The estate is a typical of its period, with a mixture of semi-detached houses and bungalows,
each with a fair sized plot of land at front and back, both consisting of a square of lawn
surrounded by flowerbeds or vegetable plots. Or it was. With increasing prosperity has
corne an increasing number of cars. Initially, many houses were not provided with a garage,
especially those at the council owned end, but by the 1970s car ownership was the norm
and in the past decade two or three cars per family has become commonplace; one parked
in the garage, one in the front garden and the third on the pavement! Something had to give
to accommodate this fleet of vehicles and usually it was the front lawn, over a third of the
front garden lawns on the four hundred house estate having disappeared beneath brick
paving, concrete or tarmac, a process that appears to be accelerating. In total it adds up to
quite a serious loss of wildlife habitat as relatively few householders are zealous gardeners
- or zealous enough to try and rid their lawn of moss and 'weeds' - and the result is that
many have come to resemble tiny wild flower meadows. Some of these are far richer in
plants than any grassland to be found in the local countryside, typical species being Self
Heal, Bird's-foot Trefoil, Ox-eye Daisy, Autumn and Lesser Hawkbits, Cat's-ear, Red
Clover, Lady's Bedstraw. Lady's Smock, Mouse-ear Hawkweed, Hoary Ragwort and Field
Wood Rush. The grasses, too, include species that are in decline in the improved grassland
of modern farms - Crested Dog's-tail, Yellow Oat Grass, Meadow Barley and Sweet Venal
Grass among them. I have even found five species of sedge sprouting from ill-kept lawns
- Grey, Prickly, Wood, Hairy and Oval - presumably relics from the land's former life as
farmland and scrub - while one particular couch potato's lawn was graced with two fine
spikes of Green-winged Orchid a couple of years ago. Front gardens are also a haven for
declining arable weeds, especially those houses belonging to younger couples, whose
increasingly busy lives leave little time for gardening. A ripped out privet hedge in one of
them resulted in a flush of Long-headed Poppy the following spring while the site of
another produced four or five Broad-leaved Spurge. These gardens also provide the last
refuge in the parish for Crow Garlic, a species once so common that it regularly contaminated
the wheat crop at Fryerning Hall Farm.
As for fungi, the classic species of unimproved grassland are, of course, wax caps. Around
twenty lawns on the estate have hosted at least one species, usually Hygrocybe conica or
H. psitticina, while one particularly fine patch of grass in Burnthouse Lane is regularly
adorned with up to six - the above two plus H. ceracea, chlorophana, virginea and the
scarce glutinipes. Mycena, too, are well represented, luteoalba and olivaceomarginata being
abundant each autumn, while other species of regular occurrence include Bovista plumbea,
Clavulinopsis helvola, Conocybe apala, Coprinus comatus, Entoloma sericeum, Marasmius
oreades and Tubaria furfuracea. Less usual finds have been Calvatia utriformis and
Macrolepiota excoriata on a couple of lawns and, surprisingly, Cystoderma amaranthinum
on one, a species usually associated with heathy soils. Edible species are represented by St
George's Mushroom Calocybe gambosa on several lawns each spring and five species of
Agaricus - plus both Macrolepiota procera and rhacodes - in autumn, including a fine
flush of Field Mushrooms Agaricus campestre on greensward flanking Roman Road. Care
is needed when picking these, though, as they grow alongside the indigestible Yellow Stainer
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 52, January 2007
17