William and Elizabeth Stone at Ingatestone c.1865.


Enlargement. White gravel "hoggin" path at Mill Green, below the foot of William Stone late 1860's.



June 16 2006. I visited Mill Green by the route of my late Great Uncle William Stone, who lived there while working for the Eastern Counties and later the Great Eastern Railway at their London Terminus, commuting each day and presumably starting with a walk down the hill to Ingatestone Station built in 1846 about 15 years earlier. I was not able to match the doorway of his parents cottage, termed 40 Mill Green in the 1851 census, to the surviving and exposed fronts of buildings facing Mill Green Road and Hardings Lane.
The Flemish bonding of the red bricks made locally by Thomas and Frederick Bangs of the Mill Green Old Kiln is seen on the photograph and local buildings of various 18th and 19th Century ages. The newly named Mill Green cottage on the N.E. corner of Mill Green Road and Hardings Lane had a front path made out of similar bricks and also a wall in which the bricks show dimensions of 220 mm by 110 mm by 65 mm, with a repeat vertical distance inclusive of mortar averaging 81 mm. On the photograph, William Stone
Senior (bapt. October 27, 1816 – April 25, 1870) looks to be 24 courses of these bricks tall, and his wife 22 (Elizabeth Wilkinson (1818-1874) at Margasetting) courses, although the perspective is probably misleading with his height then coming out at six foot four and hers five foot ten!

The usual guideline for laying the usual bricks of Victorian London (thickness 64 to 70 mm) was not more than one foot (305 mm) for four courses, which is less than 76 mm for the repeat distance and simply less than 24/4 feet = six feet for William Stone. At the adjacent Fryerning Church there is a north chapel extension of bricks of about the right age, with dimensions of 215 x 100 x 60 mm exposed on the corner, repeating at 76 mm.

Ingatestone Train station was built in 1846 and shows two types of red bricks, which may of course have been brought in by train. One type is more pink and weathered, with the grog of 21 mm diameter (sand pellets added by the brickmaker) raised and often somewhat grey or white in colour. Examples of this type, measured while waiting for the train (a convenient if unusual pastime) had dimensions of 226 x 116 x 62 mm, repeating at 76 mm and 210 x 115 x 60 mm repeating at 75 mm. The associated old, unreplaced, but less weathered bricks with a darker red colour and finer or absent grog included 195 x 102 x 62 mm, repeating at 73 mm, and 230 x 105 x 61 mm repeating at 71 mm. Even the latter repeat distance would make William Stone, hay dealer of Mill Green, five feet seven inches tall and his wife, five feet one and a half inches. This seems more likely bearing in mind that the top of the door is higher than his head by three more courses. However it is known that their daughter Phoebe Stone used to combine the role of barmaid and bouncer in my great Grandmother’s public house in Stepney in the 1870’s. She also looks to be quite a large lady in wedding photographs.

This visit to Mill Green was also concerned with the gravels, which were seen in the various places and the Norman parts of Fryerning and Ingatestone Churches. It is easier to write immediately about the bricks and walls. It should be noted that the "puddingstone" of these church wall architectural descriptions is iron oxide cemented gravel (ferricrete) and not the silica cemented, Eocene, true Hertfordshire Puddingstone also sometimes seen in Essex churches.