Blackmore Area Local History

Mountnessing
"Mountney, the owner, and ing (meadow): Mounteney's meadow"

Mountnessing in 1887

The following is taken from ‘Durrant’s Handbook For Essex’, written by Miller Christy (Durrant & Co., Chelmsford, 1887).   

Mountnes’sing. A. 4005; P. 874; Vicarage, value £135; 2m. S.W. from Ingatestone.   

This parish, a very picturesque one, anciently belonged to the Mountney family, whence its name – Mountney’s Ing, or Meadow.  The Church (St Leonard or St Giles) is a poor and very small, regular edifice, the nave of which was erected about 1280.  The nave has both aisles, which render it almost square.  The same roof covers the whole.  Over the W. end is a bell-turret, to support which a framework has been erected within.  The walls, in which Roman tiles are visible, are supported by heavy and unsightly brick buttresses.  All the windows, except the E. one, which is Perp., are extremely poor, being square and of wood. The aisles have dormer windows in the roof.  Both N. and S. doors are pointed.  The former is closed, but has a grating.  The latter also has a grating, and one of its iron bands appears to have once been inscribed.  The porch is rather rude, and chiefly of timber.  The chancel is a modern one of brick.  The arches of the aisles are pointed and supported by low massive cylindrical columns, perhaps of Norman age.  The capitals of those on the S. side are plainly moulded, but those on the N. are carved, one showing well-executed foliage and a human face, in deep relief, the mouth fettered by an iron bridle, probably in reference a passage to Psalm xxxix.   The font is a low and perfectly plain octagonal one.  Beside it, for many years, has reclined a large elephant’s or mammoth’s rib-bone, rather over 4ft. long.  There are many mural monuments.  The Registers commence in 1654.  Thoby Priory was founded about 1145 by the joint action of several members of the De Capra family, and takes its name from the first prior, Tobias or Toby by name.  It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St Leonard, and was occupied by monks of the Order of St Augustine.  No portion of the original building now remains, but part of the later one still stands, and other parts have been incorporated with the adjoining large modern residence still known by the same name.  The plan of the monastic buildings, which formed a square, may still be traced.  On the S. side stood the church; and on the N. the cloisters; and on the W. the prior’s house and monks’ reflectory.  Of the latter, a large and lofty room, the greater part still remains, being incorporated with the modern house.  It is, however, much disfigured by modern windows and a plaster ceiling which hides the fine old oak roof.  The church formerly comprised of a nave, with a S., and probably also a N., aisle and a lofty chancel without aisles.  The part which still stands is probably of the 14^th cent., and shows the S. window of the chancel, together with the first arch and its columns, and a portion of the second arch of the S. arcade of the nave.  The lower portion of the effigy of a Knight Templar, probably one of the De Capras, and other relics, including six rude oak coffins, have turned up in the immediate vicinity. 



Pictures: (Top) St Giles' Church, Mountnessing, with War Memorial. (2) Inside St Giles' Church - an illustration from Suckling's Memorials and Antiquities of Essex, 1846.  (3) Thoby Priory - from Suckling.  (4) Coffin found at Thoby Priory - from Suckling.

Mountnessing in 1861

The following is taken from ‘The People’s History of Essex’ written by D. W. Coller (Meggy & Chalk, Chelmsford, 1861).

