Waltham Abbey Historical Society

Coggeshall Museum & Town

East Street, looking eastwards

TWO TOWNS, TWO ABBEYS, TWO IDENTITIES

Coggeshall has some similarities with Waltham Abbey. Both are Medieval market towns, and each had an Abbey founded in its midst in the early middle ages. Both grew rapidly on the fat income from pilgrims and passing trade.

Both settlements spread out along streets called East and West Street (now renamed Highbridge Street and Sun Street at Waltham Abbey) and both lie on major rivers (the Blackwater and the Lea), which in each case was harnessed to power the main local industry.

Each town lost its 'holy' trade at the Dissolution, yet both found new water-powered business to replace it. Here is where their differences begin to emerge - Waltham had its cattle-market, silk-printing and gunpowder mills, whilst Coggeshall became renowned for its sheep-farming, cloth, wool and lace-making.

The White Hart Inn, Market End. Its eastern bay is thought to be the old Guild Hall, dating from 1420. The Inn lies at the epicentre of town, on the staggered crossroads of East and West Streets, with Market Hill running north (to the right in this view) and Bridge Street leading south to the Abbey.

Coggeshall's leading merchant family in 1500 was the Paycockes. Their richly-carved home is not the only monument to them - there is also the Paycocke Chapel in the parish church. Another of their homes, built for Robert Paycocke in 1526, now forms one of the White Hart Inn's bays. Anne Paycocke and her husband Richard Benyan acquired the Abbey estates in 1581, and built the east wing of the present Abbey House.

The trade in woollens and cloths was now at its peak, but eventually began to decline at the end of the 17th century, just as a new industry arose: the production of luxury textiles such as tambour lace, velvet and silk. These industries were to keep the town prosperous until the late 19th century; at times, they employed over half the town's population.

The present mill which stands on the site of the old Abbey Mill is an early 17th century replacement, built by Flemish refugees. The row of windows seen just under the roof in this photo are weavers' windows, designed to give maximum natural lighting to a row of weaving rooms, thus highlighting the town's famed cloth-making industry.

TIMBER-FRAMED HOUSES

This rich history is visibly abundant in Coggeshall today; its small town centre (often used as a film-set for Lovejoy) has over 200 listed buildings (some say "nearly 300") , a great many of them timber-framed, and has seen very little alteration or obliteration in modern times. Despite fierce campaigning and many successful battles, the same cannot fully be said of Waltham Abbey, though to be fair we do have about 5 times the population of Coggeshall.

Coggeshall's history spills over into much earlier times as well, like a vein of gold surging through granite. Much like Waltham Abbey, its present settlement dates back to the Saxon period, but there is also evidence of Roman and pre-historic activity as well. Coggeshall lies on Stane Street, the main Roman Road from Colchester to St Albans via Bishops Stortford, which may lie on top of a much earlier trackway.

COGGESHALL MUSEUM

Coggeshall Museum and Heritage Centre, in Stoneham Street, was founded by volunteers in 1991 and is still run entirely by volunteers, headed by Curator Shirley Ratcliffe. It aims to preserve Coggeshall's historic past and to record today's events for future generations. There are both permanent and changing exhibitions, so there is always something new to see.

Coggeshall Abbey is thought to have been the earliest producer of post-Roman bricks in this country, and the abbey remains contain extensive examples of the finished product. In the Museum there is a display of Coggeshall bricks and a collection of different types of medieval tiles.

There is also a fine range of Coggeshall lace in the museum, including a magnificent 19th century wedding veil, a piece of unfinished tambour lace still on its wooden frame, lace-making tools, and patterns used to mark out the designs. The museum also houses a working wool loom.

GUIDED TOUR:

Coggeshall Museum's Curator, Shirley Ratcliffe, will welcome us at the Museum, when we will be able to explore its nooks and crannies. She will then give us a short guided walk of the centre of town, as we make our way from the Museum to Paycocke's House.

The Clockhouse Tearooms, No. 1 Stoneham Street. View looking south along Market Hill, with East Street in the distance (the yellow building with a white shopfront can also be seen in the White Hart photo above).

Formerly a school for poor children, this mid-15th century building supports a clocktower erected for Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887.

Click on the photo for another view of it.

This clocktower underlines the fact that the parish church is not in the centre of town - it lies at the eastern end of East Street, at a point which is thought to have been the original nucleus of the town, until it migrated towards what is now called Market Hill, the site of the market granted to the abbot by a charter of 1256.