there are few surviving records from St Osyth. The Priory was attacked during
the Civil War and its estate and parish records were likely lost then – an epic
frustration for historians. But the records of the other witch-accusing communities
and authorities were more fortunate. Among these is today’s focus: a record of Elizabethan
visitations made by the Colchester ecclesiastical authorities to the parishes
around St Osyth.
St
Osyth itself answered to the Commissary Court of the Bishop of London and, guess
what, the Commissary’s early records are lost (you might almost think St
Osyth’s documents were cursed…!) but the ecclesiastical team from Colchester visited
most of the other witch-rich villages. In each place, they recorded the names
of the minister and Churchwardens. And today I found the names of some of the
accusers of the 1582 witches and learned that they were Churchwardens too.
Here’s
a nice clear link between parish authorities and witch accusations. It’s easy
to suppose that religious-reforming folk went after suspected witches but it’s
important not to stereotype accusers: they can’t be dismissed as just
“fanatical puritans” or “Anglican worthies”. But in this case there’s some documentary
evidence that they were the community’s religious leaders. It’s going to need
more thinking about as I carry on researching the book.
Essex
Record Office is one of the most impressive and friendliest archives in the UK,
and it’s come up with the goods once again. Has your village got a hidden
history of witchcraft? Were your ancestors accused? Or were they accusers? Are
there still stories of witches in your community? So much more to discover.
We have already introduced you to two of our speakers for jam packed day of talks on the 7th March, our next introduction is for John Miners.
John has many years experience in textiles, starting his career with Samuel Courtauld & Co. Ltd in Essex. He has been involved in the sourcing and supply of historic fabrics for many restoration projects both in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the USA. His background is technical, rather than design based, and he has knowledge of the production techniques used to produce textiles in past centuries, as well as studying the social history aspects involved in the manufacture of fabrics.
In January 2018 he was appointed as Director of the Warner Textile Archive Trading Company Ltd. This archive is a rich design resource documenting the successes and innovation of Warner & Sons from the late 1800s. Owned by the Braintree Museums Trust, this Collection, the second largest archive of publicly owned textiles in the UK, comprises stunning textiles and inspirational paper designs, as well as original printing blocks, photographs and other documentary material.
John will be talking about how the local textile industry moved from the home into factories, changing from wool to silk. He will look at how Samuel Courtauld & Co changed their production methods of silk yarn using various forms of power: from hand to donkey to water to steam, then exploring the move into the production of mourning crape using machinery built to their own designs in their own workshops. In addition the history of the company up until closure in 1982 will be examined, giving information about the changes in technology.
Archive Assistant Neil Wiffen reflects on the changing pattern of land usage and the historic value of meadows to the Essex landscape.
There is currently much in the media about climate change and environmental degradation. We hear on almost a daily basis about the threat to different ecosystems and landscapes, as well as about worldwide species loss. We in the UK are not immune, and subjects such as the loss of meadows and the threat to bees are now quite common topics of discussion. Recently the BBC reported that, ‘over 97% of wildflower meadows have been lost since the 1930s, that’s a startling 7.5 million acres (3 million hectares). Species-rich grassland now only covers a mere 1% of the UK’s land area’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150702-why-meadows-are-worth-saving).
What have bees and meadows got to do with the Essex Record
Office (ERO), we hear you ask? Well, working among our wonderful archives we
are used to seeing lost landscapes of the past as depicted in maps or described
in documents – a land before industrial agriculture and large-scale
urbanisation.
One important, almost universal feature of any parish’s
landscape would have been that ‘species-rich
grassland’ mentioned by the BBC. They were generally described as meadows,
which the ERO’s trusty copy of the Oxford
English Dictionary (1933) defines as, ‘a piece of land covered with grass
that is mown for use as hay. In later use often extended to include any piece
of grass land’ (pasture, on the other hand, was used for general grazing of
livestock). Look at any tithe, enclosure or estate map and there the meadows
will be, often listed and somewhere along the way appraised as well.
