Finchingfield

Finchingfield
Essex
Finchingfield looking east
Location
Grid reference:	TL683327
Location:	51°58’3"N, -0°26’60"E
Data
Population:	1,471  (2011)
Post town:	Braintree
Postcode:	CM7
Dialling code:	01371
Local Government
Council:	Braintree

Finchingfield is a village and parish in the Hinckford hundred of Essex, in a primarily rural area. It is approximately six miles from Thaxted, further from the larger towns of Saffron Walden and Braintree.

Nearby villages include Great Bardfield, Great Sampford, and Wethersfield.

History

There has been a settlement in Finchingfield since historical records of the area began. There also is archaeological evidence for a Roman villa 400 metres south-south-west of the village church. Finchingfield was recorded in the Domesday Book as Phincingfelda. The village was an official stop for horse-drawn coaches travelling from London to Norwich.

Spains Hall, the nearby Elizabethan country house, was built in the early fifteenth century. The hall is named after Hervey de Ispania, who held the manor at the time of the 1086 Domesday Book. Since then, the land has been owned by three families: the de Ispania family, the Kempe family, who acquired it when Margery de Ispania married Nicholas Kempe in the early fifteenth century, and the Ruggles family (later the Ruggles-Brise family who reside there today). The hall was the hub of the community, those families owning much of the village, and employing most of the villagers.

Community

Finchingfield and Cornish Hall End combined had a population of 1,471 at the United Kingdom Census 2011.

The ecclesiastical parish covering Finchingfield includes Cornish Hall End, Shalford, and Wethersfield.

Societies and clubs founded in Finchingfield, include The Finchingfield Society, the Horticultural Society, the Royal British Legion, and Finchingfield Cricket Club.

It often is called the most beautiful village in England, a "picture-postcard" village and one of the most photographed, with a duck pond and village green surrounded by Georgian and mediæval cottages; St John the Baptist Church on the hill; an eighteenth-century windmill; three public houses; Post Office; tea rooms; a hall; a primary school; and a doctor's surgery.

Finchingfield was the home and is the burial place of Dodie Smith, whose books include The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956). She lived in The Barretts at Howe Street, a hamlet in the parish about a mile and a half from the village.

The 2013 Sky series Chickens was filmed in the village. The series concerns three young men who avoided going to fight during the Second World War, written by and starring Simon Bird and Joe Thomas.

The village is on the route of the Dunwich Dynamo annual cycle ride.

Notable people

• Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel
• Norman Lewis, travel writer, novelist, founder of Survival International
• Dodie Smith, author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians

Gallery

• 
  Finchingfield, June 2005
• 
  Finchingfield post mill
• 
  Finchingfield Guildhall (before 2011-2013 restoration)
• 
  The church of St John the Baptist
• 
  The Fox Inn, Finchingfield

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Finchingfield)

• Images of Finchingfield
• Cliff Lawson's tribute to Finchingfield