Spring 1994

The Pond and Dam on Hunford Brook

Bob Delderfield outlines an archaeological investigation of one of Pound Wood’s Puzzles

Whilst it is generally agreed by those visiting the site that in former times Hunford Brook was dammed and a pond created, there is need for corroborative evidence. So on Easter Saturday this year an archaeological investigation was carried out at the dam site under the auspices of the Southend Museum.

Two surveys were conducted, one to produce a hachured plan of the site and the other used an auger to enable sections to be drawn across the pond and its banks. In landscape archaeology, levelling equipment or similar apparatus is used to enable a reasonably detailed plan of the lumps and bumps to be drawn. This often allows us to see the shape and structure of a site more clearly than we can on the ground, especially in an area where trees, bushes, brambles and ground cover inhibit a clear view. Levelling causes less destruction and disturbance of the woodland habitat than a full excavation, so is to be preferred in Pound Wood.

It will be a while before the results of the surveys are published. However, preliminary thoughts would seem to point to a deliberate digging of at least part of the pond and not just the flooding of a natural hollow. The auger survey produced soil samples to a depth of 33cm across the pond and a preliminary drawing of the two sections produced indicates a well established pond. More samples will need to be taken along one of the sections before a final interpretation will be attempted.

If there was a pond, what was it for? The most likely possibilities would be a fishpond, a watering place for cattle or a source of water for an industrial activity. Whatever its origin, one thing is certain: it predates the wood.

The huge hombeam coppice stool on the dam is several hundred years old and existing documentary evidence takes Pound Wood back definately to the sixteenth century and probably to the thirteenth. We are therefore looking at a date for the pond and dam which is at least medieval, quite possibly early medieval or perhaps even earlier.

Watch this space for further news.

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January 1995

What’s in a Name?

Because Pound Wood is ancient, we tend to assume that its name is similarly antique but research shows that this is far from the case. The wood probably acquired the “Pound” less than 300 years ago and even then it may have been an error!

Pound Wood (in Hadleigh & Thundersley), at 55 acres, is part of a very old 91 acre estate which also includes Tile Wood (in Thundersley only). Owned by the Church Commissioners from 1875, it had been the property of the Dean & Chapter of Westminster Abbey since the 13th century. The main source for its documentation is the Westminster Abbey Muniment Room and Library. Here, in huge, leather-bound lease books, there exist copies of some 15 leases of the Thundersley and Hadleigh estate dating from 1613 to 1862.

In the 1613 lease, the two woods are called Tylers Woode and Gooddyners Woode and the description of the boundaries of each wood makes it absolutely clear that Tylers is our Pound Wood and Gooddyners became Tile Wood. When the name ‘Pound’ first appears it is on a lease of 1769 which reads as follows: “Goodiners Wood now called or known by the name of Pound Wood”. It is said to be in the parish of Thundersley and the boundaries described fit today’s Tile Wood, whereas Tylers Wood — now called or known by the name of “Wolf’s Wood” is placed in Thundersley and Hadleigh and with boundaries which suit modern Pound Wood. This wording is repeated on all the later leases right through to 1862.

The only earlier reference to Pound Wood unearthed so far is a brief note in the Hadleigh Parish Registers that a Mr Johnson (W.A. lesee 1746–1769) had been felling in Pound Wood in 1750. This seems to contradict the leasing evidence and suggests that the 18th century Pound Wood was the Pound Wood we know today — Hadleigh people would have been unconcerned with a wood lying entirely in another parish.

The Chapman & Andre map of 1777 leaves Tile Wood unnamed and the title ‘Fennley Wood’ appears beside Pound Wood. The O.S. maps of the early 19th century show Pound and Tile Woods as we know them today. An 1812 perambulation of the Rayleigh boundary also names both woods in their modern positions.

How did the name ‘Pound’ come to change its allegiance? Was it an error made by the Westminster Abbey clerk who produced the 1769 lease or did the O.S. surveyors either confuse the two woods or receive duff information? For the present my money is on the Abbey clerk who would not be physically acquainted with the site and who would have had to interpret the notes or oral report of a surveyor. His successors would have copied the estate details verbatim, perpetuating the error.

Research continues and earlier references to the name ‘Pound Wood’ may come to light. The origin of the name remains a mystery: at present there is no evidence for a pound or pinfold nearby, nor any sign of a person called Pound.

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Spring 1995

Dubious Goings-on

The previous owners of Pound Wood, the Church Commissioners, hold correspondence files relating to their lands in Hadleigh and Thundersley. The last thirty years of this archive are not open to public view but a search through the period 1875 to 1965 reveals some fascinating insights into Pound Wood and other woodlands belonging to the Commissioners.

The Rev. Arthur Maley, Rector of Thundersley and the author of “The Ancient Parish of Thundersley”, often wrote to the Commissioners. In October 1930 he complained of motorists camping in the woods at night “with regrettable consequences” which he did not spell out. A month later he wrote that conditions were “as bad as ever” — “Have you done anything?” The correspondence pauses here although no indication is given of any action taken.

However, in 1935, the Rector wrote a stronger letter of complaint that the woods were “being used for immoral purposes, camping by gypsies and tramps and the depositing of rubbish”. He wanted a local authorised person to patrol the woods, and suggested one of the Thundersley churchwardens who has wood-reeve’s experience. Again, there is no indication of any action taken.

Those of us who assisted in the initial clean-up of Pound Wood know very well that the depositing of rubbish was not just a problem of the 1930s! As to “immoral purposes” we can certainly cite current persecution of badgers but I suspect the reverend gentleman was more concerned with human “socialisation” in this instance.

Visitors welcome?

The Trust is to be congratulated for providing access, conducted tours, and the nature trail sponsored by Ridley. They show a hospitality apparently not available in Pound Wood in the 1930s. In August 1935 the Rev. Maley once again writes to the Commissioners, this time with a request rather than a complaint. The St Michael’s Garden Party is to be held in the church field and the Rector is seeking permission for conducted parties to be taken through Pound Wood, led by the churchwarden, Mr C. Goodsell, who had been a wood-reeve.

Permission was not granted and the rather stiff reply explains that this is because of “the unfortunate results which have arisen in the past”. No further explanation is proffered. What heinous crimes did the previous visitors to the wood commit? Perhaps there is someone still living in Thundersley who can shed more light on this mystery?

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Autumn 1995

Memories of Old Daws Heath

The request in a previous newsletter for the memories of long term residents brought an almost immediate response from Mrs Doris Staines (née Scudder). She has spent most of her life in Thundersley, including the first 18 years in Daws Heath where she was born in 1908. The Scudders were associated with Daws Heath from the very early 19th century and her grandmother was a servant at Bramble Hall in the 1860s.

Doris remembers the old Daws Heath with great affection, recalling the rural simplicity of the place: “no buses, no paths, no gas or electricity. You chopped your wood for the fire and used paraffin lamps”. The children of the area roamed the fields and woods regarding the latter as public property — in fact, Doris was staggered in later years to discover that woods had owners. Pound and other woods were considered by the very few people then living in the area as the source for beansticks, peasticks and kindling. “Our mothers would hurl a bushell basket at us” and it was expected that the child would fill the basket with faggots. It was also common and regarded as perfectly normal for locals to set snares in the woods for rabbits. In those days before the welfare state if you couldn’t work you didn’t eat, so rabbits would be caught and then either eaten, sold, or perhaps swapped for potatoes.

Editor’s Note: Uncontrolled cutting by today’s large local population would eliminate the wood in a few weeks, but some sticks are still surplus at coppice time — come and collect them on work-party Sundays.

Although Doris recalls her childhood in Daws Heath with pleasure, she has no illusions about the behaviour of children in those far off days — “children have always been little horrors” — and she has a number of tales of childhood mischief including herself ‘scrumping’ at the age of seven. As we all know, Pound Wood produces wonderful chestnuts which Doris and her friends also enjoyed. They would pick them up and sell them if they could get away with it. Occasionally they failed and were discovered in their crime; Doris well remembers receiving the carpet beater across her behind for one such misdemeanour. Then there were the activities in and around the Daws Heath Pond which stood at the very top of Western Road on the west side. Dashing into the pond the children would claw up the silty sludge from the bottom and perpetrate minor acts of vandalism with it. Doris finds amusement in our modern idea that every wood and road has a proper name because in her youth much cruder references were, usually made. Bramble Road was known as “along the top and down the end”. St Michael’s Road was the “old back road”. Starvelarks Wood was “the coppice” and the stream in Pound Wood which we now dignify as Hunford Brook was simply “the ditch”. St Michael’s field, before the church was built, gloried in a more agricultural and ancient field name, Stoney Crop Field, which in Doris’s childhood produced crops such as swedes, tumips and wheat.

Wyburns Farm was casually reduced in size and status by many of the locals who would look from Daws Heath Road across its fields towards Rayleigh and refer to it as the “40 Acres”. Doris also recalls it being known as “Grinsteads” after the farmer of that time. If Doris and her friends fancied going to Rayleigh they would not follow the path which winds through Starvelarks but just cut across 40 Acres. As they went they might grab the odd ear of corn, rubbing and hand winnowing it in order to eat its sweet centre. The field beside the Daws Heath Road often had cows or sheep on it and Great Wyburns stood at the east end of that field at the junction of Daws Heath Road and Western Road (photographs in Tony Babbington’s book nos. 178 and 179). Here it was customary to take your can and purchase fresh milk from the farmhouse door.

Another farm providing milk was Hareslands which once stood at the far end of Haresland Close. From here a daughter of the farmer would set out on a bicycle precariously balancing a can of milk on each side of the handlebars to sell milk from door to door.

Represented above are just a few memories of old Daws Heath from Doris Staines to whom I am most grateful for her time and patience. She has plenty more tales to tell and I hope to include some of them in a future newsletter.

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January 1996

The Gunpowder Plot

The 1995–96 Pound Wood coppicing season began on November 5th and it therefore seemed appropriate that the new site should be called “Gunpowder Plot” recalling that well known event which took place 390 years ago. However, there are also other connections between the Daws Heath Woods and the plotters of 1605.

Coppicing, as we all know, is an ancient art of woodland management and involves the planned and regular cutting of the underwood, which in the case of Pound Wood is don-iinated by hombeam. Apart from the obvious local uses of underwood such as fencing, the main commercial value to the wood’s owners was in converting it into charcoal. It is quite likely that in the middle ages charcoal from Pound and Tile Woods went up the Thames by barge to feed the iron smelting industry in Kent and the outskirts of London but from the 16th to 19th centuries, Thundersley charcoal played a significant part in the gunpowder industry of West Essex at Waltham Abbey and the Lea Valley.

At one period a six-wheeled wagon with five horses collected 200 sacks of charcoal weekly from Thundersley, taking them on the turnpike roads to the factory via Rayleigh, Billericay and Romford. Apparently, the charcoal of the Thundersley area was especially suitable for the manufacture of gunpowder. According to die Rev. Maley, Rector of Thundersley in his The Ancient Parish of Thundersley: It caused Thundersley to play a part in the Gunpowder Plot, for the charcoal was taken from Thundersley to the Gunpowder Factory at Lea Bridge, the first factory for making gunpowder in all England. This factory provided the powder for the plotters in Eastwood [should be Eastbury] House, Barking, only a few miles away, and shipped by Guy Fawkes in small barges plying up and down.

Essex has an additional link with the Gunpowder Plot because it was William Parker, Lord Monteagle of Great Hallingbury Hall, who received the somewhat cryptic letter which uncovered the plot. His response led to the failure of the scheme and the capture of the plotters. For this he was given a handsome pension of £700 a year.

