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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...
in the
Uttlesford
Uttlesford is a Non-metropolitan district, local government district in Essex, England. Its council is based in the town of Saffron Walden. The district also includes the town of Great Dunmow and numerous villages, including Stansted Mountfitchet ...
district of northwest
Essex
Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...
, 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, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...
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 a cultural heritage initiative focused on an area in the East of England recognized for its high concentration of cultural and historical significance. Although without formal recognition or status, the concept has the ble ...
References
External links
Villages in Essex
Uttlesford
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