164
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
1944. It was also found by Mr. W. D. Graddon in October, 1938
"near Woodford Wells." I have had the privilege of examining
Mr. Graddon's and many of Mr. Ross's specimens, and find that
while the form shows affinities with both D. squamulosum and
D. crustaceum Fries, it differs from both in the colour of the
stalks, in the stout, straight, not flexuose threads of the lax
capillitium, and in the dark spores being marked with a smooth
pale area of dehiscence. It seems therefore to be worthy
of specific distinction, and I propose the name laxifila in
reference to the lax character of the capillitium.
The following is a Latin diagnosis :—
Peridiis sparsis vel subconfluentibus, profunde umbilicalis ;
stipitibus tenuibus, gilvis vel fiavo-gilvis ; columella hemispherica,
floccis capillitii robustis, laxis, subsimplicibus vel in reticulo
junctis,; sporis fuscis, delicate verruculosis, 9-11u diam., area
dehiscentiae pallida laeve.
JOAN SIMPSON AND HER CHIGWELL LAND.
By PERCY THOMPSON, F.L.S.
[Read 25th November, 1944.]
WHEN I first knew Chigwell, now 50 years since, my
attention was arrested, on one of my earliest visits, by
an iron plate on the west side of the road at the northern approach
to the village, bearing the legend "Entrance to Joan Simpson's
Land." This plate, now broken, still remains in part, or did
until within the last four or five years.
The curiously worded notice intrigued me ; who was Joan
Simpson and why should her land be so carefully signposted ?
I resolved to make enquiries.
My first information was that, according to local tradition,
Joan Simpson was an old-time inhabitant of the village who left
money for the upkeep of the roads : it was thought that she was
a laundress !
This was unsatisfying, and indeed improbable, so I set about
further enquiry : here I must acknowledge my indebtedness to
the writings of the late Mr. W. C. Waller, whose information,
here as elsewhere, proved generally most reliable. I have been
able to add to and in some measure amend Mr. Waller's state-
ments, from documents unknown to him.
Joan Simpson was the wife of one Nicholas Simpson who,
according to the State Papers, 1535, was a Page of the Privy