Birdbrook, Essex

Description
Birdbrook, a parish in Essex, having a station on the Colne Valley railway, 4 miles SE of Haverhill. It has a post office under Halstead; money order office, Haverhill; telegraph office, Birdbrook station. Acreage, 2072; population, 531. A Roman camp occurs near Watson Bridge, and a number of Roman urns, coins, and other relics have been found near the old Roman road. The living is a rectory in the diocese of St Albans; tithe rent charge commuted at £620 with residence, in the gift of Clare College, Cambridge. The church is an admirable specimen of Early English architecture, and has been faithfully and completely restored; it contains among other monuments a tablet to the memory of one Martha Blewitt, who was the wife of successively nine husbands, and died in 1681, and of Robert Hogan, the husband of seven wives, the last of whom he married in 1739. Baythorne-end, Chadwell (St Cead's Well), and Bailey Hill are hamlets in this parish.