The Story of Billericay E-Book

Charles Phillips

• Herausgeber: Phillimore & Co Ltd
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 292

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Billericay in Essex was originally a prehistoric settlement. This book tells its story from those times, through the Roman occupation, its eclipse and its subsequent rise in importance. It describes the change from a rural market town in the mid-nineteenth century to a dormitory town for London after the coming of the railway in 1889. This is the first detailed history of Billericay, packed with original research and a multitude of previously unpublished illustrations from many sources. Author Charles Phillips brings the story right up to date, and his book is an ideal introduction for all the town's residents, as well as anyone interested in the history of Essex.

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank the following people and organisations:

Christine Brewster and the staff of the Cater Museum, Adrian Rilstone for writing the foreword, Father Jim McGrath, parish priest of Holy Redeemer, for his hospitality and help when I turned up unannounced at his presbytery front door, Billericay Musical Theatre Group, Barleylands Farm Museum, Julia Seaman, Sylvia Kent, Lord Petre for granting permission to reproduce the picture of his ancestor Sir William Petre, and for confirming information on Sir William and Sir John, later the First Baron Petre of Writtle, Malcolm Acors for guidance, Basildon Heritage for help with photographs, Denise Rowling, Jo Cullen, Susan Randle, the staff of Billericay Library who had to put up with me when I was doing my research, the staff of Chelmsford Library, the staff of Stock Library, the staff of Colchester Library, National Express East Anglia, the staff of Billericay station, Greater Anglia, the National Archive – formerly the Public Records Office, Essex Record Office, Jenny Butler, Stock Post Office and General Stores, the Great Eastern Railway Society, John Watling, Essex Bus Enthusiasts Group, Richard Delahoy, Essex County Council, Billericay Town Council, Ken Butcher, Alan Osborne, Simon Fletcher, the late David Collins, Billericay History, Jim Devlin, Roger Watling, the British Newspaper Library, Trove – Australian On Line Newspaper Archive, National Library of New Zealand Newspaper Archive, Project Gutenburg and British History Online.

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

one

Stone Age to Saxons

two

The Norman Conquest and the Medieval Town

three

The Reformation

four

Life and Crime: the Sixteenth Century

five

Puritans, the Mayflower and Civil War

six

Glimpses of the Seventeenth Century

seven

Queen Anne to Napoleon

eight

Under Arms

nine

In Decline

ten

Billericay Resurgent

eleven

The First World War

twelve

The Long Truce

thirteen

At War

fourteen

The Post-War Town

Bibliography and Sources

Copyright

FOREWORD

It would be discourteous of me not to begin by admitting that I feel flattered and privileged to have been asked to write this foreword for Charles Phillips’s The Story of Billericay. I can only claim to be a native by adoption, but by way of mitigation I was very young when brought, with my sister, to Billericay by my father and mother, and I certainly remember the town as it must have been – with, of course, change of personnel although not necessarily of family – for many generations before our arrival in 1950.

Charles outlines the development of the town from the Stone Age, through its over-powering annexing of Great Burstead to the present day. He is, as I know from personal experience, passionate about a similar over-powering annexing of Billericay by Basildon, and ends his book with what can only be read as a clarion call to Billericay residents to search out a twenty-first-century Wat Tyler!

I happily commend this volume to all, and am sure that it will be as important to Billericay and Essex bibliophiles as its many predecessors referred to in Charles’s list of sources.

Adrian Rilstone, 2009

INTRODUCTION

Billericay’s history goes back a very long way, and unlike a lot of towns it still has a good number of its historic buildings and other reminders of the past. For the purposes of this book I have focused on the area known as Billericay today. Historically it was part of the parish of Great Burstead, so I have included information about that area too: it is often impossible to unravel references to the two settlements in the sources.

I was born in St Andrew’s Hospital in Billericay, and for many years used Billericay station when travelling to work in London. Following early retirement in 2005 I have seen more of the town than when I was working, and have felt for some time that there is a need for a new written history. This is not to decry the work of those who have gone before me. In researching I have been fortunate in having access to a number of sources that were not easily available to earlier historians. This is primarily thanks to the wonders of the internet – and all those people who are taking the time to make sometimes obscure material available to the wider world.