MOUNTNESSING – THOBY PRIORY – Returning in a southerly direction [from Blackmore] to the high road, at about a mile from Ingatestone we come to Mountnessing.  It is a small scattered village, in the centre of a rather extensive parish, which reaches Shenfield at one point and up to the town of Billericay on another.  Here we come upon the site of another of the old monastic institutions – Thoby Priory, of which time and better taste have left us some interesting ruins.  The Priory was founded in the reign of King Stephen in 1141, or within ten years after, by the family of De Capra, several members of which united for the purpose; and it took its name from its first prior, Tobias or Toby.  It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St Leonard, and was inhabited by monks of the Augustine order.  Its endowments consisted of the great tithe of he parish, 497 acres of land, and about 27 acres of copyhold.  The priory buildings formed a square, on the south side of which stood the church, of which the arch of the south window of the chancel, and the first arch and its columns of the southern arcade of the nave, still remain; but these are of a much later date than the original monastery.  The cloisters were on the north.  The reflectory stood on the west, and the festal hall of the banished monks has been preserved nearly entire, being incorporated, with other portions of the buildings, into the present mansion, though disfigured by modern sash windows, and the fine roof hidden by barbaric plaster.  The whole plan of the priory may still be traced; and the ground about it has been found rich with its ruins.  The chance plunges with a spade have at different times brought to light objects of much antiquarian interest.  Part of the figure of the Knight Templar was some years since turned up beneath the garden mould, the armour, recumbent lion, and the drapery being after the usual pattern of these monuments; but there is this singular fact about it, that it is composed of plaster moulded on an iron frame.  Suckling supposes it was dedicated to the memory of some knight of the family of Mountney or De Capra, connected with the priory in the crusading times.  Near the cloisters, too, have been dug up six coffins, formed from the trunks of oak trees, scooped out, and charred, the bark still remaining on some of them; and Mr. Grant, the then occupant, had boxes and ornaments made out of the wood, which was found capable of high polish.  Two of the coffins, which were opened, were found to contain perfect skeletons of females.  Knives of bone, with ivory handles, coins, and ornamented floor tiles, have also been turned up; and, says a recent writer, “so little has curiosity been gratified here, that the principal antiquarian treasures of this fallen pile remain to be developed at a future day.”  Wolsey, who, although a cardinal, could make a luncheon of a monastic institution, had grasped the priory in 1525; but on his fall it came to the crown.  At the suppression it was valued at £75. 6s. 10½d., which it has been calculated put the land at 2s. an acre, though under the good culture of the monks it had become the richest in the parish.  It was granted first to Sir Richard Page; then it came to the family of Prescot, and passed by marriage to that of Blencowe, who still own it.  It is now occupied by Mr. Vickerman.

Of the five manors in the parish, three belong to Lord Petre.  Bacons, the residence of William Havers, Esq., which lies near Ingatestone Hall, received its name from Edmund Bacon and his brother, who possessed it in the reign of Edward I., and by royal licence formed an extensive park around it, which, however, agricultural advancement has long since brought into profitable cultivation.  Mountneys, or Mountnessing Hall, which stands on a slight eminence near the church, a mile and a half from the village, and took its name from an ancient family in the county, located here in the reign of King Stephen, had of old a park, which is also laid out in rich pastures and arable fields.  Cowbridge belonged to the Abbey of Stratford Langthorne, and was part of the spoil appropriated to Sir Richard Rich, whose family sold it to Sir William Petre.  The owner of Thoby is lord of Arnolds, whose mansion-house is a large and venerable pile.  The church, which was appropriated to Thoby Priory, is a neat and convenient building of the time of Edward I., though an antiquarian writer has described its chancel as “a barbarous modern erection of red brick.”  Amongst the monuments in the sacred building are several to the Blencowe and Prescot families, the former residents of Thoby; and on a plain stone in the chancel appears the following, in old English characters:

“17 Decembris, 1583.
“Layde here aloone all dedde in tooeme John Peers of Arnollde Hall,
Awaitheth for the daye of dooime till Christe hym up shall call,
Whose tyme now paste on earth well spente hath gotten hym good name,
His honest lyfe and governmente deserved well the same,
God grannte that his good dealyne may to us example be
Of Mountneysinge that rightelie say an honest man was he.” 

Leaning against the font is a fossil rib bone, four feet and three quarters long, dug up some years ago in the parish.  Village tradition and credulity assert it to be that of a giant, once an inhabitant of the village, and respecting whose doings strange tales used to be current round the winter evening’s cottage fire; but probably the anatomist and the geological would tell us that the relic is that of a whale, or a remnant of an elephant or the mammoth, that in former conditions of the earth trod the soil.  There is a school in the parish endowed with a farm of 17a. 3r. 16p., called Punchons, left by John and Amy English, in 1787.  The poor have the rent of a field of six acres, purchased with money left by E. Canning in 1681; and five roods of land left by an unknown donor.

Mountnessing Windmill.  

“From being a friendly focus of village life, the wind-mill has dwindled to an ‘ancient monument’”.  These words were written by C. Henry Warren in 1940 in his book, ‘Corn Country’.  The miller at Mountnessing in Essex – the last of four generations of the Agnis family – had ceased business only a few years earlier.  It is a post mill, built in 1807, replacing an earlier one on the same site.  Chapman and Andre’s map of 1777 shows a mound but no windmill.  Ownership was passed to Mountnessing Parish Council in 1937.  In 1947 the mill was given Grade II listed building status.  However a lighting strike a few years later damaged one sail and the building sank towards dereliction.  Its fortunes changed in 1975 with the formation of the ‘Friends of Mountnessing Windmill’ and an ambitious project of restoration began in 1979 which lasted four years.  The windmill was officially opened to the public in April 1984 and remains a fine example of village industrial past.