Thaxted

"THAXTED, a parish in the hundred of DUNMOW, county of ESSEX, 19 miles (N. N. W.) from Chelmsford, containing 2045 inhabitants. This village, which is of considerable antiquity, is situated on the river Chelmar, on the main road from Chelmsford to Cambridge. Fairs are held on the Monday before Whit-Monday, and August 10th. The living is a vicarage, in the jurisdiction of the Commissary of Essex and Herts, concurrently with the Consistorial Court of the Bishop of London, rated in the king's books at £24, and in the patronage of Lord Viscount Maynard, whose ancestor gave £2000 in augmentation of the vicarage. The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is a spacious embattled structure, supported by buttresses terminating in canopied niches, in the later style of English architecture, and with a tower and crocketed spire one hundred and eighty-three feet high, the exact length of the church; the south porch is much enriched. There are places of worship for Baptists, the Society of Friends, and Independents. A free grammar school for the instruction of thirty boys was founded by Thomas Yardley. Some Roman coins, and a beautiful amphora, were discovered in this parish some years ago." [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) - copyright Mel Lockie 2016]