This book is dedicated to the people of Billericay. While taking photographs and undertaking research for this book I walked and cycled around large parts of Billericay and Great Burstead. It was an education – and I hope you learn as much from reading this book as I did from writing it.

I fully accept that through no fault of my own errors may well have occurred or been perpetuated. I whole heartedly apologise if that has happened. If you have any comments please contact me via the email address below or via the publishers.

Charles Phillips

Stock, near Billericay

October 2012

[email protected]

one

STONE AGE TO SAXONS

It is not known when the first people settled in the area that is now Billericay, but evidence has been found of Middle Stone Age activity in the shape of some burnt bone, pottery and a flint axe head on the south-east-facing slope less than a mile from the town. Beyond this, which suggests a settlement of some kind, not a great deal is known about Billericay in the Middle Stone Age.

There was definitely a settlement here by the time of the Bronze Age. Two Bronze Age burial mounds were excavated in Norsey Wood from 1865 onwards. Finds included burials and Deverel-Rimbury pottery, dating from 2500 to 1000 BC. This distinctive pottery is in the most characteristic Middle Bronze Age style – globular thick-walled urns, with smooth surfaces and subtle decoration. The number of dead found in these burial mounds indicates that they were used over a long period of time, which suggests a settlement of some importance. Its exact location in relation to the modern town cannot now be determined, as the timber Bronze Age huts, probably with turf roofs, have left no trace. While the burial mound in the south-eastern part of Norsey Wood is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, the one near the Norsey Road has had an air-raid shelter, a fish pond and a garage (among other things) built into it at various times since the 1930s.

The arrival of the Iron Age, which ran roughly from 500 BC to the coming of the Romans, brought with it more concrete evidence of a settlement. In pre-Roman times Essex was inhabited by the powerful Trinovantes tribe, whose territory covered an area at least from modern Colchester to the mouth of the Thames. Downham Grange near Billericay is thought to have been an Iron Age fort to protect the area from the south-west, north-east and east. This survived the Roman occupation and was used thereafter by the Saxons. Unfortunately no remains can be found today. From limited evidence, it has been suggested that Iron Age Billericay consisted of about a dozen families living in farmsteads that contained three generations; this led to a tribal organisation. The buildings were large, thatched and circular, made of wattle and daub, and with an opening in the roof for smoke to escape. Wattle and daub construction consisted of interwoven twigs plastered with a mixture of clay, lime, water, and sometimes dung and chopped straw.

The Bronze Age barrow in Norsey Wood is the oldest surviving structure in Billericay. (Author)

Relics from the Iron Age have been found over the years, particularly on the high ground behind the former St Andrew’s Hospital. When the cutting for the railway was being dug in the mid-1880s an Iron Age burial urn was found. At Bell Hill in the mid-1970s, during the building of a new housing development, a ditch or stream bed produced Iron Age material and evidence of an area of extensive burning, which possibly dated from the Iron Age. Archaeologists recorded a ditch that produced stratified material from the first century AD, but it is not certain if this was Iron Age or Roman. At some unknown date an Iron Age pot was found in the garden of 5 Chapel Street.

The Romans briefly invaded Britain in 55 BC and 54 BC under Julius Caesar. These invasions were not successful from the Roman point of view, however, and it was AD 43 before they came again. This was the start of the Roman occupation of Britain. They established a military station of the Ninth Legion in Norsey Wood. The headquarters of the Ninth Legion was built at Colchester. Although this was destroyed in the revolt of AD 61 led by Queen Boudicca, it was later rebuilt.