Extract from John Walker junior’s 1609 ‘trewe and perfect’ plan of the ‘landes belonging to the Mannor of Mascalls Bury … within the parish of White Roodinge’ (D/DC 27/1118). It depicts the ‘Longe’ and ‘Shorte’ meadows adjacent to the moated house. Another important aspect of the farm and household economy, the orchard, can also be seen close by the house. Do note the spelling of arable as ‘Eareable’ – one can almost hear the Essex accent across the centuries!
— An image of the same location from Google Satellite, 2019.
The importance of meadows to people in the past was immense,
particularly before the introduction of fodder crops, such as turnips, through
the 17th and 18th centuries. Meadows were mown for hay in
summer which was then used to feed overwintering livestock. Therefore the
amount of hay harvested determined the number of cattle that could be kept
over-winter. So a good hay crop was an essential product of the agricultural
year, with the whole community coming together to ensure it was harvested and
stored successfully.
The
high regard that meadows were held in can be seen by how they were valued. When
the Escheator compiled the Inquisition Post Mortem (TNA, C 134/74/19) on the
death of Nicholas Dengayne in 1322/3, his manors of Colne Engaine and Prested
Hall (Feering) were valued. The 240 acres of arable
land in the former was valued at 4 pence per acre, while 140 acres in the
latter was 3 pence per acre. By comparison the 6 acres of mowing meadow at
Colne Engaine and 5 acres at Prested Hall were all valued at 2 shillings per
acre – the equivalent of 24 pence per
acre, or six to eight times the value of the arable land.
Quite what types of grasses and flowers these ‘traditional’ meadows were made up of is unknown, but we have to assume in an age before widespread use of agricultural chemicals they were very species rich with lots of insects as well. Not all ‘grassland’ was equal to a well-established meadow. By the 1930s 302,803 acres of ‘permanent grass’ was recorded in Essex (The Land of Britain: the Report of The Land Utilisation Survey of Britain part 82 Essex, copy in ERO Library, Box 95), of which 92,300 was for hay – possibly this was mainly ancient meadows. The remaining 210,503 acres might not have been of the highest quality but rather a result of the agricultural depressions of pre and post First World War. This would have been the case with the 38,977 acres of ‘rough grazing’ – not all grassland was equal!
A local meadow in glorious technicolour! Along with various grasses there is knapweed, scabious and lady’s bedstraw. The honeyed aroma of the latter is intoxicating on a sunny day!
Now, we are beginning to appreciate our meadows once more and recognise their value as habitats to vital wildlife. While there has been a great loss of meadows, more are being planted, for example by conservation charity Plantlife. Perhaps our maps and documents will guide where new meadows could be sown?
What can you find out about your local landscape history? Check our introduction to the main sources for starting a place history, then come and explore what we have in our Searchroom.
After a lot of work we are finally able to announce that the Essex Record Office, working alongside Ancestry.com have launched a new searchable index of the Essex parish registers. Searching for your Essex ancestors is now easier than ever!
In celebration of our new partnership with Ancestry.com, Edward Harris, Customer Service Team Lead, takes a look at some of the stories found in the pages of our parish registers. Read on for more information about what we have been working on with Ancestry.com.
D/P 94/1/1 – Parish register for St Mary the Virgin, Chelmsford.
The Parish Registers of England, containing as they do the records of baptisms, marriages and burials made by the Church of England are frequently the start and the backbone of a genealogist’s journey into family history. Prior to 1837 and the start of civil registration, they are essential for family history. Unfortunately they are all too often the end of that journey. When the next link cannot be made or one elusive great, great, great, great grandparent fails to materialise, it is usually normally the pages of a parish register that we are gazing at.
Despite the frustrations so many of us hardy researchers are well aware of, it cannot have escaped our notice that within this great national collection there are a countless stories. These stories provide snippets of the joys and sorrows of everyone, whether normal or extraordinary. They can be better than any soap opera but always tantalising because of what they often don’t tell us and the questions they can’t answer for us. We decided to take a retrospective look at some of the stories we have unearthed over the years at the Essex Record Office where a helpful curate or vicar has decided to provide us with a few extra snippits of information.
The parish burial register for St Mary the Virgin in Hatfield Broad Oak includes in its pages the sad and untimely death of 5 year old Betsy Rogers burnt to death, and two extraordinary marginal notes on that page give a clue as to how:
D/P 4/1/26 – The burial register for St Mary the Virgin, Hatfield Broad Oak showing the burial of Betsey Rogers.
Feb.y 7. A frost of 7 weeks broke up today. Temperature 12° below freezing point! Many persons frozen to death. One at Gt Canfield, one at Sawbridgeworth.
The seat of Lord Rendlesham (Rendlesham Hall, Suffolk) burnt to the ground, damage = 100,000£; The seat of Lord Sandwich (Hinchinbroke, Huntingdonshire) also destroyed by fire with title deeds, fine pictures, etc.; The Argyle Rooms, Regent St, London also destroyed by fire. Lyceam also…All in Jan.y in Feb.y arising from the unusual heating of flues etc. in consequence of the uncommon severity of the season.
The register for Little Clacton contains a very sad and somewhat mysterious story dating from 1592, when a bride, Prudence Lambert, hanged herself the morning after her wedding to Clement Fenn.
D/P 80/1/1 – Marriage register for Little Clacton showing the marriage of Clement Fenn and Prudence Lambert.
Clement Fenn singleman, and Prudence the late wife of Nycholas Lambert, wch dwelt in Little Clacton Lodge; were maryed uppon Teusdaye [six], the xvth day of August; but the (most accursed creature), did the verye next morning, desperatelie hang her selfe, to the intolerable grieffe of her new maryed husband, and the dreadfull horror and astonishment of all the countrye.
Prudence’s burial is recorded two days later in the same register.
D/P 80/1/1 – Burial register for Little Clacton showing the burial of Prudence Fenn.
Prudence Fen, now the wife of Clem[e]nt Fen, and late the wife of the above named Nicholas Lambert; was buried out of the compas of Christian burial; in ye furthest syde of the churchyard northward; uppon the xviith daye of August; for that shee most accursedlie hanged her selfe.
A slightly happier story is found in the parish register from Ugley (one of Essex’s more esoteric place names) in 1759 which records the baptism of:
Anne daughter of John Grimshaw, a Sailor in the Dreadnought Man of War, & Jane his wife found in Labour in the Road, & taken care of by the Parish, was born June 27th & baptized July 7th
D/P 373/1/2 – baptism register for Ugley including Anne’s birth.
From these stories of life and death, to the sort of story that leaves family historians pulling out their hair in frustration.
In 1862 the baptism register for St Mary Magdalene in Harlow recorded the reason for its early closure. The registers had been removed from the church by the curate Revd William Raymond Scott who took them to Hawaii (then known as the Sandwich Islands). The curate had travelled to accompany the new Bishop of Honolulu to the island, but also to chaperone 70 young women destined for a life in Australia.
The registers would survive a mutiny, make a brief stop at the Falkland islands and Australia before reaching Hawaii. Fortunately the registers did return to the church 2 years after leaving these shores and so are still available to researchers.
D/P 533/1/1 – parish register for Harlow with note explaining closure of registers.
Fortunately, provided the register in question isn’t on a voyage around the world, searching the Essex parish registers is now easier than ever!
Since 2011, the Record Office’s service Essex Archives Online (www.essexarchivesonline.co.uk) has been making Church of England parish registers – and some other documents – available as digital images. Off-site, this works as a subscription scheme, offering various lengths of subscription between 1 day and 1 year. Some documents on the system, such as wills, come with their own name indexes, but the parish registers do not. Subscribers looking for a particular baptism, marriage or burial have often had to work through a whole parish year by year.
The ERO has now teamed up with Ancestry, the world’s largest online commercial family history website, to offer a new way to access the data. Ancestry have created a name index to the parish register images, and Ancestry users can click straight through from the index to Essex Archives Online in order to buy a copy of the indexed image. Images are emailed out automatically on payment; each one costs £2.99 including VAT.
