Visitors to the ERO may not notice the canal basin that lies just behind our building – although ‘Wharf Road’ is a bit of a clue. Nevertheless, into the last century the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation of 1797 (strictly, a river made navigable and not a canal) was an important means of transport for heavy freight. In its way, it is partly responsible for the ERO lying where it does: heavy freight includes coal, coal can be used to produce gas, and so it was natural for Chelmsford’s gasworks to rise beside the basin. Natural gas brought the end of the gasworks, and created a large development site handily close to the town centre.
This Ordnance Survey map from 1897 shows the system of waterways to the south west of Chelmsford town centre, where the rivers Chelmer and Can met, and where they fed into the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation. The Navigation ended at Springfield wharf, where there were timber and coal wharves for unloading the goods brought up the Navigation on barges from Heybridge Basin, 13.5 miles away. The Essex Record Office stands today between the Navigation and the Chelmer, just south of the gasometers.
The main archive of the Navigation Company was deposited in the ERO decades ago (reference D/Z 36). What we did not know then is that there were some volumes missing. Three registers of ships berthing between 1886 and 1941 at the far end of the navigation – 13½ miles away in Heybridge, on the Blackwater estuary –had been loaned out to a student. They were never returned, and their whereabouts are now unknown. Fortunately, one of the researchers through whose hands they passed kept a set of photocopies. Through his kindness we have recently been able to borrow the photocopies and make a set of digital copies from them (reference T/B 694).
The registers name vessels unloading (or occasionally loading) at Heybridge Basin, with the names of their masters and the nature and tonnage of their cargoes. Now and again a small private yacht turns up, but for the most part this is a record of freight traffic during the last years of canals as a working transport system. As you can see from the images on Essex Archives Online, even in 1886 the navigation handled quite a narrow range of bulk goods for a small band of local companies. Coal, timber, chalk, wheat – all headed up the navigation on horse-drawn lighters. At first some cargoes of fish were also landed, although these disappear after 1901. Steamships made a few entrances, but most of the navigation’s visitors were sailing vessels.
As its trade was taken over by rail and then by road transport, the navigation slowly shrank into a backwater. As late as 1927 the gas company was still bringing in coal, but soon only the timber trade was left – and only one customer, Brown and Son Ltd of Navigation Road, Chelmsford. The last delivery to be registered was on 21 November 1941, although commercial traffic on the navigation did not actually cease until 1972.
Registers of freight traffic sound un-promising, perhaps, but they are an intriguing relic of an enterprise and a way of life that marked this patch of Essex deeply and literally. Do take a look.
Our theme this month is toys – but of a grown up kind. This bill is one of thousands in the Audley End estate archive. General Sir John Griffin Griffin, later to become the 1st Baron Braybrooke, had inherited the estate from his aunt in 1762, and seems to have been spending fairly freely.
These purchases from Francis Watkins, a London instrument maker, put Sir John squarely in tune with the fashionable pleasures of the age – but pleasures that were linked to serious technological innovation. Founded in the 1740s, the Watkins firm survived to be taken over in the 1850s by its younger rival Elliot Brothers. In the 1960s Elliot’s, early manufacturers of electrical equipment and then of computers, became in turn one of the component parts of GEC Marconi. The connection between optics and electrics was evident even at the time of this bill: amongst the ’optical, philosophical, and mathematical instruments’ available from Watkins were ‘electrical machines’.
So far as Sir John’s own purchases are concerned, a ‘concave to opera glass’ is probably a replacement lens, although it is interesting that Watkins was advertising ‘an opera-glass entirely new’. For outdoor amusement, perhaps on the private bowling green behind Audley End house, we have 6 pairs of bowls with a jack, apparently bought in from another supplier. A ‘book camara’ seems an unexpected purchase for the 1760s, but in fact cameras were well-developed by the late 18th century. How to fix the images that they produced was unknown, but the principles of focusing light on to a screen were well understood, and a wide variety of cameras was available. Probably Sir John’s purchase was a camera in the form of a book, opening to display an image to the (hopefully) delighted viewer.
Less of a toy was the most expensive item, a 6-guinea mahogany measuring wheel. Sir John may have led a life of luxury, but he was also interested in the land that supported it. He spent many years re-assembling the Audley End estate, which had been split three ways on the death of the 10th Earl of Suffolk in 1745. For a serious landowner, estate management involved estate measurement, and it is likely that the measuring wheel was a means to that end.
Bills like this show vividly how many human activities – serious and frivolous – are united through the making of tools. But we came across this one only because we were looking for something else in the bundle. Serendipity is one of the great pleasures of an archive, and not to be had from a search engine. Why not try it yourself?
This month’s recording is an extract from a lecture delivered to the Essex Branch of the Historical Association by Hilda Grieve in 1981. The lecture – entitled ‘The Rebellion of 1381 and the County Town’ – was given to mark the 600th anniversary of the Peasants’ Revolt. As the title suggests, the lecture considers the contribution of people from Chelmsford to the rebellion. The extract I have chosen comes from the start of the lecture, as the speaker sets the scene by describing the extent and nature of Essex’s county town in 1381. It is a fascinating picture painted by a historian who may have developed a greater knowledge of the history of Chelmsford than any other. It may come as a surprise to learn of the humble nature in the fourteenth century of what is now the only city in Essex. Hilda Grieve (1913-1993) joined the newly-created Essex Record Office in 1939 – the same year in which she was awarded the Alexander Medal of the Royal Historical Society – and continued in the post of Senior Assistant Archivist until 1966. From 1966 to 1973 she was Deputy Editor of the Victoria County History of Essex.
Her first major publication was The Great Tide (1959) which was written for Essex County Council on the subject of the 1953 floods in Essex. The first volume of her exhaustive history of Chelmsford – The Sleepers and the Shadows – was published in 1988 (as Essex Record Office publication no.100). This volume covered the medieval and Tudor story. And the second volume, subtitled ‘From Market Town to Chartered Borough 1608-1888’, was published posthumously in 1994 (as Essex Record Office publication no.128). Volume 1 is now unfortunately out of print but can be consulted at ERO or Chelmsford Library; volume 2 is also available for consultation and we have copies for sale.