A not totally unrelated incident, on a local and more domestic scale, occurred in about 1920 when Doris Staines, our entertaining informant about old Daws Heath, was only 12. “Woodside”, the substantial house which stands on the corner of St Michael’s Road, was then occupied by the six Mitchell sisters who were regarded by the locals as “old maids”. With the coming of November 5th, several local children were building a bonfire on the little triangle of grass which still sits at the junction of St Michael’s Road and Bramble Road. When the easily available wood produced only a measly pile, Doris’s two elder brothers, knowing of the Mitchell’s woodstore behind the coach-house, removed 100 faggots (bundles of small wood for domestic use in wood-buming stoves and ovens) from said premises without the knowledge of the owners. When the now very large bonfire was lit and was burning merrily, the Mitchell sisters could be seen at the upstairs windows thoroughly enjoying the blaze, completely unaware of their contribution to its success. The next day Mr Rolph, the Mitchell’s groom and gardener, going to fetch wood, discovered the large space where the faggots should have been. On this occasion the police were called in and Doris remembers: “This time there was trouble. The bobby came after us. But it was a smashing fire!”

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May 1996

Earlier Threats to Pound Wood

Discussions and arguments over “development”, “Green Belt”, “change of use of land” and “open spaces” have been commonplace since the Trust was founded in 1959 but the battle to prevent urban and industrial takeover of sites such as Pound Wood goes back further than many might imagine.

During the 1920s the Rochford Rural District Council, which then included Thundersley and Hadleigh, was active in proposing many development schemes. By 1929 it had been decided that Pound Wood, Tile Wood and West Wood were all ripe for residential development, subject, of course, to purchase from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners who owned all three woods. The west end of Pound Wood was to become an estate with 8 dwellings per acre and the cast end would be slightly more crowded at 10 per acre. The south end of Tile Wood and the bulk of Tylerset Farm would also be given over to 10 houses per acre. The 80 acres of West Wood were to he subjected to a housing estate of 640 dwellings. Somebody certainly had it in for the woods!

It is true that the country peace of Daws Heath has been disturbed by small housing development and a huge increase in road traffic in the last 30 years but if all the plans of the late twenties had come to fruition there would now probably he no sign of Daws Heath’s rural heritage.

One feature of the proposed road system at Daws Heath was to have been the loss of the double bend in St Michael’s Road, the new line would have followed the footpath in St Michael’s Field along Pound Wood’s western boundary. Rows of shops on either side of Bramble Road between St Michael’s Road and River’s Corner were also among the proposals.

Like so many local town planning schemes of the 1920s and 30s, these developments were never realised, but this was not the end of the threats to Pound and other woods. During the 1930s the new Benfleet Urban District Council attempted to purchase Pound Wood from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for £2000 in order to build an estate at initially 12, later 2 houses per acre. However the vendors wanted £100 per acre and, much to our retrospective delight, the dispute over land value was never resolved and nothing came of these plans. The Church Commissioners, as they are now known, have received much criticism in recent times but it would seem that we owe much to these faceless landlords.

One far-sighted supporter of local open spaces was Mr Harold Tutt, Headmaster of Hadleigh School 1917–52, Councillor, JP, and highly respected ornithologist. At a Council meeting in May 1938 he made an important and prophetic speech moving that a resolution offering £45 an acre for Pound Wood and parts of West Wood be rescinded and that these woods should remain on the planning map as proposed open spaces. The Southend Standard reported. “Mr Tutt said that people came to live in the area because of the amenities of the countryside and the healthiness of the air … We could see the time fifty years hence when Benfleet, Rayleigh, Pitsea and Southend would sweep over the whole area just as they had seen development sweep over the Metropolitan area in the last 20 or 30 years …” Sadly Mr Tutt’s motion was defeated but how pleased he would have been to know that Pound Wood has now been preserved by the Wildlife Trust.

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January 1997

Neighbours: Present and Past

For at least 500 years, Tylerset Farm, like Tile and Pound Woods, was part of the estate at Daws Heath owned by Westminster Abbey. It contains some 11 acres, which at present cater for the stabling and grazing of horses, and has been owned for the past 31 years by the Harvey family. A few weeks ago I visited Mike Harvey and his mother, Joan, to discuss the history of the farm. There is some evidence that the delightful little farmhouse may be as much as 400 years old. The view looking north is of undiluted trees and fields and if you ignore the distant roar of the A127, you could be in the depths of the countryside.