There is definitive evidence of a large Roman settlement in Billericay, although its Roman name is not known, and many vestiges of the period have been found in the town. These include coins, bricks, pottery, brooches and numerous other artefacts, and at Sun Corner the remains of Roman buildings have been found. In 1877, during the digging of a hole for the building of a gasometer at the gasworks in Laindon Road, workmen came across a cache of broken pottery on a platform or pavement of Roman construction. This pottery, on investigation by Mr J.A. Sparvel-Bayley, was found to be cinerary (that is, it contained the ashes of the dead), and other urns including some of Samian ware, one of which bore the word DACMUS. In 1933 part of a Roman rubbish pit was excavated in Norsey Wood. This revealed late fourth-century coins and pottery. The concurrent discovery of late Iron Age pottery was clear evidence that this rubbish pit had been in use for centuries. Excavations in 1987–8 at School Road and Roman Way revealed cremation burials, wells and ditches of the first to fourth centuries AD. A pottery kiln dated AD 43 to 100 was discovered to the south of the school in Buckenhams Field just north of the junction of Laindon and Noak Hill roads.

Bell Hill and the drovers’ pond. (Basildon Heritage)

The Roman settlement stretched in an arc from near the site of St Mary Magdalen’s Church in the High Street to Norsey Wood. This position provided a defensive view over surrounding forests. Some sources think that during the Roman occupation an additional outpost, possibly a fort, was built at Blunts Wall, near Tye Common and west of the High Street. From the evidence that has been found of a Roman road that went from Norsey Wood to Stock, it seems that the main road through Roman Billericay ran from the Roman settlement at Chelmsford (Caesaromagus) to the Thames. Other evidence of a Roman road was found during building work at Billericay School.

It is worth remembering that the Roman occupation of Britain was just that: an occupation. Although it lasted from AD 43 to 410 and there were Roman buildings and Roman towns throughout much of Britain, there was not the same assimilation that occurred in France or Spain. Billericay at this time, for example, consisted of a Roman occupation force existing side by side with the indigenous population. Roman law and a few other habits of life were imposed on the inhabitants, but they were essentially free to go about their own business. There is evidence that some in the higher echelons of society adopted a Roman way of life, living in Roman-style buildings but remaining essentially British; Romano-British. Humbler folk remained British even in the style of their buildings, but no doubt some of their number understood and were able to read and write a modicum of Latin. Co-operation and collaboration took place. It is possible that there were liaisons between the occupying forces and local inhabitants, and that some male inhabitants joined the Roman army as auxiliaries, that is non-citizen corps.

By the end of the fourth century AD the Roman Empire was coming under attack along its fringes, including Britain, and in 383 the Roman army began to withdraw from its British territory. This withdrawal was completed in 410. Essex was eventually settled by Saxons from Lower Saxony, in what is now Germany. Records from the period are scarce, so we do not know how long their conquest of the area took. From the evidence of a wheel-turned pot of Roman ware found at Billericay, there is a suggestion that the Saxon conquest might have taken place over a long period, commencing some time before the withdrawal of the Romans. The pot, which contained human ashes, indicates that there was a gradual intermingling of Saxon and Roman cultures: it has Saxon decoration (a cruciform pattern, lines and dots and a swastika) and a fourth-century Roman jar as its lid.

Eventually Roman Billericay was deserted. The reason for this was that the Saxons associated cemeteries with ghosts, and in the Roman settlement there were cemeteries. The Saxon invaders settled at a new site, now Great Burstead. This had an impact on Billericay which lasted for centuries: it was not until 1844 that Billericay was finally separated from Great Burstead, and became a separate ecclesiastical parish.

NORSEY WOOD

Norsey Wood is where Billericay began, but what of the place itself? It is a mixed coppiced woodland of 165 acres, varying in height from 197ft to 302ft above sea level. The wood comprises plateaus of sandy soils overlying clays, producing four valleys that lead into a principal valley. The steep-sided but well-vegetated valleys radiate in a northward direction from the south-west corner of the wood, and during the winter and wet periods contain southward flowing streams. These eventually lead into the River Crouch. The higher plateau areas are reasonably flat and well drained and gently slope northwards. In the north-east the gravels become thinner, and the underlying clays support small springs, although with today’s warmer climate these have largely become redundant. For such reasons there exist three apparently artificial ponds in the north-east of the wood, and one in the south-east. The gravel plateaus mainly support sweet chestnut coppice, and in the south and east areas of hornbeam, oak, birch, rowan and aspen. The marshy valleys support alder, ash and willow coppice with areas of pendulous sedge, sphagnum moss and buckler fern. The soils in Norsey Wood are very acidic.

