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Great Bardfield, Essex

Historical Description

Bardfield, Great, a small town and a parish in Essex. It stands on Blackwater river, 7 miles NW of Braintree station on the G.E.R. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Braintree, a town-hall, police station, and a fair on 22 June, and is a seat of petty sessions. The parish comprises 3666 acres; population of the civil parish, 956; of the ecclesiastical, 931. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of St Albans; net value, £145. The church is an ancient building of stone in mixed styles. There is a Primitive Methodist chapel, a Friends' meeting-house, and some small charities.

Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England & Wales, 1894-5

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Ancient CountyEssex 
Ecclesiastical parishBardfield St. Mary 
HundredFreshwell 
Poor Law unionDunmow 

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.


Churches

Church of England

St Mary (parish church)

The church of St. Mary is an ancient building of stone in the Norman and Perpendicular styles, consisting of chancel, nave of four bays, aisles, a fine south porch and an embattled western tower with spire, containing 6 bells, all rehung in 1887, when a treble bell wes added, and a clock: the chancel and nave are divided by a fine stone screen: there are piscinæ in the north and south aisles; William Bendlowes, serjeant-at-law, who held this church and the advowson of the living, obtained a licence in 1556 to convert the vicarage into a rectory, and having leased out the great tithes for 500 years at 20 marks yearly, settled on the rector and his successors the yearly sum of £6 13s. 4d. being one moiety of the 20 marks; the other moiety he employed in founding a chantry in the church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity; he died 19 November, 1584, and, with his wife Elizabeth, was buried under the south window of the chancel, where are their figures in brass with a Latin inscription: there are several memorial windows in the church to members of the Lampet family, which has furnished two vicars to this parish. The church has 250 sittings.

Methodist

Primitive Methodist Chapel

The Primitive Methodist chapel here was erected in 1862, and has 250 sittings.


Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Great Bardfield from the following:


Land and Property

The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Essex is available to browse.

The Essex pages from the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 is online.


Maps

Online maps of Great Bardfield are available from a number of sites:


Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following newspapers covering Essex online:

DistrictBraintree
CountyEssex
RegionEastern
CountryEngland
Postal districtCM7
Post TownBraintree

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