North Weald Bassett or simply North Weald is a village and civil parish in the Epping Forest district of Essex, England. The village is within the North Weald Ridges and Valleys landscape area.
A market is held every Saturday and Bank Holiday Monday at North Weald Airfield. The market used to be the largest open air market in the country but reduced its size over the years.
Geography
North Weald Bassett in approximately north-east from the centre of London. The parish abuts the outskirts of the towns of Harlow to the north and Epping to the south-west, and is split between these post towns for postal addresses. The parish includes the village of North Weald and the hamlets of Foster Street, Thornwood, Thornwood Common, Tyler's Green, and Hastingwood.
It is rural, with large sections of parish land at the south-west used by North Weald Golf Course, and North Weald Airfield and (ICAO: EGSX), an operational general aviation aerodrome which was an important fighter station during the Battle of Britain, when it was known as the RAF Station RAF North Weald.
Latton Priory was a small priory of Augustinian Canons Regular, the remains of which are a Grade II* listed building. Paris Hall is a 16th-century Grade II* listed house.
History
In 1086 North Weald was one of the most thickly wooded places in Essex. Peter de Valognes' manor in North Weald was said to contain woodland sufficient for 1,500 swine, showing how wooded the area was.
The 'wood of Henry of Essex' in North Weald was mentioned in 1248. In 1260 Philip Basset, Henry's successor as lord of the manor, complained that many robberies were being done in this wood near the road between Ongar and Waltham, and he secured the king's permission to assart (turn forestry into arable land) 6 acres of the wood.
Norden's Map of Essex, 1594, does not show North Weald as a densely wooded parish. In 1777 there was apparently no woodland there apart from Weald Hall Coppice. This is specially interesting in view of the survival of large woods in neighbouring parishes. Weald Hall Coppice still survives, and there is also a small wood at Canes farm. North Weald formed 1,739 acres of the Ongar Hundred.
The ancient manor houses were Weald Hall, near the centre of the parish, Canes, Marshalls and Paris Hall at Hastingwood. In addition to the four manor houses there were probably substantial medieval dwellings at Tylers Green, Bowlers Green, Bridge Farm (near Weald Bridge), and possibly one or two other places. The parish church, St Andrew's, which dates from the 14th century, is ½ mile east of Weald Hall.
Apart from the church the oldest existing building in the parish is probably Tylers. This is a timber-framed and plastered house consisting of a central block with a gabled cross-wing at each end. It may date from the 16th century but there is some evidence that the central block was an earlier open hall with a screens passage at its south-west end. The 'King's Head' at Weald Gullet is a timber-framed building probably of the same period. It was restored about 1927. Two ancient timber-framed cottages which formerly stood on the north side of the main road near the end of Church Lane were destroyed in a German air raid in 1941.
Until the 17th century the Epping-Chelmsford road was probably the most important in the parish. In 1786 a petition was presented to the Epping Highway Trust by the people of North Weald asking that the road should be taken over by the trust. An Act of Parliament for this purpose was passed in the following year. A toll-gate was erected at the junction of the main road and Woodside. The gate-keeper lived at first in a rented cottage but a toll-house was built about 1818. This still survives: a single-story building of brick, now plastered, with a tiled roof.
In 1801 North Weald, with 620 inhabitants, was one of the more densely populated parishes of the area. In the 19th century the population followed the trend normal in rural Essex until about 1861: there was an increase to 886 in 1831 and a subsequent slight decrease. But between 1861 and 1901, when the agricultural depression was depopulating most villages, the population of North Weald rose from 842 to 1,135. This was clearly due to the coming of the railway in 1865. New places of worship in the 19th century were the Congregational chapel in Weald Bridge Road, built about 1830 but closed about 1874, the Chapel of Ease at Hastingwood (1864), the Iron Mission Church at Thornwood (1888), and the Wesleyan churches at Thornwood (1883) and Weald Gullet (1888). The original school was relinquished in favour of a larger building and the new school was extended in about 1842 and again in 1871.