The village of Henham lies in rural England, in Essex. We visited there a few weeks ago to see Ian’s delightful grandchild, daughter, and son-in-law. For me it was also another first visit of the village and area and I loved it. Like I have seen in many English villages they are picturesque and peaceful, with many original houses intact or restored, and this village has a great deal of that to show. Above are; left: The old Village school building, right: a sign for the Cock restaurant, and underneath: the village church. This village church has six bells, I heard them (love the sound of church bells). There is a lovely write up with photos and a sample of the bells ringing on this website: http://www.henhamhistory.org/StMarysBells.html
Listed buildings, some with thatched roofs, timber framed cottages some with casement windows, some of the cottages I recognised from the Henham website, these are Friar’s Cottage (above right), Cedar Cottage (above).
It was also early spring, and we made a long walk along the fields and roads, there was plenty new growth to be discovered. The Blackthorn was in full bloom, the wild Chestnut tree just about to start opening its flowers, but I was sorry to hear that some of them were due to be copped down because of a disease. The Hazel already had its catkins, and the weeping willow already its leaves.
Some of the wild spring flowers which were a joy to behold and plentiful.
Henham as a village dates back to pre Roman times, there is mention of it in the Anglo-Saxon period, saying that at that time the village was described as the little clearing on top of the hill. Apparently Henham is one of the highest lying villages in Essex. For more about the history of the place and the parish please visit their website at: http://henhamhistory.org
Certainly England has a lot to offer in well preserved historical buildings, it’s delightful to discover this. It was of course a delight to be taken for this long walk around part of the village and surrounding fields by Susie and Jared, and a very energetic little Phoebe. Thanks again for showing us such a nice welcome, lovely to share time with you.
agoyvaerts 
I love the tracery of bare branches; this place looks so neat (I mean clean and tidy).
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Yes indeed Mary that was definitely the case. Hope you are keeping well.
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Yes, you’re right, Mary – not a stray weed or piece of litter to be found. Lovely.
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Essex is a misunderstood County!
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For me it was a first introduction Andrew, a nice one.
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Thanks for another great tour.
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Very welcome and thank you!
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such a wonderful, peaceful and historic place. I love these old houses. They look so very cozy. I could live in such a house. The beautiful landscape and flora is another asset to live there. Thanks for sharing this place with us, dear Agnes. All the best, kind regards Mitza
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Yes, these houses are so picturesque, I agree Mitza, and people keep them well. Enjoy a nice weekend too, gosh I cannot believe that it is Friday again 🙂
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:))
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Looks lovely. And you are right they are very good at restoring their old buildings in the UK
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A delight to see older buildings restored isn’t it.
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It is:)
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Wonderful place and wonderful flowers
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Yes that it is indeed, en de bloemen… prachtig vooral in de lente.
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Excellent photos but the first is magneficent
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Dank u wel.
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You wouldn’t happen to know the name of the wild flower (centre right with pink/mauve flowers), would you, Agnes? It grows in my garden and I know it might be classed as a weed but it is so pretty.
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Helen as far as I know it is Ground-ivy, very pretty it is, it grows wild all right. 🙂
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I’ll look up ground-ivy and see where that takes me. Thank you, Agnes.
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You are welcome Helen.
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And it’s a member of the mint family – which figures, if you look at the leaves 😊
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We are learning Helen 🙂
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Indeed, Agnes. I might even try it as a tisane, as it is supposed to be high in vitamin C!
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Ok Helen, just make sure we identified it right. I’m always a bit nervous until I am one hundred percent sure. 🙂
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You are right there, Agnes!
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Good morning, My wife and I built and run our village history website (henhamhistory.org). It contains some 15,000 plus images and several thousand pages of A4 (mainly due to me taking a whole summer to transcribe the baptisms, marriages and burials from the church registers written in ye olde english – Secretarial Script – since 1538. Thank you for your kind comments about our village. We’ll be in The Cock pub on Christmas morning. You may have noticed that we refuse to have street lights in the village, just the aroma of log fires wafting around you and glimmer of handheld torches in the stroll up to the church and pub
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That sounds really lovely Nina and Ray. Thank you for your comment. I will check out more of your photo. I thought your village really beautiful.
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