Stroll through the streets

AT the heart of Wethersfield is the village green, host to some towering plane trees, home to a colony of vociferous rooks and in autumn  the bane of many residents who find their drains blocked with enormous leaves.

The Green has many interesting houses around it. The brick building to the right has extensive cellars and once was home to a Dr Rust, an imposing bearded figure who liked to sit in his window and watch his horse grazing on the green. To the left is the former Manse for the Congregational minister, now a private house.

The church of St Mary Magdalene stands at the top of the Green, its sturdy square tower topped by a  shingle spire. Now with a minute congregation it  shares its vicar with three other churches.

 In front of the church is Ivanhoe, a fine old timbered building, reputedly once a workhouse and certainly home to a butcher's shop in the 1900s.

High Street contains many listed buildings. Nearest in the picture Blenheim Cottage once the home of Joe Dee a violin-playing local builder with a long- suffering wife and a mistress installed in a cottage a mile up the road. 

Virginia Cottage and Virginia House (1538  but with an Edwardian bay front) are seen next to the left. Part of Virginia House was one of the village's two "emporiums" selling everything from groceries to dress material, fresh meat to coal and paraffin. 

In 1984 the house and shop were divided and some 12 years later the shop closed; the village now has only a post office stores and a garage.

Silver Street is the road out to Finchingfield, Saffron Walden and Dunmow. The village school is in Silver Street. 

Most of  the street's character has now gone but in the 1900s it had a butcher's shop, a large barn where the livestock was killed for meat and a big wooden building housing the sadler's premises. There was also a sweetshop, very popular with the schoolchildren.

Braintree Road leaves the village green for the nearest town, Braintree. The section  called the Causeway  was built to cross low-lying marshy ground, once reed beds. In the early 1900s there was a cricket field on the ground but only for the "toffs" of the village. The working folk had their own field for cricket on the Finchingfield road, courtesy of a local farmer.

St Mary's and Ivanhoe

The High Street

Plan of the village
Click to enlarge