Welcome to this website about the community of Chrishall in Essex.
Chrishall is a small village on a hilltop in the very north west of Essex, close to the borders of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, in the East of England. This website is particularly aimed at the local community and the genealogist who perhaps has never visited Chrishall and wishes to visualise the kind of community whence his or her ancestor came.
“I stumbled accidentally across some aspects of its history, and began to learn and think more about it, but then – as I studied the records – people began to rise up out of them. Where before I had seen only names on lists, individual characters began to shake their shoulders and stand up. It was as though these dead were being awakened, resurrected. They seemed close, as though they had something to say.”
(quote from In a Country Churchyard by Ronald Fletcher. Although this quote refers to Westleton in Suffolk, we hope you come to feel the same about Chrishall charcters and history.)
Recent updates to existing content:
- February 2020: found the names of the winning football team (although we still don’t know what they won!)
- April 2020: Saffron Walden Museum have started a blog. It is linked from our Links page where there are all sorts of other interesting history resources for you to check out as well. Also added is a photograph of Wire Farm showing the lamp outside – see the Wire Farm page here and scroll down for the photograph.
- May 2020: An interview with Dennis Smith about him joining the Home Guard when he lived in Chrishall has been added to our links page. And another one for our links page: the Rogers family history containing links to many Chrishall families.
Chrishall History Facebook Page
New Chrishall History Facebook page so we can continue to share the collection even when the Archive is closed. As I write this we are in the midst of a pandemic - Corvid-19 has changed our lives and is a historic event in itself. One of the impacts of the virus is...
VE Day 75th Commemoration
Friday 8th May 2020 is the 75th anniversary of VE Day, Victory in Europe, where the country celebrated the end of part, at least, of the Second World War. (VJ day was to come later in the year.) Chrishall never seems backwards at coming forwards when a party is in the...
Chrishall in 1949
In the year we had VE Day celebrations across the country, Chrishall was a busy little village.Old postcard of the ChurchRev A. A. BagleyThe Church was led by The Rev. A.A Bagley. Sitting atop the hill in the vicarage, he would be able to look over the surrounding...
The Royal Observer Corps
The following article was written by Joe Hagger who was one of the village cobblers or shoe-makers and lived in the cottage that faces the green next to The Red Cow. (This article is published as written and the language reflects the time at which Mr Hagger was...
Dancing round the Maypole
I hope you were out at the crack of dawn this morning to wash in the morning dew to preserve your youth and dancing round your maypoles! I remember dancing round the maypole in Chrishall old school playground, although how the pole was held up I can't remember. I...
Bryan Rogers: childhood in Chrishall and the outbreak of WWII
(Pictured above: Dot and Charlie Rogers with sons Leonard and Bryan and daughter Gwen. Dot's mother "Nan-Nan" Rush. Mr and Mrs Jim Archer, friends from Saffron Walden. On holiday in Frinton, last week of August 1939 just before WWII was declared.) Who am I? I was born...