There is a well-defined system of ‘rides’ in the wood. The primary one is believed to date back to Iron Age times, if not to the Bronze Age. By the end of the sixteenth century the major rides were sufficiently established to appear on a map of the area; this dates from 1593. In more recent years a series of footpaths has developed.

The main historical features that are easily visible are the Bronze Age burial mound, medieval deerbanks (protective boundaries consisting of a massive ditch and bank, a formidable barrier for animals) and First and Second World War trenches.

Before the early 1930s the area of the wood was about 200 acres. It included within its boundaries a second Bronze Age burial mound. However, housing development in 1931 to 1933 reduced the wood to its present size – and, as mentioned elsewhere, a house was built on the other Bronze Age burial mound. This housing development also destroyed a large part of the northern section of the medieval deerbanks.

The whole of Norsey Wood is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and it is also a local nature reserve.

The medieval deerbank in Norsey Wood. (Author)

two

THE NORMAN CONQUEST AND THE MEDIEVAL TOWN

In 1066 William, Duke of Normandy (William the Conqueror) successfully invaded England. As King William I he commissioned a survey in 1085 of all the land that he had acquired. This was known as the Domesday Book, and was compiled between 1086 and 1087 by commissioners who travelled around the country, which was divided into seven circuits. It was not a population census but a land and property census: King William wanted to know who held what land, the number of working persons there were, what animals there were and what money he could expect to receive from the land. Although it contains a wealth of information, the Domesday Book omits certain places: there are no records specifically relating to the City of London, for example. It also mentions only working people: no attempt is made to record their spouses or children.

As far as is known Billericay does not appear in the Domesday Book. It was suggested by the Rev. George Walker in his book The Story of a Little Town (1947) that the reference in Domesday to land held by the Bishop of Bayeux in Great and Little Burstead acquired since the Conquest relates to Billericay. This land had twenty-eight freemen holding 28 hides (a hide was notionally the amount of land that would support a household) and 5 acres (medieval acres were different from modern acres; they could be used to measure length as well as area). At the time of the Conquest there were sixteen ploughlands, but at the time of the survey thirteen. A ploughland was the amount of land that could be ploughed in one year using a plough and a team of eight oxen. The land had 5 hides of woodland, 23 acres of meadow, pasture for 250 sheep, 54 bordars (a type of peasant), and 4 slaves. It had decreased in value from £20 at the time of the Conquest to £16 at the time of the survey.

For the sake of completeness I will give you details of the rest of the land held by the Bishop of Bayeux in Great and Little Burstead. Before the Conquest the land was held as one manor by Ingvar, who was a thane – part of the king’s or a lord’s household, or part of a military elite. The land area was 10 hides. Of this land three ploughlands always belonged to the lordship of the manor. Obviously there had been some reduction in land available for ploughing, as before the Conquest the men held twelve ploughlands but at the time of Domesday they only had eleven. At the time of the Conquest there were twenty villagers and five smallholders; at Domesday there were twenty-two villagers and ten smallholders. A villager was a member of the peasant class who held the most land; a smallholder was a ‘middle-class’ peasant. There was half a hide of woodland and also pasture. The Domesday Book says that there were 150 sheep, 2 cobs, 11 cattle, 106 pigs and 219 sheep; this second reference to sheep is confusing. The land was valued at £20. It may be noted that the area of newly acquired land at Great Burstead was greater than the area called Great Burstead at the time of the Conquest.

Great Burstead in the Domesday Book. (Phillimore)

At the time of Domesday the Bishop of Bayeux was one Odo, the half-brother of William the Conqueror. In 1082 he was imprisoned for seditious behaviour, and in 1088 raised a rebellion against his nephew William Rufus. The rebellion failed, and Odo was banished from the country. Because of his disgrace the manor of Great Burstead passed to the Marshall family, whose head was the Earl of Pembroke under the second creation of the title in 1189. William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke granted it to Richard Siward, who then granted it to Stratford Langthorne Abbey at Bow. The monks of the abbey were Cistercians.

