Buildings and other structures within Parks
Spains Hall, Finchingfield, had a chain of seven, one-acre ponds near the house. Arthur Young
transcribed the results of "experiments", by the owner Thomas Ruggles, in fish husbandry in his
general view of the Agriculture of the County of Essex in 1807. Tench were by far the commonest
fish reared, followed by carp, but a few eel and perch are recorded too. The interconnected ponds
were stocked with small fish and then emptied (drawn down) two, three or four years later and the
fish weighed to give an idea of their productivity.
Arthur Young (1807) also mentions the ponds of Leez Priory in connection with their neglect;
''There is a chain of them near a mile in length and occupying about thirty acres, which were once
under water, formed and sluiced with great attention and a stream through them, but at present, and
for many years past, water in only two of them, and those almost choked-up with mud by neglect".
Pond Park, nortli of Leez Priory, is said to have taken its name from these ponds. Pond-head Field
and Crotch Pond Mead, totalling about 45 acres, are named on a 1775 estate map located by a loop
in the River Ter and they commemorate these ponds. The ponds arc still clearly marked on modern
Ordnance Survey Maps (Pathfinder 1098 - Great and Little Waltham). The ponds were said to
have been constructed much earlier by the monks as dual fish and mill ponds.
Some of these park ponds would later have been enlarged or altered and incorporated into landscape
schemes - the Spains Hall ponds were the subject of a suggested alteration by Humphry Repton in
1807. The pond in the walled kitchen garden at Hylands is marked as a fish pond on the 1878
Ordnance Survey Map. I can only think the presence of the small, but deep, pond in the kitchen
garden would have been to provide fresh fish for the table.
Carp (above) Tench (below), the two favoured species for park ponds. In medieval Havering,
before the introduction of Carp, Bream are the species mentioned.
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Essex Parks: Section 1 - Parks in Essex