280
ON THE REMAINS OF A SUPPOSED
PILE-DWELLING AT WOODHAM WALTER,
ESSEX.
BY MILLER CHRISTY, F.L.S.
THE large expanse of waste land known as Woodham
Walter Common is intersected, near its southern extremity,
by a small streamlet, which occupies a remarkably-narrow steep-
sided valley—certainly one of the narrowest, deepest, and most
picturesque valleys in Essex. This stream, after leaving the
Common on its eastern side, runs past the village of Woodham
Walter, and thence into the Chelmer near Ulting Hall.
About two hundred yards below the point at which the
stream leaves the Common, its valley is crossed, at a specially-
narrow place, by a massive artificial dam of earth, about fifty
yards long and twenty-five feet high. This clearly once held up
a mill-pool five or six acres in extent, but is now cut through
by the stream. The dam has evidently been broken for a long
period ; for oaks and other trees at least several hundred years old
grow on the dam itself and on ground which once formed the
bottom of the pool.
Similar dams are found commonly throughout Essex, wher-
ever the valley of a stream permits of one being constructed with
advantage. They held up the waters which, in Mediaeval times,
supplied the power needed to drive corn-mills, fulling-mills, and
the like. Their pools served also as fish-ponds in the days when
means of transport were so bad that fresh sea-fish were almost
unknown, except upon the coast, and fresh-water fish were of real
importance as a form of food-supply. Sometimes a string of such
pools exists, one above the other, along a valley, as at Leighs
Priory, Woodham Walter Hall, and elsewhere in this county.
About a hundred yards below the large dam above-mentioned
is a much smaller dam, not more than about twenty yards long
and ten feet high. This is also broken. It is situated just below
the point at which a small tributary streamlet joins the main
valley, and can never have held up a pool of more than an acre
in extent. The bed of the pool is now overgrown with bushes,
while an oak of fair size grows actually on the dam itself. One