November 3 2006. The parish church of Broomfield, originally dedicted to St. Leonard and now to St. Mary the Virgin, lies on the ancient route from Bury St. Edmunds, via Braintree and Ingatestone, to Roman London. The parish resembles Prittlewell and Sutton Hoo in evidently being an early Anglo-Saxon administrative center, with archaeological evidence of prosperous graves situated away from the church, which was presumably avoided in the Pagan era. But perhaps the burial of people around churches is a modern custom developed when the church took over administrative functions and in other parishes, such as Ingatestone, the site of the moot and gathered tithes? I visited Broomfield today to see whether it resembled Ingatestone and Braintree Churches in showing a large stone of Saxon-era significance along the road, and to study the Eocene London Clay concretions present in the walls of many older Eastern Essex churches and castles. According to the Inventory of the Historical Monuments of Essex, volume 2, by the Royal Commission of Historical Monuments they are erroneously described as “lumps of brown boulder clay” embedded in most parts of the church with “flints and short courses of Roman Brick.” The historical dating in their account is doubtless more correct and shows that the round early 12th Century west Tower lacking the London Clay concretions was added to their concentration in the south wall of the Nave and western Chancel built in the 11th Century (i.e. perhaps Saxon or earlier Norman). The Tower was presumably built with the similar one at Great Leighs, 6 km to the N.E. and off the old road, by visiting builders who employed the superior building stone of flints for their work, and perhaps brought it with them to both sites. However when the church was enlarged to the east and north in the 15th Century and modern period the London Clay concretions were used again, and this was also the case in the “modern” South Porch of the Royal Commissioners. One can easily imagine parts of the old wall being removed to make extensions and then that stone being used again partly to save transport costs and partly to match the colour and texture of the existing exterior. However, the part of the northern walls added since the Commissioners Report, which we would term new if modern is defined as post-1714, has much the same appearance without including any London Clay or Roman materials in it.
I intend to add a technical account of the colour and fossil content of these particular London Clay concretions in the Nave as a later entry to the blog. The typical material was studied on the west side of the porch among Roman Bricks or tiles. One of the Roman bricks was easily measured on the S.W. corner quoin there as having square dimensions of 290 mm by 290 mm, with a variable thickness of 35 to 45 mm, and having a no interior black reduction band on display. These were, however, seen in smaller fragments of probable Roman tile in the main part of the Nave walls. Flints with a white patina and various rather scarce sandstones were also present, but it is London Clay concretions that dominate and is the “stone that is weathered a strong mustard yellow” in the description by Norman Scarfe (A Shell Guide to Essex, Fuber and Fuber, London). Probably these concretions and the Roman Bricks are derived from an earlier Saxon structure on the site, which may have been built along the route when St. Edmunds boy transported to London or in the remote period of the Saxon gravegoods. Prittlewell Church certainly existed, and was modified, around the time of the early 7th Century burials, without them being shifted towards it. What I did notice was that a large stone was indeed present as expected in the Nave wall at Broomfield, and projecting about 400 mm south from it. It consists of 90 mm long, white and other irregular flints cemented by hard ferricrete or perhaps even silica, into a Puddingstone (sensu Royal Commission, but not the Hertfordshire Puddingstone of geologist’s). The resulting boulder has a diameter of 0.4 m and a length of at least twice that extending to secure it in the Nave wall just west of the 14th Century S.E. Nave window. Perhaps it had functions at that time as a table for alms given to the poor, or as a mounting block for horse riders on a lower ground level? The various studied descriptions of the Church do not note it at all. However, originally it may have been where tithes and manorial obligations were made in a moot operating in the northern half of Chelmsford Hundred, in a similar way to the Kings Hill gathering at Rayleigh and at the Ingatestone.
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