The first Essex historian, the Rev. Philip Morant (1700–70), says in his History and Antiquities of the County of Essex (1760–8) that ‘Billericay is a hamlet in Great Burstead, but so considerable as to be a market town; the only one within this hundred [Barstable Hundred] except the little town of Horndon on the Hill.’ Another name for Great Burstead was Burstead Grange – a grange being a monastic estate used for food production, or sometimes the agricultural buildings at the heart of that estate. The Cistercians had been discharged by Popes Paschal II and Hadrian IV of paying tithes on land they tilled themselves, and so in general they did not let out their lands, thereby making themselves liable for the paying of tithes, and had large barns or granges in which to store their crops.

As to when this ‘hamlet’ of Billericay was first established … we don’t know. We can make an educated guess as to why it was established, though: a settlement appears to have grown up where the road from Chelmsford to the Thames joined the road from London to Wickford on the River Crouch, which in those days is believed to have been navigable as far as Wickford. Today’s Chelmsford, however, can only be traced back to about 1100, when Maurice, Bishop of London built a bridge across the River Cam. This theory apparently contradicts George Walker’s suggestion that the extra land held by the time of Domesday was the settlement now known as Billericay. Exactly when and why the hamlet was established remains shrouded in mystery.

According to Philip Morant, the first time Billericay is mentioned is in 1343, when Thomas Malegreff is recorded to have held of Humphrey de Bohun, the 6th Earl of Hereford under the sixth creation and the 5th Earl of Essex under the third creation, the hamlet of Beleuca in Burstead as of his manor of Fobbying (Fobbing). Morant says that this name Beleuca is probably derived from the old word Baleuga or Banleuga, denoting territory or precinct round a borough or manor; the French word banlieue, suburb, is from the same root. He says that by 1395 Beleuca had been transformed into Billerica, but he does not know how this transformation came about.

According to Percy Hide Reaney in his Place Names of Essex (1935), however, the earliest mention of Billericay is in 1291, when it was spelt Byllyrica. By 1307 the spelling has changed to Billirica; in 1343 it is Billerica. This contradicts Morant’s findings. How to explain the two contradictory names for Billericay in 1343? Perhaps Billerica refers to the hamlet and Beleuca to the territory or precinct around it.

While a large part of Billericay was located in Great Burstead, there was a small part of it that was in Mountnessing in the manor of Cowbridge, which according to Morant extended along the High Street as far as the Red Lion. At the time of the Conquest Cowbridge was owned by one Alwin, but when the Domesday Book was compiled it was owned by one Ranulf, brother of Ilger, who was a minister of the crown. Later the manor gave its name to a family, and we find Richard de Cobridge mentioned in a deed of Roger de Ginges in the reign of Henry III. Next, the manor became part of the possessions of Stratford Langthorne Abbey.

According to Harry Richman in Billericay and its High Street (second edition, 1965) in about 1342 a chantry chapel was established in Billericay. This date slightly contradicts Philip Morant. A chantry was a private Mass celebrated regularly for the repose of the soul of a testator and others nominated by them in their will. Some were endowed during the lifetime of the founder, and the Mass priest was obliged to celebrate Masses for his well-being while he was alive and his soul after death. Chantries were also endowed by guilds and fraternities for the benefit of their members, and even the most humble testator could arrange for one or two Masses to be said for his soul. Those who had the most money were responsible for the erection of magnificent chantry chapels. However, history is never straightforward and there is some confusion about the establishment of Billericay’s chantry chapel, which eventually became the church of St Mary Magdalen. Harry Richman says that, ‘It is usually stated that about 1342 a chapel and chantry with lands to support a priest was founded in Billericay by a member of the Sulyard family of Flemyng’s, Runwell’, but there seems to be a slight mystery here judging by Morant’s account. He states that the Sulyards were only at Flemyng’s (now Flemings) from the late fifteenth century: John Flemyng inherited from his father in 1464, aged fifteen, then died without issue leaving three sisters; at this point the Sulyards come into the story. All this means that the Billericay chapel and chantry were founded long before the Sulyards were at Flemyngs, if 1342 is the right date. However, J.A. Sparvel-Bayley, writing in the Essex Archaeological Transaction at the end of the nineteenth century, stated that it had not been satisfactorily ascertained when the chapel was founded. He said that Newcourt in his Repertorium attributed the foundation of the chapel to the Sulyards family, of Flemmings in Runwell.

