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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Thank you for reading this post.

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.

The birth of a new child – a child who will one day be king of Great Britain – is an exciting event.  Today, I, along with seemingly all the tourists and City workers in London, headed towards the Tower of London to watch the 62 gun salute from Gun Wharf, overlooking the river Thames.

Why 62 gun salute?
– 21 for a royal celebration
– 20 because the Tower of London is a royal palace
– 21 because the Tower of London is in the City of London

The Honourable Artillery Company performed this honour of producing a grand total of 62 earth-shattering, ear-splitting gun shots which all resounded around the Tower to the applause and appreciation of the waiting crowd.

© Essex Voice Past 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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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.

I have a typical English-person’s obsession with the weather.  After a cold, wet and dismal start to the summer in June, I am so pleased that since early July, we are now in the full glory of a hot sunny English summer.  If you believe in old superstitions, then the next 40 days will be just as glorious as today.  Happy St Swithun’s Day.

St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St Swithun’s day if thou be fair
For forty days ’twill rain nae mar

St Swithun from Breviary, Use of Sarum with Norwich variants (‘The Stowe Breviary’), (Norwich, England), between 1322 and 1325), shelfmark Stowe 12 f.273 Feast of Swithun

Notes
Images from the British Library’s collection of Medieval Manuscripts are marked as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions in accordance with the British Library’s Reuse Guidance Notes for the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Early modern images from the British Library

© Essex Voices Past 2013.

After a gap in my blogging, I don’t normally say why I haven’t been around; I’d just start re-blogging again. However, I have received several concerned emails from cyber-friends to ask ‘am I ok’. Yes, I’m perfectly fine but over the last few months, the effort of getting my small child back into a school has overtaken my entire life. You may recall that I wrote about some of my battle in my posts on our School Trip Friday for the Academically Challenged. This week, after an 18 month legal battle and with my son out of school for exactly one year, I finally faced Essex County Council in a court of law in front of a judge. I have no idea yet what the judgement will be, but whatever it is, I know I have done absolutely the best for my child and he will be returning to school in September.

Sadly in amongst the fight for my child, I have neglected blogging and my writing skills – linked totally to my emotional well-being – have been repressed. I am hoping that my writing abilities will return. In amongst the fight for my son, we have still continued our School Trip Fridays, but I haven’t written up any stories yet. I also hope to shortly be able to return to the local history of Tudor England and, in particular, Great Dunmow.

But for the moment, here is a picture of my child, who I have fought so long and so hard for, during one of our most spine-tingling School Trip Fridays for the Academically Challenged

Here’s looking at you, kid

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Walk in our shoes
– School Trip Friday – St Michael’s Mount and the Tudor Pretender, Perkin Warbeck
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford
– School Trip Friday – Of Cabbages and Kings
– School Trip Friday – Hadrian’s Wall
– School Trip Friday – Messages from England’s Roman Past
– School Trip Friday – What did the Roman’s ever do for us?

© Essex Voices Past 2013.

When I first starting writing this post, I thought I was writing about how three postcards showing Great Dunmow’s High Street, depict that the town did not change in a 25 year period between 1908 and 1932.  However, as I was writing my story, a mystery started to emerge, and, in unravelling this mystery, I realised that my postcards held the key to poignant story.  Instead of writing about an unchanging High Street, I was, to my great surprise, writing the story of an unknown soldier who had carried into the carnage of the Great War, a treasured photo of his home-town.

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Original post
Below are three postcards of Great Dunmow’s High Street – photos all taken from the location of roughly where the War Memorial is today.  Because the photos are so similar  you would be forgiven for thinking that these 3 photos were all taken at roughly the same time.

High Street, Great Dunmow, 1908.

High Street, Great Dunmow, 1918.

High Street, Great Dunmow, 1932.

Look again.  There are horse drawn carriages in the first two, but cars in the last.  These three postcards show Great Dunmow’s unchanging High Street over a 25 year period – 1908 to 1932. Fortunately, all these cards have been postally used or dates written on the back so this information can be used to date them.

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Stop! The camera never lies! My rewritten post…
Can postmarks or dates on backs of postcards be used to date a photograph?  Look closely at the first two postcards – the first was postally used in 1908 and the second was written on the back in 1918.  They are almost identical – including the street sign left of the centre of the card and the extent to which the foilage has grown on all the trees and bushes.  Modern technology has meant that by digitally scanning both these postcards the sign has been revealed and it reads

Staceys Noted Home Grown Tomatoes ? per lb

Stacey’s sign from 1918 postcard

Stacey’s sign from 1908 postcard

Whilst the 1908 photo is very fuzzy and almost undecipherable, it can (just) be made out that the sign has five lines (as does the 1918 sign) and the width of each line of text exactly matches each line on the 1918 sign. The fourth line down could quite easily be “TOMATOES”. It is possible that Great Dunmow’s nurseryman, Stacey, had the same sign in the same location 10 years apart.  But identical foliage and vegetation? Is this too much of a coincidence?  In all respects, the two postcards seem almost identical but supposedly photographed 10 years apart.   This seemed very curious and so I investigated further…

The 1918 postcard was from the lens of Willett of Great Dunmow and is numbered 511.  The military photos on my post here, were clearly taken by Willett during the Great War and dated 1914, but have higher numbers – 830 & 853.  Our street scene postcard, written on in 1918, has a much lower number.  Therefore, our 1918 postcard certainly pre-dates the Great War and must have been written on some years after the photo taken.  This intrigued me, so, for the first time since I purchased this card, I read the back of the 1918 card:

Back of 1918 postcard

France June 10/6/18
This places [sic] is where Mrs L?y?e lives.
Please take care of these for me, all is well at present.
Much love to all
From Robert
By the time you receive this we shall be in action again.

