High Country History Group: Theydon Mount Church Quatercentenary

High Country History Group: Theydon Mount Church Quatercentenary: Extract from the Theydon Mount Register in 1611 (Photographed at the Celebration Day when the Essex Record Office kindly lent the origina...

Christmas Day 1914

The Christmas truce of 1914 has become a legendary halt in hostilities in what was a war of attrition, killing millions and lasting four and a half years.  Revd. Edward Henry Lisle Reeve, of Stondon Massey, kept notes for a parish history (now preserved in the Essex Record Office).  He gives this account of Christmas Day 1914 on the Western Front.

28^th January 1915

“When travelling by train to London from Ongar on Jan 25^th I had for a fellow passenger for part of the way a Lancashire man who had returned wounded and frost-bitten from the front, and was now sufficiently convalescent to be going for a short spell to his native county before returning to France.

“His first-hand report of the conditions of things abroad was very interesting.  He had often been for days together standing in water in the trenches, and the plight of the soldiers in the cold, wet, and filth was, he said indescribable.  The Germans were in as bad or worse plight.  During an interval on Christmas-day some of the enemy had approached our trenches and joined in conversation with our men.  One German soldier had given his cigarettes and offered him brandy. 

“In reply to the German invitation to drink with him the British soldier declined, until by way of assuring him took a pull himself at the flask he was offering!  Lancashire shyness was then overcome, and the soldier accepted a draught of the “Cognac” for such it proved to be.  The time was soon over for these pleasantries, and the two dropped back again into their several positions, having apparently no special desire to kill one another, save at the call of duty!  I wished my fellow passenger a safe return to England at the close of war.”

High Country History Group: Journal No. 54 (December 2014)

High Country History Group: Journal No. 54 (December 2014): Members of the High Country History Group will have received their copy of the Quarterly Journal.  Included in the latest edition are it...

Blackmore: Christmas at the Priory Church of St Laurence, 1960s

Familar Nativity scene by children of Blackmore in the 1960s

Brentwood Council Sites for 5500 homes by 2030

Sites in and around the village of Blackmore appear frequently in Brentwood Borough Council's proposals to build 5500 homes across the district by 2030. This just published by the Brentwood Gazette: http://www.brentwoodgazette.co.uk/Proposed-development-areas-Brentwood-revealed/story-25700826-detail/story.html 

Stondon Massey: Old Folks Christmas Dinner 1980

A photograph taken in 1980, soon after Revd. Montagu Knott became Rector of Stondon Massey.  He had already been Vicar of Blackmore since 1957 and was to remain incumbent until 1985.  Here he is pictured with an unnamed 'old folk'.

ESAH160: ESAH Archives: S/LIB/9/4

ESAH160: ESAH Archives: S/LIB/9/4: Essex Society for Archaeology and History Archives S/LIB/9/4: Blackmore, Stondon Massey, Doddinghurst and Ongar featured in 100 year old notebook.  Publication to follow in 2015 or 2016 on website.

ESAH160: ESAH Archives: S/LIB/9/3

ESAH160: ESAH Archives: S/LIB/9/3: Essex Society for Archaeology and History Archives S/LIB/9/3 - Ingatestone and Fryerning church references.