Essex Archives Online expands as new registers are deposited, but currently it holds about 600,000 images of Anglican parish registers deposited either in the ERO itself or in Waltham Forest Archives. The registers cover the whole of the present county of Essex, including Southend and Thurrock – and also including parts of north-east London that used to be in Essex. Depending on the parish and the event in question, they cover the whole period from 1538 almost up to the present day. Ancestry’s new index covers all the baptisms up to 100 years ago; all the marriages up to 84 years ago; and all deposited burial registers, whatever their date.
For those with large family trees to discover the subscription option is still available, but for anyone who needs an image now and again the new system is easier, quicker and cheaper!
This month’s document has been chosen to mark National Tree Week, 24th November to 2nd December 2018, the UK’s largest annual tree celebration marking the start of the winter tree planting season. The document is the sale catalogue dating from 1923 for the Hallingbury Estate (SALE/A316). The estate included Hatfield Forest.
The part of the sale catalogue describing Hatfield Forest. The lot was over 922 acres, and included several cottages and a shell room or grotto,
The sale catalogue includes a large fold-out map which shows how big the estate being sold was. Hatfield Forest is the area coloured in grey in the top right corner.
In his book entitled The Last Forest, 1989, Oliver Rackham begins by quoting from a previous book of his; ‘Hatfield is of supreme interest in that all the elements of a medieval Forest survive: deer, cattle, coppice woods, pollards, scrub, timber trees, grassland and fen, plus a seventeenth-century lodge and rabbit warren. As such it is almost certainly unique in England and possibly in the world. …The Forest owes very little to the last 250 years. … Hatfield is the only place where one can step back into the Middle Ages to see, with only a small effort of the imagination, what a Forest looked like in use.”
The sale catalogue draws attention to the timber ‘of very considerable value, the wood having been carefully managed for many years’. Many years indeed, as the Domesday survey of 1086 shows that it belonged to Earl Harold during the reign of Edward the Confessor before passing to William 1st after the conquest. Thus it became a ‘royal’ forest, part of the Forest of Essex which included Epping and Hainault, and alongside provision of timber it was used by the kings for hunting purposes. The chief beasts of the chase were red, roe and, particularly, fallow deer which still populate Hatfield Forest today.
Henry III was the first king to part with the forest and it passed down through the families of Bruce, de Bohun, the earls of Stafford and the Dukes of Buckingham. At one point, Robert the Bruce owned it before it was forfeited along with the rest of his lands in England when he became King of Scotland (the story is featured in this earlier blog posted in August 2014 featuring some of the oldest ‘Essex’ documents kept by ERO). Eventually, along with much of Hallingbury and Hatfield, it came into the possession of the Houblon family who developed it as park during the eighteenth century, creating the lake, planting ornamental trees such as horse chestnuts and building the charming shell house. The family later invoked the Enclosure Act of 1857 and paid £3000 to take it out of common land and enclose it as a private park. Following a decline in their fortunes, however, it was put up for sale in 1923.
According to the National Trust, after an administrative error, a timber merchant bought Hatfield Forest and started felling the timber. At which point, the 83-year-old Edward North Buxton, a council member of the National Trust and a life-long preserver of forests helping to save Epping Forest of which he was a verderer, stepped in to save Hatfield Forest too. He managed to purchase it with the help of his sons from his deathbed and then give it to the National Trust. It was first opened to the public by Lord Ullswater on the 10th May 1924.
An invitation to the public opening of Hatfield Forest in 1924
A map of Hatfield Forest from a 1952 National Trust guide
The forest is famous for its splendid oaks which acted as standard trees amid the coppices. One of the legendary trees was the Doodle Oak which in 1813 measured 60 feet in circumference. Unfortunately, by 1924 it had disappeared. At first the National Trust adopted a laissez-faire approach to preserving the forest but quickly realised that in order to preserve it properly, it would have to be managed as a working forest, especially with regular cutting of timber in the coppices, thereby preserving it in the same way it has been worked for nearly a thousand years.
The sale catalogue, guide book map and invitation will be on display in the ERO Searchroom throughout December 2018. You can find out how you can visit this ancient forest on the National Trust website.