The Harveys heartily approve of the Trust taking over Pound Wood and Wyburns Farm. Mike feels strongly the importance of ensuring the preservation and conservation of all the remaining green land in Daws Heath. The Trust is delighted to have such supportive neighbours.

I also recently visited Miss Vi Grigg, another of our close neighbours. Now in her ninth decade, she has lived in one of the Haresland Cottages for most of her life. The Griggs were a very large family, many of whom lived at Daws Heath and were leading members of the Peculiar People.

Vi’s great uncle Alfred Grigg, who lived to 98, farmed Ebeneezer Farm in the lower half of the central triangle of Daws Heath. Here he kept cows and grew crops, but Vi especially recalls him growing large numbers of pinks which he sold to gypsies from Eastwood who then re-sold them in Southend. Like our previous informant, Doris Staines, Vi remembers the six Mitchell sisters who lived opposite her in “Woodlands” on the corner of St Michael’s Road. Their father, James Mitchell, had retired from his London draper’s business to Daws Heath in about 1890. Later on when (during Vi’s childhood) Mr Mitchell died, his eldest and youngest daughters kept house whilst the other four continued to work and live at the drapery, returning periodically to the quiet hamlet of Daws Heath.

Sadly, for Vi and many other long term residents of the Heath, the constant traffic through the village has now destroyed much of that quiet.

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September 1997

Jack Whalley, Woodsman

From time to time we volunteers have found ourselves involved in what can only he described as the traditional woodland crafts. We have made, with varying success, barriers, gates, cut firewood and experimented with rustic furniture as well as trying our hands at the more contemporary craft of making planters.

Led by enthusiast such as Gerry Bullock we have had to rediscover appropriate techniques since there are few traditional exponents around to pass on these skills.

However, it is not as long as many of us might think since the last of the traditional woodsmen were plying their trade. One such was Jack Whalley who was still active in Tile Wood as recently as 1964 and I am indebted to Mike Astor of Rochford who worked with Jack in the late fifties and early sixties for his reminiscences of this interesting character.

Jack was a woodsman well before the first world war, and during that terrible conflict he carried on working at home because, as a woodsman, his job was regarded officially as a reserved occupation. It is interesting to remind ourselves of the continued importance of wood in the war effort when men were still relying on horses for heavy transport duties. So Jack spent his whole life earning his living among the woodlands of S.E. Essex. He was a remarkable man in many ways and regarded by Mike Astor as the last of the traditional woodsmen. Working in the local woods — including Belfairs Nature reserve, Pound and Tile Woods, Jack, then in his eighties, was still coppicing in 1964. Little wood was wasted as Jack and his employees made split and round chestnut stakes, rustic furniture, rustic trellis work, beanpoles, peasticks and, of course, logs for firewood.

The method of business was also traditional. Jack paid the owner or lesee of a wood a sum of money giving him the right to cut an agreed acreage of underwood. He then had to turn the cut wood into a profit in order to make a living. On the occasions when Jack had difficulty paying the Council for his rights in Belfairs Nature Reserve, the shortfall would be made up by providing stakes for the Council’s use.

Thus in the middle of the twentieth century Jack Walley was plying a trade that did not differ enormously from that of his medieval forbears. But the day of chainsaws and plastic was already beginning to have a devastating effect on woodsmen. As Mike Astor puts it, “The bottom fell out of the market” just as Jack was nearing the end of his working life.

Jack Walley was an independent man who learned his craft and stuck to it throughout his life. He was an outdoors man who had little time for the niceties of personal hygiene. He always wore old army shirts with no collars which he seemed to wear until they fell off exhausted. If he had been working in the pouring rain he would invariably light a fire and steam himself dry. None of this appeared to weaken his constitution but after retirement he was eventually admitted to Nazareth House and tradition has it that when forced to take a bath poor Jack died within a week.

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Wanted!

Long term residents who have memories of the Daws Heath area in the past. You are a vital source of local history which could be lost forever if not recorded. Please contact Bob Delderfield on 01702 556703