Thames Tributary Cripsey Brook

Thames Tributary Cripsey Brook
The Brook continues to flow south towards the River Roding.


Post to the north Ongar
Post to the east High Ongar
Post to the west Ackingford
Post to the south Ongar


Bansons Lane
Ongar Health Centre
Sainsbury’s supermarket
on the site of a school. This store was opened in 1988 as part of their ‘county town’ venture, now discontinued.
School - King’s Trust - Joseph King, in 1678, left money for the education of the poor and teaching was undertaken in Kings Trust cottages.In 1846 a purpose built school was erected behind the trust cottages and children attended from the surrounding area. From 1902 it was managed by the Essex Education Committee. In 1911 when the Essex Education Committee had decided to build a new school they transferred the buildings for use as a County school. And this opened in 1915. It was reorganized again in 1936. The school lay behind Budworth Hall and the trust cottages. It was single-storied, in yellow brick. A foundation stone was at one time in the lane which once ran between Ongar Grammar School and what was Little Bansons.

Bansons Way
Railway buildings from the 19th either built by the Great Eastern Railway or their tenants. They are timber framed, weather-boarded with slate roofs and buildings flanked the entrance to the coal yard. The weighbridge office and coal office are small buildings with walls of horizontal boarding. The coal office has a coal fireplace as an advertisement inside
Frank Bretton House. Sheltered housing.

Castle Street
Castle. The 50ft high artificial mound is the earthworks of a Norman castle which stood on its top. This was built in the reign of Henry I by Richard de Lacy who was Chief Justice of England in 1162. It was the chief building of the Boulogne estates and the town became known as Castle Ongar. The mound would have been surrounded by water filled ditches. This was demolished in the 16th and a brick house was built here which Queen Elizabeth visited in 1579. This house was demolished in 1744 and fragment and some of the moat remain. In the mid 16th the then owner built a summer house on the top of the motte. There is a veteran horse chestnut in the area now.
The northern arm of the defensive structure round the town still survives as an earthwork between the castle and the High Street
The Manor House. This is adjacent to the site of the eastern bailey and may have been the original manor-house. However, that role seems to have varied between this building, the White House and Castle House. It is a 14th house extended in the 19th. It is timber framed with rough cast over brick. This was sometimes used as the Chipping Ongar Manor House. It is 16th originally but altered in 1840. It is timber framed and plastered. There are some crenellated extensions. In the 19th it was the home of Congregational Minister Isaac Taylor, whose daughter, Jane, wrote "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."
Castle Farm. Barn from the 18th Timber framed and weather boarded. Granary from the 18th which is timber framed, weather boarded and standing on Staddle Stones. It was one of the larger farms in the area.

Chipping Ongar
Chipping being derived from 'chepe' meaning market. It was however originally a ‘plantation’ built by the owners of the castle, and known as Castle Ongar. The town itself was surrounded by a defensive moat the remains of which still exist in part. There are some Roman remains in brick work and archaeological finds and it is also thought there was a Saxon settlement here. It was the centre of the Hundred and that of the moot.

Epping Road
The Four Wantz. This road junction and roundabout takes its name from the four roads it coordinates
Bowes House. The house took this name early in the 19th from another Bowes House, then renamed Shelley House. This red brick 19th was used as a school.
Bowes Field. The former playing fields of Great Stoney School
Bowes Farm Lodge. 19th cottage timber framed and plastered. Stable building in red brick from the early 18th

Great Stoney Park
Housing on the site of Great Stoney School. The school, also called Hackney Cottage Homes, was built in 1903 as a workhouse for Hackney orphans. It was on the cottage principle instead of large institutional buildings and was designed by W.A. Finch. It was made up of a porter’s lodge, probationary cottage, administration block, eight residential cottages and an infirmary round a central green. A school was added in 1907. The orphanage closed in 1939 and reopened as the Ongar Residential Home for mentally handicapped boys which itself closed in 1994

High Street
The street widens within the enclosure for a market-place, and narrows at sites of the gates through the town enclosure ditch.
The defensive structure around the town is marked by the back boundary of the properties which front the High Street on the west side.
Little Bensons, This is two semi-detached houses from the 19th in brick. There are steps to the doors with cast iron rails.
Outbuilding at the back of Little Bensons. This is an oldstable with a 12 hole dovecote from the 19th . It is Timber framed and weatheboarded.
Bensons Yard. Building South of Little Bensons.used as an office and workshop. It is 19th and timber framed with vertical weatherboarding and a High Street front of red brick. It may have been part of Ongar Grammar school. The Pleasaunce Chipping Ongar Library
212 Ongar House. This 18th brick building is now an office.
218 Hermitage Cottage. This was originally two cottages from the late 18th. Timber framed, rendered, and with weather boarding
218 The Cock Tavern". 18th pub, this is a timber framed, part plastered part weather boarded building with 20th extensions. It was at one time a Gray's pub and this is still advertised on the fascia.
Theatre Resource. This Arts Centre is in the buildings of the Great Stony School which was owned by Hackney Council. The school closed in 1994 and the site acquired by ‘The Great Stony School Trust’ which leases the site to Theatre Resource who opened it as an arts centre in 1999 working with young people and people with disabilities
Central House. This was originally occupied by the private Ongar Grammar School and dates from 1840. Buildings here were part of the setae of The Little Bansons and the school was built before 1874. In 1937 the school it had music rooms, a gym, swimming-bath and rifle-range as well as playing fields and grounds. The school took boarders. It closed in the early 1940s and the building converted to business use in the 1950s. It is built of brick with painted ashlar
stucco.
Pleasaunce Garden. The garden contains a large copper beech which is partly in the Cerizay garden. Ongar is twinned with Cerizay in France, noted for its orchards. Cherry trees and a walnut from Cerizay were planted in the Pleasance by the Twinning Association.
Police Station. The original police station was opened in the 1885s on land given by Mr. Budworth
The outer defence round the medieval town, include a gateway near the Police Station to the north. The road still narrows here
Telephone Exchange
Budworth Hall. This was built in 1886 as a memorial to P. Budworth, a local J.P. and owner of Greensted Hall. It was originally an assembly room, a reading room and a coffee room for "the young men of the town". The tower and clock was added in 1887 for Queen Victoria's jubilee. The architect was Fothergill Watson of Nottingham and it is in red brick. There is a plaque saying “Erected 1886" over a window and another commemorative plaque.
Ongar Station. Opened by the Great Eastern Railway in Apri1 1865 as the terminus on the line from Epping with a long single platform on the south side. It was then called The Epping Railway. The last steam train ran in 1957. In 1948 it became part of the Central Line. In 1994 it closed and taken over by the Epping and Ongar Heritage Railway.
Station building in red brick in typical Great Eastern Railway style.
Station Masters house in red brick
Housing on the site of the Goods Yard. The yard handled a daily milk train dealing with 1,300 churns a week as well as general goods, and local produce. It was closed in 1966.

Love Lane
Ongar Town Cemetery. Opened in 1866 when the church yard at St Martin’s was closed. There are two chapels, one church of England and one non-comformist. Both are fitted with turntables for coffins to rest on, so that bodies can be carried in and out head first. They were designed and built by I C Gilbert, an associate of the architect of Budworth Hall
Ongar Sports and Social Club House and Playing Fields

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