Material Vernacular: North Essex

A collection of observed traditional vernacular North Essex materials and methods of construction, featuring: Saffron Walden, Thaxted, Stebbing, Great Bardfield, Little Tey, Great Tey, Marks Tey.

1)Pargetting

The term pargetting/pargeting [par-jet-ing] refers to an ornamental practice of plastering exterior walls which is endemic to Essex and Suffolk. Decoration is formed by a relief or incision to plaster, applied to either an entire exterior facade, or often between the exterior studwork of half-timber buildings.

Ornamental lime render housing in Saffron Walden

Pargeted house, Great Bardfield (near Braintree Borders NEGC)

2) Colour/materially heterogeneous streetscapes

Mixture of half-timber frame, painted lime render, and brick facades in Thaxted

Painted lime render streetscape, Thaxted

3) Half-timber frames

Half-timber frame, lime render, clay peg tile roof, brick & hedgerows. The Chantry, Stebbing (near Braintree Borders NEGC)

Half-timber frame buildings in Saffron Walden

4) Clay peg tile / Thatch roofs

*Note the lack of slate roofs due to geological inavailability.

Roofscape, Great Bardfield (Braintree Borders NEGC Site)

Thatch, brick, and lime render in Thaxted

5) Dominance of Brick + Timber in Churches

Vernacular building materials of an area are often defined by the resources that are immediately geographically available. In Pevsner’s introduction to Essex, he declares there is ‘no good natural stone’ in the county (Pevsner 2nd edn). However, the ground is the main source of building material in Essex. London clay is the dominant lithology of east and south Essex, particularly within the geological ‘Thames Group’. As a result, brick and clay-tiled buildings dominate the towns and villages of the county. This is indicated by the typical village church, which unlike others across the UK is often partially composed of bricks, due to the geological accessibility of clay and the distance from ‘good natural stone’.

Two instances of brick are commonly seen in historic Essex buildings. Firstly reclaimed Roman brick installed at the erection of the building [often from the nearby capital Camulodunum, at Colchester]. Secondly brick is used as a fast patchwork material due to geographically accessibility.

St Barnabas, Great Tey (West Tey)

Roman Brick and clay tiles at St Barnabas, Great Tey (West Tey)

Timber tower & clay tile roof, St James the Less, Little Tey (West Tey)

Brick & timber tower at St Andrews, Marks Tey (West Tey)

Timber frame + lime wash interior, St Andrews, Marks Tey (West Tey)

Patchwork brick alterations, St Mary the Virgin, Stebbing (near Braintree Borders NEGC)

Brick, render, and clay tiles, Stebbing (near Braintree Borders NEGC)

6) Ornamental bargeboards

Ornamented timber eaves, Thaxted

Ornamented timber bargeboards, Saffron Walden

The history of the Essex landscape can be grouped into three primary material and land-types. Landscape of forests: first nature. Deciduous ancient forests, composed of ferns and oaks, were the primary landscape throughout the Holocene until the beginning of mass farming. Landscape of agriculture: second nature. The second landscape was brought about due to the enclosure of open land; a process consisting of geometrically rationalising and privatising plots of public land which could then be deforested enabling the mass cultivation of an agricultural landscape. This is landscape composed of the repetition of a single plant. Although farmland remains the foremost landscape of Essex, following the first migratory ‘essexodus’ of the late-industrial revolution, there is an argument for another: the landscape of housing: third nature. Amidst the UK’s ‘Housing Crisis’, a combination of an increasing population and a cultural desire for land ownership, has led, and is leading to, the gradual dominance of an urban landscape. Agricultural land is increasingly in demand and competition to be developed in to residential land, leading to greenfield development on the fringe of existing settlements and the creation of new towns.