Little Bardfield is a village and
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...
in the
Uttlesford
Uttlesford is a local government district in Essex, England. Its council is based in the market town of Saffron Walden. At the 2011 Census, the population of the district was 79,443. Other notable settlements include Great Dunmow, Elmdon, Stebbi ...
district of northwest
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
, England. Little Bardfield is a small scattered village on the southwest side of the vale of the River Pant. A minor road (Bardfield Road) runs through the village and connects Thaxted to the west, to Great Bardfield to the east. The parish comprises the village of Little Bardfield and two hamlets: Hawkspur Green and Oxen End, which are all surrounded by farmland.
Little Bardfield's church is dedicated to St Katharine, and contains an
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
tower.
In 1774 Sarah Bernard, widow of the Rev Thomas Bernard, by will directed her executors to cut down all the timber in Halsted Grove. With the proceeds of this, they erected a school and five terraced almshouses.
The nave and tower of St Katharine's Church date from circa 1040AD, with a fourteenth century chancel and porch. The interior was entirely restored in 2006 when the integrated decorative scheme devised for the church by G.F. Bodley in 1866 was reinstated. Between 1910 and 1940 the Brotherhood of St Paul, an Anglo-Catholic theological college which trained around three hundred priests for service overseas, was located in the parish.
See also
The Hundred Parishes
The Hundred Parishes is an area of the East of England with no formal recognition or status, albeit that the concept has the blessing of county and district authorities. It encompasses around 450 square miles (1,100 square kilometres) of northwes ...
References
External links
Villages in Essex
Uttlesford
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