Berden, Berdon, or Beardon, Essex
Historical Description
Berden, Berdon, or Beardon, a village and a parish in Essex. The nearest stations are Newport and Stanstead, each 6 miles distant. The parish has a post office under Bishop-Stortford; money order office, Clavering; telegraph office, Quendon. Acreage, 1800; population, 336. A small Augustinian priory was founded here in the reign of Henry III., was given at the dissolution to Henry Parker, and passed to the hospitals of Christ Church, Bridewell, and St Thomas. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of St Albans; gross yearly value, £180 with residence, including an allowance of £30 from Queen Anne's Bounty. Patron, Christ's Hospital. The church is an ancient building of flint in the Decorated style. The Rev. Joseph Mede, author of the "Clavis Apocalyptica," was a native.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Essex | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Berdon St. Nicholas | |
Hundred | Clavering | |
Poor Law union | Bishop-Stortford |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Churches
Church of England
St Nicholas (parish church)
The church of St. Nicholas, standing on slightly elevated ground, is an ancient structure of flint with stone dressings, mostly in the Perpendicular style, and consisting of chancel, nave, transepts, south porch and a western tower faced with pebbles and containing 4 bells: the chancel is a magnificent specimen of very Early English workmanship, some of the windows dating from the 13th century: on the south wall of the chancel is a tablet inscribed to Thomas Aldersaie esq. of Bunbury, in Cheshire, citizen and merchant of London, a member of the Haberdashers' Company and founder of the Free school at Bunbury, ob. 4 February, 1598, æt. 79: within the communion rail are brass effigies of Thomas Thompson of Birden, gent. and Ann his wife, with an inscription to the latter, ob. on St. James' day, 1607, æt. 31; above are the arms of Thompson and Aldersey, and below the figures of nine sons and four daughters; here also is a slab with inscription to Dame Mary Scott, daughter of John Aldersey, of Berden Hall, and successively wife of Thomas Westrowe, alderman of London, of Sir Norton Knatchboll, of Batch, in Kent, kt. and of Sir Edward Scott, of Scott's Hall, in Kent, kt.; she died in 1678, aged 89: in the north transept is an altar tomb with the figures in brass of a man between his two wives and an inscription to William Turnor and Margaret and Margery his wives; he died 10 Nov. 1473: two shields above and some figures below, probably of children, have been removed, but there remain two scrolls severally inscribed "O bone Jhu esto michi ihs" and "miserere mei Deus:" the church was completely restored in 1868, at a cost of about £2,000, and has 200 sittings.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Berden, Berdon, or Beardon from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Berdon (St. Nicholas))
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 Berden, Berdon, or Beardon are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following newspapers covering Essex online: