“All places that the eye of Heaven visits Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.”
My Dad used to like quoting this bit of advice from John of Gaunt in Richard II. Certainly the chance of finding points of interest in unexpected places came through on a recent visit to the village of Much Haddam near Bishops Stortford in Hertfordshire.
We were there for a walk courtesy of Country Walking magazine. As well as a pleasant six mile stroll through the countryside, this drew attention to the Henry Moore museum along the route, including plenty of sculptures outdoors which you can see easily.
A seasonal benefit was a field of young lambs, and later some very early bluebells coming through.
But the greatest historical interest came in Much Haddam itself.
The Forge Museum (www.haddammuseum.org.uk) includes some Elizabethan wall paintings, on the wall where they were originally painted, where they had been hidden behind layers of wallpaper for centuries, until they were revealed in the early 20th century. They feature the Judgment of Solomon from the Old Testament, the Royal Arms of Queen Elizabeth I, and the coat of arms of the Newce family who owned the property at that period. I’ve certainly not seen anything like this, in a secular and domestic setting, and in what today seems a relatively small property – this isn’t a stately home, but a room that’s about 12 foot by 10 foot, in a two storey house with a few such rooms either side of a corridor. The Newce family were local notables, and their house was designed to emphasise their status to neighbours and visitors, but there would have been grander properties not far away. The wall paintings are the unusual thing, certainly to our eyes.
As its name implies, The Forge Museum also includes a blacksmith’s workshop, which occupied the building for centuries, plus other local history.
More generally, walking along the main street in Much Haddam raises a number of questions, Why were there so many fine apparently Georgian buildings? What led people to this part of Hertfordshire? Why are they apparently built as terraces? I don’t have the answers, and the point of this post is to bring out that you can find points of interest where you don’t expect to, and the chance to use your own eyes and detective instincts to explore at least a bit about the history of a place and what made it tick.