Handley Barns: the story of a farm
Graham Smith 48 The Meads, Ingatestone, CM4 0AE
When describing the landscape of what he terms 'ancient countryside' Oliver Rackham
paints a picture of isolated manor houses snuggling in hollows in the hills, squiggles of
smoke rising from their tall chimneys and their yards ringed with barns, byres and pigstys
where chickens scrabble in the dust and geese flip-flop inanely across wet flagstones.
Handley Barns so snuggles, the land rising gently to Box Wood on its western margin
then swinging past Well Wood before dipping eastwards to Dawes Farm and along its
periphery to Bushy Wood, following the boundary stream with The Hyde and Harding's
Farm back to the farmstead. The topography is unlikely to have changed much since the
Romans, or more likely, Romanised Britons, farmed the land two thousand years ago.
There is a registered Roman site in a field close to the modern farmhouse and restrictions
on how the land can be tilled. The site has never been excavated but finds from the area
reputedly cover a time span of around three hundred years. Its fate during the Dark Ages
is unknown but the name of the neighbouring farm, "Hardings" is the anglicized version
of the Scandinavian "Haldin" and it is as "Halden's" that it is known on the earliest
maps. Essex, of course, was subject to the Danelaw during much of the tenth century.
Put two and two together and you come up with five. Still, it is a tempting thought that
the Vikings farmed in the parish at that time and certainly well within the bounds of
possibility. What is certain is that by 970 the estate of which the farm forms a part - and
which was later to become the parish of Ingatestone - was the property of King Edgar
and he presented it to Barking Abbey when he re-consecrated the abbey, almost exactly
one hundred years after it was sacked by the Danes. Unlike the landowner of nearby
Fryerning they were allowed to retain their property by William the Conquerer and it
remained in their possession until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, when it
was acquired by Sir William Petre, one of Henry VIII's secretaries of state. Sir William
was a remarkable man who obviously possessed diplomatic skills of the highest order
as, although a Catholic himself, he somehow succeeded - unlike many of his
contemporaries - in hanging on to both his lands and his head during the subsequent
reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth.
In 1601 his son John (later to become the first Lord Petre) commissioned a map of his
estate from two of the premier cartographers of the day, John Walker and his son, also
John. In the introductory notes to the map the farm is listed as demesne - the King's or
Lord's own farm - as are the neighbouring 'Handley Land' and 'Great Handley Wood',
which were later to become known as Mill Green Common and Stoneymore Wood
respectively. The notes go on to state that "The Mannor of Handley Barns doth conteyne
of arable and pasture one hundred and thirty-five acres, three roodes and thirtie-three
perches; and of meddowe, ten acres, two roodes and twentie-six perches" whilst there is
of "coppiced woodes and springs, twentie-six acres, one roode and twentie-six perches".
The map itself names the fields on the farm. They range between the functional - Barn
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Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 59, May 2009