The story of your house

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https://essexvoicespast.thinkific.com/courses/Spring-2020-House

All over the landscape in England and Wales there are still signs (literally) of our medieval past.

Carmelite Way, Maldon

The past that we once had before Henry VIII destroyed one of the biggest “systems” in English/Welsh history.

Look around the towns and villages where you live. Can you see signs that a monastic building was once in your midst?

Where I live in Essex, the county was once full of monasteries – we’ve looked at several this week.

But there were others in Essex, now long gone with not even fragments of ruins left. But they can still be found in the names of houses, roads and communities.

⛪️ Stansgate Abbey Farm: although this name is slightly misleading as it implies a great abbey once stood here. This was shut in an earlier round of Henry VIII’s closures – shut in 1525 long before the king broke with Rome. Shut because the “Abbey” only had a prior and 2 monks! So, this was not a great and powerful Abbey like the one Bury St Edmunds. But its name still lives on in the area’s landscape.

⛪️ Priors Green in Little Canfield: a modern naming invention, but various town planners’ and developers’ reflection back to Thremhall Priory (closed in 1536).

⛪️ Priory Lane in Tiptree: a name reflecting Tiptree Priory – closed in 1525 (another early closure by Henry VIII). Purchased in 1547 by the powerful D’Arcy family. The current house built by England’s first witchfinder, Brian D’Arcy. He lived here in 1570s until he moved to St Osyth’s former abbey (where he proceeded to create havoc and unhappiness in 1582 by accusing numerous locals of being witches).

⛪️ Friary Field/Friary Lane/Carmelite Way in Maldon: names reflecting the site’s former use as Maldon’s Carmelite Friary.

Next time you park your car in Maldon, think on – this area was once part of the lands of the Friary and five hundred years ago walked monks tending their gardens…

And where in 1540 in the ruins of the priory was performed a very anti-Catholic play, Saint John the Baptist, written by the granddaddy of all English dramatists, Dr John Bale.

House-history course | Dr John Bale, Maldon's last Prior

Dr John Bale, Maldon’s last Prior, and probably England’s first Protestant playwright.