New fragments which tell us about Essex’s past come in to us all the time, in all shapes and sizes. Here, Archivist Ruth Costello tells us about one of our new additions – a beautiful survey of the Rivenhall estate. The volume bears no date, so Ruth has been sleuthing to see if she could find out when it was made.
This month’s document is one of two volumes of maps which we received earlier this year as part of accession A14956. This, the smaller of the two, shows Rivenhall Place and its lands, which were owned by the Western family.
The index at the beginning of the volume lists the parts of the Rivenhall estate which are included in the survey
For each part of the estate, there is a carefully drawn map, and a list of how each parcel of land was being used. This map shows Rivenhall Place and the lands immediately around the grand house.
Despite its undoubted beauty, it seems to have been treated as a working document, with annotations in pencil, some of which seem to have been rubbed out at a later date.
Unfortunately, the survey does not include a title page, where we might expect to find the name of the surveyor. Nor does it include a date.
We knew the volume must predate 1839 as the Rivenhall tithe map produced in that year clearly shows the newly built Eastern Counties Railway running through the parish. In the volume, it has been pencilled in at a later date (it’s the line crossing through the meadow land numbered ‘23’, north of Rivenhall End in the page on display).
The two lines marked in pencil through field no. 23 on this map show where a railway line was later built, helping us to date the volume
We already held two maps of Rivenhall Place among the Western family estate records drawn in 1828 and 1839 (this latter one didn’t show the railway, so must have been produced earlier that year). It’s unlikely that the land would have been surveyed and mapped on another occasion, so we thought that the volume must tie in with the date of one of these maps.
On display in the ERO Searchroom, the volume is opened to display the map of Pond Farm, which at the time was leased (somewhat appropriately) by Joseph Lake. Both the volume and the 1828 map (D/DWe P12) show a property described as ‘workhouse land’ (it’s surrounded on two sides by the field numbered ‘26’). The later map of 1839 (D/DWe P16) has the name ‘Bilney’ against this property. It would seem that Mr Bilney bought the property after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 led to the sale of former, smaller parish workhouses and the creation in this case of the new Witham Poor Law Union workhouse.
Map of lands that made up Pond Farm
List of lands making up Pond Farm
Some of the surrounding area is described as ‘William Blackborne’s land’. We found a burial for a William Blackborne in the Rivenhall parish register in 1825. Initially this made us think that the volume must predate his death and must be earlier than 1825. However, both the 1828 and 1839 estate maps also included his name, which showed that out of date information was being copied forwards.
We think, therefore, that the volume and the 1828 map we already held were drawn at the same time. Sadly, we still don’t know who drew them; the map also has no author. The map shows the whole of the estate and its individual farms together, but it has only a very little colouring, by comparison with the volume. This volume and its companion (a series of maps of the Felix Hall estate) are thus a welcome addition to our holdings.
The volume will be in display in the Searchroom throughout September 2018.
In August 918 years ago, the king of England died in suspicious circumstances. Here, our medieval specialist Katharine Schofield discusses what may or may not have happened that day, and the Essex connections of the man rumoured to have killed the king.
On 2 August 1100 William II was killed while hunting in the New Forest. William (also known as William Rufus) was the son of William the Conqueror, and had inherited the kingdom of England on the death of his father in 1087.
William II drawn by Matthew Paris
The earliest account of his death in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that he was shot by an arrow by one of his men. Later chroniclers named Walter Tirel as the man who fired the fatal shot. Opinions vary as to whether Rufus met his death by accident or design.
Tirel was a renowned bowman; one account of William’s death records that at the start of the day’s hunting the king was presented with six arrows, two of which he gave to Tirel with the words Bon archer, bonnes fleches [To the good archer, the good arrows].
Other chroniclers record that Tirel let off a wild shot at a stag which he missed, hitting the king instead. Tirel took no chances and fled to France, according to legend having the horseshoes of his horse reversed to throw off any pursuit. In France he always maintained his innocence. Abbot Suger of St. Denis who knew Tirel in France recorded ‘I have often heard him, when he had nothing to fear nor to hope, solemnly swear that on the day in question he was not in the part of the forest where the king was hunting, nor ever saw him in the forest at all.’