In 1367 the Chantry House in the High Street was built, and according to a report in the Daily Chronicle in June 1926 (at the time of its proposed sale and removal to America) it was renovated in 1510. According to the article, the building was at one time ‘used as a meeting place for priests, who said their masses in the private chapel’ in the house.

Morant also says that because of flooding during the winter, when the inhabitants of the western part of Billericay could not easily reach their parish church of ‘Ging Mountney’ (Mountnessing), the vicar of Great Burstead was to ‘receive the small tithes and oblations of Blunts Wall’, which was one of the manors of Great Burstead. He concludes that ‘we will suppose this chapel built as well for the chantry, as for the ease of these inhabitants now laid to Billericay’. Perhaps residents contributed to the purchase of the chantry lands, or paid for the priest through voluntary contributions: ‘it is plain a priest was maintained and according to the Book of Chantries, did sing mass and minister sacraments, which last was not the office of a mere chantry priest’.

The original name of the chapel, which later became the parish church, was not St Mary Magdalen (as it became later) but St John the Baptist.

There was also a primitive fort at Blunts Wall during this period. As mentioned in the previous chapter, some sources think that there was a fort on this site in Roman times. While the new fort dated from the thirteenth century, it would have made sense to make use of the remains of an earlier fort in its construction. Until comparatively recently some earthworks survived: the remains of a ditch and ramparts, together with some artificial mounds. They have now been obliterated.

In 1253 there is reference made to a market in Great Burstead. On 14 May of that year Henry III granted the Abbey of Stratford Langthorne the licence to hold a market at Great Burstead on a Tuesday and a fair there on the vigil, the day and morrow of the feast of St Mary Magdalen. In 1285 Edward I confirmed the earlier charter. It is not known where the market was held, whether it was in Great Burstead itself or in what is now Billericay.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Norsey Wood was part of the Forest of Essex, which was Royal Forest – the king’s hunting ground, protected by Forest Law. Under this legislation landowners could only hunt or take wood out of the forest with the king’s permission, and the granting of a licence. To create permanent boundaries in order to prevent deer and cattle entering the wood, landowners built huge ditch and bank systems around their woods; as previously mentioned, Norsey Wood’s bank was named the Deerbank – a unique title. The bank that survives today is of a later construction than the original one, upon which it was superimposed.

St Mary Magdalen church, c.1900. (Basildon Heritage)

High Street and Chantry House, 1900s. (Basildon Heritage)

A very important event in the fourteenth century that the men of Billericay took part in was the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. The reasons for this uprising included excessive taxation, the extravagance of the royal court, the imposition of dues by the lords of the manors and the failure of the English government to protect English homes from French and Spanish naval attack. There was also the matter of a poll tax that had been imposed by the government in November 1380 to raise money for the war against France then in progress. This was a tax of 3 groats on everyone over fifteen, except paupers; a groat was worth four old pennies. Naturally, because the new poll tax took a larger proportion of the income of the poor than it did of the rich, it was not popular. J.A. Sparvel-Bayley, writing in the Essex Archaeological Transactions, says that ‘the tax … was rigorously exacted, the insolence of its collectors being but too often unbounded; opposition was everywhere offered, and in no county more so than in Essex, and especially by the men of Fobbing, Stanford [le Hope], Billericay and Hadleigh’. The Revolt started on 30 May 1381, when the villagers of Fobbing, Corringham and Stanford-le-Hope as well as others from Stock, Ingatestone, Warley and Ramsden (Bellhouse), and a weaver dwelling in Billericay, attacked the King’s Commissioner of Taxes and John Bampton, an Essex JP, when the commissioner went to Brentwood to reassess the return for the Barstable Hundred. The absolute refusal of the men of Fobbing to co-operate led to an outbreak of violence when John Bampton foolishly ordered the king’s sergeants at arms to arrest the men’s spokesman. The commissioner and his men, who were lucky to escape with their lives, fled to London to report the incident to the government. Undeterred, and still in ignorance of the true situation, the authorities made further attempts to enforce the tax and apprehend those involved in the riot. The Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir Robert Belknap, was commissioned to bring them to justice. However, on 2 June at Brentwood he and his retinue were also attacked by the still recalcitrant villagers; the court was wrecked and its papers destroyed. The fracas developed to the point of murderous violence, and the rioters beheaded three local jurors. After this the situation deteriorated even further, and serious disorder spread throughout Essex.

