Blackmore - History

History

The village was recorded in the Domesday Book as 'Phingaria' which was a Latinised form of its original Anglo-Saxon name, Fingreth, meaning 'the stream of the people of Fin'. It is thought that the name Blackmore was introduced in the Middle Ages as a reference to 'Black Marsh' or 'Black Swamp'.

The Priory Church of St Laurence church marks the site of a former Augustinian Priory, dissolved during the reign of Henry VIII in 1525. The church is the original building (but without the chancel which was destroyed at the time of dissolution) and is now the parish church and features one of the last remaining all wooden steeples (currently inhabited by a community of bats) in England. The site still shows signs of the original moat. The village itself is believed to have migrated to a location closer to the chapel of the Priory from around Fingrith Hall during the mediaeval period.

Jericho Priory, on the site adjacent to the church and still within the moated area, was built in the 18th Century on the site of an earlier 16th Century building which was believed to be the country retreat of Henry VIII and where, in 1520, his 'natural son', Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, was born.

Other old buildings in the village include the 15th-16th Century Bull Inn, a traditional Essex timber-framed house, and Fingreth Hall, in the north of the parish, where Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer during the Elizabethan era lived.