Could the unreadable name be ‘Mrs Lyle’? In which case, Robert’s female friend was one of the Lyle’s of Great Dunmow, whose son, Hayden Stratton Lyle M.C. of the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles, although alive and well at the time of this message, was killed in action just 5 days before the Armistice.

Robert’s message, written possibly in the trenches during the slow days before battle, is so tantalising and raises so many questions which can never be answered…  Who was he writing to? What did he want the recipient to ‘take care of’? Why did Robert have a pre-war postcard of Great Dunmow?  The style in which his message is written gives very strong unwitting testimony that Great Dunmow was not his, Robert’s, home town.  If it was his home town, Robert would surely have said something similar to ‘This place is where I live’ – not his message ‘This places is where Mrs L?y?e lives.‘  So who had given him a postcard of Great Dunmow? Was it one of Mrs Lyle’s sons – Hayden, Robert or William – all of whom were in France/Flanders in 1918?

Had this postcard come from another unknown soldier, possibly a Lyle, who
carried a photo of his much-loved home town into battle?

Whoever you were, Robert, and whatever happened to you, I salute you, and want you to know your postcard reached its home.  95 years to the day after you sent this postcard home from the battlefields of France, I am retelling the story of you and your unknown friend from 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
– 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

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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.

Transcription of Tudor Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts (1527-9)

Commentary
Line 4: Whoever Thomas Wete was, he either hadn’t paid his rent for a long time or rented a large piece of church land/house. £3 6s 8d was a very large sum of money for the time equating to very roughly three or four months wages for a labourer.

Line 5 & 17: This must have been money collected for events held on May Day.  The fact that there are two entries on this page for May Day gives unwitting testimony that the churchwardens hadn’t been as diligent as they should perhaps have been.  They appear to have been  ‘catching up’ on their yearly accounts long after the event.

Line 6 & 18:  This is money collected during the festivities held on Corpus Christi day.  See my post on Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi events.  Again, as per the commentary above on May Day, these two entries for two years show that the churchwardens were writing up the church’s accounts years after the actual event.

Line 7: John Foster had been playing the lord of misrule – possibly during the Christmas celebrations in the parish.

Line 8: Mister Joyner’s gift of £5 was a large sum of money for an unspecified reason.  However, at the bottom of this folio and on subsequent folios, the churchwardens’ document each house-holder in the parish and their individual contribution towards purchases a new church bell.  Mister Joyner is not documented within the list so it is entirely plausible that this entry is his  individual contribution to the collection.  Perhaps he didn’t give money at the time the collection took place, or maybe he didn’t live in the town. Bearing in mind that the entries on this page were written up some years after the events they were recording (as shown by the May Day and Corpus Christi feast entries), it is therefore unsurprising that Mr Joyner’s substantial gift appears separate to the list of the town.

Line 9: I would love to be able to read the missing word in this line! Can anyone help?  Were the ladies washing torches! This line probably relates to torches that were used during the funerals of the great and good of Dunmow.  The elite were buried within the church and torches were kept lit around their bodies on the night before their funeral.  But I’m not sure where the ‘ladys’ come into this – unless the word is ‘lads’?

Line 11: This gift from Mawde Bemysche is probably the result of her bequeathing money to the church in her (now lost) will.

Line 15 & 16: This is money from the old vicar, Robert Sturton’s, now missing will.  William Sturton was possibly Vicar Sturton’s nephew or other relation.  The Sturton family were a very large and important elite family within Tudor Great Dunmow.

Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Great Dunmow’s original churchwardens’ accounts (1526-1621) are kept in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1.  All digital images of the accounts within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced. Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view  into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor 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
– 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
– Unwitting testimony
– Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi events
– Christmas in a Tudor town
– Reformation wills and bequests
– The Sturton family of Great Dunmow and Great Easton

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

A few days late, but here’s Medieval May from the Macclesfield Psalter.

‘May’ folio 4r from The Macclesfield Psalter,
probably produced at Gorleston, East Anglia circa 1330
Gold & tempera on vellum, 17cm x 10.8cm,
© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

If you want to read more about The Macclesfield Psalter 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 below.

All digital images from the Macclesfield Psalter appear by courtesy of The Fitzwilliam Museum and may not be reproduced (© The Fitzwilliam Museum).

Further reading
Stella Panayotova The Macclesfield Psalter: A Complete Facsimile (2008)
Stella Panayotova The Macclesfield Psalter Book (Cambridge, 2005)
Stella Panayotova The Macclesfield Psalter (PDF format on CD)(Cambridge, 2005)

You may also be interested in the following
– January from The Macclesfield Psalter
– A pinch & a punch for the first of the month: February from The Macclesfield Psalter
– Images from the British Library’s online images from the early modern period
– Images from the medieval illuminated manuscripts
– The Macclesfield Psalter

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.