What is not in doubt is that Rufus’ younger brother Henry (Henry I) was the main beneficiary. Henry was part of the hunting party on that day and he was able to secure the Treasury (then held at Winchester) the same day and had himself crowned king at Westminster Abbey on 5 August, just three days after his brother’s death.
Illustration of Henry I by Matthew Paris
Walter Tirel (or Tyrell) is thought to have originated from Poix in Picardy and may have been the same Walter Tirel named as holding the manor of Langham, in north east Essex, (Laingeham) in Domesday Book. The Revd. Philip Morant in The History and Antiquities of the County of Essex (1768) was rather dubious as to whether there was a connection, while another historian with Essex connections, J.H. Round writing in 1895 was more certain that they were the same.
The Domesday Book recorded in 1086 that the manor of Langham was 2½ hides in extent (roughly 300 acres), with 17 villeins and 27 bordars. There was wood for 1,000 pigs, 40 acres of meadow, two mills, 22 cattle, 80 pigs, 200 sheep and 80 goats. The resources of the manor were mostly larger than they had been before the Norman Conquest, and its value had increased from £12 to £15, making it quite valuable; by comparison, the manor of Chelmsford was valued at £8 and Maldon at £12.
Tirel held the manor from Richard son of Count Gilbert, also known in Domesday Book as Richard fitzGilbert or Richard of Tonbridge, and is later more familiarly known as Richard de Clare. It is likely that Tirel acquired the manor through his wife Adeliza, Richard’s daughter and this explains why he had such a valuable holding.
The Pipe Roll of 1130 records that Adeliza, by then a widow, was still in possession of Langham and in 1147 their son Hugh Tirel sold it to Gervase de Cornhill, before embarking on the Second Crusade. In 1189 Richard I granted Gervase’s son Henry permission to enclose woods there to create a park. The manor remained part of the Honour of Clare, while passing through the hands of different owners. In the late 14th century it passed to the de la Pole family and remained in their possession until the early 16th century. The oldest surviving court roll from the manor, 1391-1557 (D/DEl M1) begins during their ownership.
Henry VIII’s first wife Katharine of Aragon held the manor, later Langham Hall, until her death, when it passed to his third wife Jane Seymour. In 1540 it passed briefly to Thomas Cromwell and after his execution formed part of the lands granted to Anne of Cleves (Henry VIII’s fourth wife) on her divorce. In the early 17th century it was granted by Charles I to trustees of the City of London in repayment for a loan. In 1662 it was purchased by Humphrey Thayer, who Morant described as a druggist to the King and was inherited by his niece, the wife of Jacob Hinde.
While Morant was doubtful as to the connection of Walter Tirel in Langham with the Tirel who may have killed William Rufus, he was in no doubt that he was the ancestor of the Tyrell family in Essex who he described as ‘early persons of great consequence in this County; and one of the ancientist families’.
While the Tyrells did not keep Langham for more than one generation, they acquired extensive lands in Essex, as well as lands in Hampshire, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. Their lands centred on the manor of Heron in East Horndon, but Tyrells also held land in Broomfield, Springfield, Beeches at Rawreth, Hockley and Ramsden Crays.
The most distinguished of the Essex Tyrells was probably Sir John Tyrell. He served as sheriff of Essex in 1413-1414 and 1437 and was elected to Parliament on a number of occasions between 1411 and 1437, serving as Speaker in 1421, 1429 and 1437. He held many posts in Essex, including acting as steward to the Stafford family and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, as well as for Clare and Thaxted during the minority of Richard, Duke of York. He was appointed a royal commissioner in the county on a number of occasions and was Chief Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster north of the Trent. Morant recorded that he served Henry V in France and in 1431 was appointed treasurer to the household of Henry VI and to his Council in France.
In a curious coincidence his grandson Sir James Tyrell was alleged to have confessed before his execution in 1502 to murdering the Princes in the Tower for Richard III.
