Essex Field Club on Facebook

Visit Our Centre

EFC Centre at Wat Tyler Country ParkOur centre is available for visits on a pre-booked basis on Wednesdays between 10am - 4pm. The Club’s activities and displays are also usually open to the public on the first Saturday of the month 11am - 4pm.

About us


Video about the Club Essex Field Club video

registered charity
no 1113963
HLF Logo A-Z Page Index

Your Forum

This forum has now been more or less replaced by the Club's Facebook page at
Essex Field Club on Facebook




The weblog below is for naturalists to use to report interesting sightings, ask questions, report on field meetings and generally post pictures and any information or questions generally relevant in some way to the wildlife and geology of Essex. You will need to register and be logged-on to post to the forum, and you need to upload pictures first, for use in posts. Find out more


Fri 17th January 2014 17:07 by Graham Smith
Handley Barns
When King Edgar the Peaceable, who reigned between 959 and 975, reopened Barking Abbey in or around 970 – a hundred years or so after it had been sacked by the Vikings – he presented the Abbess, Wulfhilda (who had earlier spurned his amorous advances), with an estate in Essex that was later to become the parish of Ingatestone. Within that estate was the demesne Manor of Handley Barns; ‘demesne’ being the Lord’s own land or domain, which in theory was farmed directly by him and not held by tenants. In practice however it was often managed by him when agriculture was profitable and handed over to tenants when it was not! Anyway, William the Conqueror allowed the Abbey to retain the land and they held on to it for a further 500 years until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 when it was purchased by Sir William Petre, Secretary of State to Henry V111. Handley Barns Manor was sold separately, to Elizabeth Hill, widow of Richard Hill, who sold it on to Sir William for £133 4s 6d.

Sir William’s son, John (later the first Lord Petre), commissioned a map of the estate from two of the leading cartographers of the day, John Walker and his son, also John. That depicted demesne land attached to Handley Barns Manor as including Redindyke Farm, properties at nearby Handley Green, and what are now called Mill Green Common and Stoneymore Wood but which at the time were known as Handley Common and Great Handley Wood. In time, Common and woods became part of the Writtle Park estate, purchased by Sir William from Queen Mary in 1554. Handley Barns Farm though has changed very little in the five centuries since then. In 1600 the farm comprised around 130 acres of meadow and pasture and three small ancient woodlands, Box & Well Woods and Langer Hedge. The first two remain, the last has gone, but was replaced in the late 16th or early 17th centuries with Gust Leaze, later renamed Bushy Wood. Field boundaries have been tweaked and land use has changed in line with agricultural fortunes (the marshy meadows alongside a stream have recently been replaced by the largest in a series of fishing lakes) but in 2014 it is essentially the same farm as in 1600 and quite possibly 1066 as well, or even earlier. One of the fields on the farm is a designated Roman site, possibly concealing the remains of a villa, and finds there in the past have included coins depicting Hadrian (117-138), Marcus Aurelius (161-180) and the latter’s wife, Faustina, who does not appear to have been a very nice person at all, to put it mildly! This is what makes Handley Barns a very special place.

Handley Barnss Farm Map 1600 Copyright: Graham Smith (The letters refer to field names. Field G, for instance, was once known as Thistly Field and two hundred years or so on is still full of thistles - and Goldfinches and butterflies - each autumn).

When I was at primary school in the 1950s we had a teacher for a few months called Dave Sorrel. One day he took us for a walk to Box Wood and we spent a couple of hours happily rooting around in the leaf litter digging up shards that had been dumped from a pottery which had once existed on an adjoining farm. On returning to school we cleaned the shards and he identified them for us, teaching us a little about the era in which they had been made. If I had but realised it at the time he prised open a window on a subject that interested me; a window that was slammed firmly shut in Secondary School but which, in later life, was flung wide when I stumbled across the books of Oliver Rackham. These were a revelation. There was I, a country boy through and through, who had walked the parish fields and woods hundreds of times with his parents when a youngster, and bird-nesting friends as a boy, yet was completely unaware that the landscape I was walking in had a history. Suddenly, woods and meadows, hedgerows, pollards, ponds and coppice stools had context and meaning. Not only that but the plants that grew in them, the birds that nested in them, the butterflies and moths that supped nectar from their flowers and whose caterpillars fed on their leaves, the dragonflies that danced above the ponds; even the mushrooms that I picked in the meadows, all were inextricably linked to the history of the landscape in which they lived. Birds had always been my ‘thing’ since I was knee high to a grasshopper but Oliver’s books opened my eyes and broadened my interest so that natural history and human history became indivisible. A walk would never be the same again. I cannot thank the Professor profusely enough! 

This will teach you to pay me compliments……………………………

Anyway, Handley Barns was where I was today, completing a Winter Thrush Survey for the British Trust for Ornithology. Birds have had it easy this winter compared with last, when three months of unrelenting easterlies from the Russian Arctic killed so many. Ground nesting birds such as thrushes have benefited from all the rain; worms, forced to the surface, almost giving themselves up so sodden is the soil. They and other birds are already looking forward to the spring. Blackbirds are becoming territorial, Blue Tits are busily courting and Song Thrush, Mavis, Tom Tit, Redbreast, Hedge-e-Bet and Jenny Wren are all in song. Bluebells, Daffs and Cuckoo Pint are pushing through the mud; Snowdrops are in bloom in the village gardens; Hazel catkins are shedding sheets of pollen on the breeze

Hazel Catkins 2 Copyright: Graham Smith and Winter Heliotrope, like these in Back Lane, are blooming at several sites in the village close to houses. Let’s hope this winter does not have too nasty a sting in its tail. Winter Heliotrope Copyright: Graham Smith

And finally, you never stop learning, or at least you shouldn’t. I have even learned to love Brussel Sprouts, after refusing to go near them as a kid unless they were buried in Bubble & Squeak. What I do not seem to have learned is that if you trip or slip while sauntering along with your hands in your pockets the first thing to hit the ground is likely to be your nose! Oh well, at least the ground was soft today…………………

link
 

Archives:

May 2020
Aug 2019
Jan 2019
Sep 2018
Jul 2016
Oct 2015
Jul 2015
May 2015
Apr 2015
Mar 2015
Feb 2015
Jan 2015
Dec 2014
Oct 2014
Sep 2014
Aug 2014
Jul 2014
May 2014
Apr 2014
Mar 2014
Feb 2014
Jan 2014
Dec 2013
Nov 2013
Sep 2013
Aug 2013
Jul 2013
Jun 2013
May 2013
Apr 2013
Mar 2013
Feb 2013
Jan 2013
Dec 2012
Nov 2012
Oct 2012
Sep 2012
Aug 2012
Jul 2012
Jun 2012
May 2012
Apr 2012
Mar 2012
Feb 2012
Jan 2012
Dec 2011
Nov 2011
Oct 2011
Sep 2011
Aug 2011
Jul 2011
Jun 2011
May 2011
Apr 2011
Mar 2011
Feb 2011
Jan 2011
Dec 2010
Nov 2010
Oct 2010
Sep 2010
Aug 2010
Jul 2010
Jun 2010
May 2010
Apr 2010
Mar 2010
Feb 2010
Nov 2009
Oct 2009
Aug 2009
Jul 2009
Jun 2009
May 2009
Apr 2009
Mar 2009
Feb 2009
Jan 2009
Nov 2008
Oct 2008
Sep 2008
Aug 2008
Jul 2008
Jun 2008
May 2008
Apr 2008
Mar 2008
Feb 2008
Jan 2008
Dec 2007
Nov 2007

current posts