Boreham

"BOREHAM, a parish in the hundred of CHELMSFORD, county of ESSEX, 3½ miles (N. E. by E.) from Chelmsford, containing 918 inhabitants. The living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Essex, and diocese of London, rated in the king's books at £10. 3. 9., and in the patronage of the Bishop of London. The church is dedicated to St. Andrew. The Chelmer and Blackwater canal crosses the southern part of the parish. The parochial school has an endowment of about £3 per annum, the gift of Robert Clough, in 1726; and Edmund Butler, in 1717, appropriated land for clothing and instructing poor children of Little Barlow and Boreham. New Hall, in this parish, is part of a much larger mansion supposed to have been built in the reign of Henry VII., and greatly adorned by Henry VIII., who, having obtained the manor in exchange for other property, raised it into an honour: his daughter, the Princess Mary, also resided here for several years. It afterwards came into the possession of Villiers, the first duke of Buckingham, and, on the attainder of his son; was purchased by Cromwell. After the Restoration it became the property of the Duke of Albemarle, but has since been purchased by a few opulent individuals professing the Roman Catholic faith, and is now occupied by a society of English nuns, who were driven from Liege by the fury of the French republicans, and who now superintend the education of about eighty Roman Catholic young ladies. The splendid chapel which belonged to the mansion, and which contained the painted window now in St. Margaret's church, Westminster, was taken down about eighty years ago, and the great hall of the building has since been converted into a chapel.” [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) - copyright Mel Lockie 2016]