Rioting also occurred in Kent. Tradition has it that the reason for this outbreak was a gross act of violence by one of the tax collectors against the young daughter of a tradesman living in Dartford. In retaliation, he killed the tax collector – apparently by hitting his head with a hammer. When the news of what had happened in Kent reached Essex, the rebels there crossed the Thames and joined up with those of Kent.

Meanwhile the revolt spread further. Manor houses and religious houses were attacked, the houses of unpopular lords of the manor and justices were pillaged, and court rolls were burnt. The rebels invaded London and killed, among others, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The young king Richard II met them at Mile End and granted commutation of all dues for a rent of 4d per acre, and a free pardon for all rebels. This was written down, which satisfied most of the rebels, although those who refused to submit were summarily executed in the presence of the others. Shortly afterwards the king called out his soldiers and rode out to Waltham (Holy Cross) to punish the rebellion with cruel severity. The charters of liberation were repealed by Parliament as having been extorted under pressure.

This wasn’t the end. After the rebels had dispersed from Waltham, full of anger and disappointment, those from Essex reassembled at Billericay, Rettendon and Great Baddow, where they prepared to continue their resistance. At Norsey Wood they assembled to make a last stand against the pursuing army of Sir Thomas Plantagent of Woodstock, the Earl of Buckingham and Sir Thomas de Percy. Although well prepared and great in number, the ignorant and poorly trained peasants were no match against the trained army. Over 500 were killed, and 800 of their horses were taken. Those who survived fled to Colchester, but failed to stir up trouble there. After that they went to Sudbury, in Suffolk, but Lord Fitzwalter and Sir John Harlestone pursued them, killed some and put the rest in prison.

During the nineteenth century a workman digging gravel in Norsey Wood described a ditch and a cave he discovered, which may been connected with the last stand of the Peasants’ Revolt. In The History of Norsey Wood K.G. Cook quoted an unknown person, possibly the Rev. J.E.K. Cutts, as saying that ‘one of the labourers informed me that in levelling and digging for gravel he came upon a ditch, about 8 feet deep, and wide enough for one person to walk along; it was about three hundred yards along, and at the end was a circular cave about the same depth as the ditch, and 15 feet in diameter; in it was some charcoal and several pieces of brick about two inches thick’.

After the revolt a number of properties were seized by the crown from those who had been outlawed or executed for taking part in the revolt. In some instances their descendants were able to claim it back, but not all were successful. In about 1401 Lors Brigg, the daughter of Roger Underwode, who was probably one of those hanged after the battle in Norsey Wood, was able to claim his property back from the crown. However, the property held by Thomas Ledre, who was executed after the revolt, was lost to the heirs and assigns of his widow Katherine, who had remarried.

From 1476 there is definite evidence of a market being held in Billericay. On 19 December of that year Edward IV granted to the monks of Stratford Langthorne Abbey a charter to hold a market at Billericay each Wednesday, as well as two annual fairs of three days each at the feasts of St Mary Magdalen and the Decollation (Beheading) of St John (the Baptist). Billericay men did not only attend their own market; they also went to others. For example, in 1491 it is recorded that Thomas Roos and William Prentys of Billericay were allowed exemption from market tolls at Colchester as they were tenants of the Duchy of Lancaster, whose special privileges included exemption from market tolls at such places as Colchester.