In one mile, take a turning to the right, then the first to the left, and then the next two turnings to the right again, bringing the explorer to the scattered village of Kelvedon Hatch, a thoroughly Essex village, with the weather-boarded cottages and projecting red brick chimney-breasts you will find scarce anywhere else than in this county. Make straight through the long, flat village street, and then to the left, where a sign-post marks the way to Blackmore. In something like half a mile down this turning, notice the old stocks at “Stocks Corner,” where a sign-post points right for Doddinghurst. Do not turn here, but continue ahead until a post is observed indicating the road to Blackmore to be down a turning to the left. In about two miles from here, when you have been wheeling along a country lane until Blackmore appears to be unattainable, and you have almost given up all hopes of finding it, the spire of the village church is glimpsed across the meadows to the right, and a pretty and easy run leads into the street of this exceedingly beautiful and old-world place.
BLACKMORE CHURCH.
At Navestock we saw one of the Essex timbered belfries, but at Blackmore we discover the finest example in the county, three-staged, and a very forest of timbering within. A fine old red brick mansion facing the churchyard is known as “Jericho,” and, although its appearance was greatly altered in the time of Queen Anne, really dates back to the days of Henry the Eighth, whose secret retreat it was. Here that Sultan carried on an intrigue with Lady Elizabeth Talbois, who gave birth in 1519 to a son, named Henry Fitzroy, created by his royal father Duke of Richmond and Somerset. Had that son lived, we should doubtless have possessed one more great peerage, left-handedly descended from Royalty, to keep company with those of the Duke of St. Albans, the Duke of Grafton, the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Munster, and others. But he died, in his seventeenth year, in 1536.
The Court was pretty accurately informed of the King’s whereabouts on those occasions when he secretly visited Blackmore, and whispered that he had “gone to Jericho.” There is, indeed, little doubt of that well-known phrase having originated in this manner. A stream running through the village is still called the Jordan.
Leaving Blackmore for the twin villages of Willingale Spain and Willingale Doe, cross the road at Blackmore, and, turning to the left, pursue a level course along a country road until reaching a solitary fork, which, of course, being solitary and puzzling, has no sign-post.
The right-hand fork looks the most likely, but it is the left, as a matter of fact, that should be taken. This leads past a hamlet where the sign-post vouchsafes a whole gazetteer-full of information; after which, in half a mile, turn to the right (the left turning lands you in a farmyard, and into a duck-pond, very green and slimy). Then a horribly loose, dusty, and stony stretch for a mile, and, turning left, the two churches of Willingale Spain and Willingale Doe are seen, standing in one churchyard. An absurd legend tells how they were built by two sisters who could not agree as to the style of a church they had proposed to build between them. One losing patience and saying that she would build a church of her own, the other is supposed to have answered, “If you’re willing, girl, do!” History, however, disproves this ridiculous story and tells us that Willingale Doe obtained its second name from the old lords of the manor, the family of D’Ou.
