341
A Former "Road" at Margaretting
BY T. H. C. BARTROP
The country road which branches off the main London-Colchester road
at Margaretting School and runs north to Writtle is very familiar to
me. It was, possibly, in existence before the Margaretting-Chelmsford
section of the Roman road from London to Colchester, although the
evidence to support this is meagre and mainly circumstantial.
On this occasion, however, I am concerned not with this country road
but with a former road which branched from it to the west, about half a
mile north of the school, where there is an odd-looking corner of a plot of
land—formerly part of a large meadow but now within the boundary of a
house destroyed during the war by a V.1. This corner is narrow and
somewhat triangular in shape. Its western boundary is lined with trees
on a bank, and its northern boundary is formed by a bank; the frontage
to the present road is about 70 yards.
This "lie of the land" has often aroused my curiosity, but I never did
anything about it until this year, when, on reference to the 1777 map of
Chapman & Andre—the first detailed map of Essex—my suspicion that a
road did at one time branch off at this spot was confirmed.
Permission to survey and photograph this area was readily given by the
owner—Lt.-Col. P. V. Upton—and photos covering the whole length of
the road were taken. The length is about half a mile, and the average
width in the region of 40 to 50 feet.
Of its origin, nothing is known. The Essex Record Office has no early
large scale map of this area, and the starting point so far as maps are
concerned is the 1777 map already referred to. The manor of Coptfold, on
which the track is situated, goes back to at least 1250, and this track may
well have been developed in those early days of the manor.
The alignment of this track, the edge of James's Spring Wood and a
ford across a road leading on to the adjoining manor of Writtle might
suggest to some that the track carried on westward, but there is no evidence
to support this suggestion.
So much—or rather, so little—for its past.
Of its falling into disuse, however, there is proof positive, for the Essex
Record Office has a map, dated 1832, with accompanying records of the
General Quarter Sessions of the Peace at Chelmsford, which records that,
after due notice had been given in three copies of the Chelmsford Chronicle,
a diversion on the "King's Common Highway" was approved. This
entailed the diversion of the "old road called the Upper Road" to a "new
road called the Lower Road", with the construction of a new link road at
the western end. No records are available as to the reason for this diver-
sion, but it might well have been made to divert the increasing traffic of
the early 19th century as far from Coptfold flail as possible—but perhaps
the owner was a little inconsiderate when he put the new road alongside
a stream in the valley which, even until very recently, was liable to flooding.
This former road led to High Woods—one of the centres of charcoal
burning.
The map of 1832, which is on a scale approximating to the standard 25in.
O.S. map, shows two small buildings on the side of the old road. One of
these was in the corner of a field marked "Granary Field" and may well
have been the granary. Careful survey of this corner reveals no superficial
evidence of any building, but there is an area measuring about 60 feet