The woodland flora of the Forest of Writtle and surrounding area
Sir William Petre appears to have been a remarkable man. The son of a rich tanner from the village
of Tor Bryan in Devon, he was a Catholic by birth but seems to have worn his religion lightly and
rose to become secretary to Henry, taking an active part in the dissolution of the monasteries and
acquiring large areas of land in the process. By the end of Henry's reign he owned no less than
45,000 acres of land in Devon and Essex. He continued to act as advisor to Henry's successor, the
young but ailing Edward VI, and even helped formulate a memo that recommended limiting the
royal succession to Protestants. However, as soon as it became apparent that the King was dying
and that Mary - a devout Catholic - was winning the battle to succeed him, he astutely tore up the
memo and decamped to her party. In due course he helped thwart a scheme by Sir Thomas Wyatt to
oust Mary and place Elizabeth on the throne, as a reward for which he was allowed to keep his
lands as long as he agreed to endow some almshouses in Ingatestone village and to pay pensions to
the Abbey's former dependents, whose livelihoods had been destroyed. It bears testimony to his
diplomatic skills that he not only succeeded in hanging on to his land during this turbulent period,
but also his head, and that he continued to do so during the reign of Elizabeth, a reluctant persecutor
of Catholics, who seemed nevertheless to suspect a popish plot under almost every bed except Sir
William's! (Wilde 1913 p.229-236).
The property he acquired at Ingatestone consisted of three principal farms and numerous
smallholdings. He built a house - Ingatestone Hall - on the largest of these and lived there until the
end of his life. The two other major properties were Woodbams Farm and Handley Barns. Two
pockets of ancient woodland survive on the former - Woodbarns Spring and Portsmorhall Wood -
but it is the latter which is at the historical centre of the parish. In 1600, Sir William's son, John
(later the first Lord Petre) commissioned a map of the estate from two of the greatest mapmakers of
the day, John Walker Senior and his son, John Junior. What they produced was both a map and a
work of art. It lists all Sir John's tenants and the land they rented and in the preamble to Handley
Barns it states that "The mannor of Handley Barnes doth conteyne of arable and pasture, one
hundred and thirtie-five acres, three roodes and thirtie-three perches; and of meddowe, ten acres,
two roodes and twentie-six perches" while there is "of coppiced woodes and springs, twentie-six
acres, one roode and twentie-six perches" (ERO PL2/100). Remarkably, it still doth conteyne most
of these things : the loss of one wood - Langer Hedge or Spring - having been complemented by the
planting of another - Bushy (formerly Gust Leaze) Wood - while two small ancient coppices - Well
Wood (formerly Apis Field Wood) and Box (alias Boxoll) Wood survive more or less intact. There
were a further 202 acres of demesne lands belonging to the manor while the outlying woods and
commons included what are now known as Stoneymore Wood and Mill Green Common, which
abut the main forest springs to the south. Many other small properties on the acidic ridge which
extends northwards from Fryerning Church to the edge of the Forest are also outwardly little changed
since 1600 ; one wonders whether Handley Barns was so very different from what it is now in 1066
or, indeed, in Roman times, as there are the remains of a villa (or similar building) close to the
modern farmhouse, artefacts from which suggest - or so I am told - an occupancy of at least three
hundred years. Although Handley Barns may not be within the legal boundaries of the Forest it is
both historically and spiritually at its very core and 1 have spent many a pleasant hour over the
years sitting on the on the edge of Box Wood, coffee and sandwiches to hand, musing on the past
lives that helped create the Forest as it is today.
Sir William's daughter, Dorothy, married another well-known Essex landowner, Sir Nicholas
Wadham, and it was this couple who founded Wadham College, Oxford in 1613. When Dorothy
(who outlived her husband) died in 1619 much of her land, including the bulk of Fryerning parish,
was bequeathed to the College (Wilde 1913 p.28-29). They are still the patron of the living of
Fryerning Church and retain some of the land. As with Ingatestone, Fryerning consisted of three
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