Sturgeons House

Writtle University College is a university college located in Writtle near Chelmsford, Essex. It was founded in 1893. Writtle obtained University College status in May 2016.Its countryside estate features a wide range of facilities, including a working farm, an equine centre, science laboratories, design studios, a canine therapy clinic, a specialist animal unit and sports provision including the UK's first permanent 3x3 basketball courts.

Roxwell is a village and civil parish in the Chelmsford district of Essex, England. The village is approximately 4 miles (6 km) west from the centre of the county town of Chelmsford, and to the south of the A1060 road, on which are the parish hamlets of Boyton Cross and Chalk End. Further Roxwell hamlets are Peppers Green at the north of the parish and Radley Green at the south.

Boyton Cross is a hamlet in Essex, England. It is approximately half a mile from the village of Roxwell and is situated mainly along the A1060 road which runs from Bishop's Stortford to Chelmsford. There is a pub (The Hare, which was refurbished in 2010). Commercial premises include a variety of farms & privately hired industrial units.

Newney Green Pit is a 0.07-hectare (0.17-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest west of Writtle in Essex. It is a Geological Conservation Review site.This former quarry exposed the Kesgrave (Thames) Gravel, first recognised in Suffolk, dating to the Cromerian interglacial around 500,000 years ago. This preceded the severe Anglian ice age, which is also seen, marking the transition to glacial conditions. The site is described by Natural England as "of prime importance for the correlation between Pleistocene stratigraphic sites in the Thames and East Anglian areas". Ice wedge polygons just below the Anglian layer reveal very cold conditions just before the advance of the ice sheet across East Anglia.The site has now been filled in and is part of a field.

The village and civil parish of Writtle lies 1 mile (1.6 km) west of Chelmsford, Essex, England. It has a traditional village green complete with duck pond and a Norman church, and was once described as "one of the loveliest villages in England, with a ravishing variety of ancient cottages". The village is now home to Writtle University College, one of the UK's oldest and largest land-based colleges and a partner institution of the University of Essex, the grounds of which once housed a Royal hunting lodge, later the possession of the De Brus and De Bohun families. The suggestion that Writtle is the birthplace of Robert the Bruce, as well as his father Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale, is contested, though its possession and use by both is incontrovertible. From 1996 until 2017 Writtle hosted the annual southern V Festival within the grounds of Sir John Comyn's Hylands Park. At the 2001 census, it had a population of 5,632, decreasing to 5,383 at the 2011 Census.

St James' Church, Chignal St James is a former parish church in Chignal St James in Essex, England. The building has a 13th or 14th century nave with flint rubble walls including some freestone and Roman brick fragments, limestone and brick dressings and a tiled roof. The east and south walls of its chancel seem to have been rebuilt and a stairway to a rood loft added, both in the early 16th century, though the building has never had a chancel arch. It was restored in the 19th century and its north porch is modern.The church was declared redundant on 18 March 1981. It was converted to a private dwelling in 1989 by Patrick Lorimer. A garage was added in 2008 following an archaeological dig.

2MT was the first British radio station to make regular entertainment broadcasts, and the "world's first regular wireless broadcast" for entertainment. Transmissions began on 14 February 1922 from an ex-Army hut next to the Marconi laboratories at Writtle, near Chelmsford in Essex. Initially the station only had 200 watts and transmitted on 700m (428 kHz) on Tuesdays from 2000 to 2030. Two Emma Toc (as it was called in the British Army Signalling Corps spelling alphabet of the day) was a surprising success. The presenter, producer, actor-manager and writer was Captain P. P. Eckersley, a Marconi engineer. His regular announcement; "This is Two Emma Toc, Writtle testing, Writtle testing", became in a short time quite well known. 2MT led to the creation of its sister station 2LO, and subsequently the BBC. 2MT did not itself become part of the BBC and closed down on 17 January 1923. Peter Eckersley went on to become the founding Chief Engineer at the British Broadcasting Company. The Marconi Hut site at Writtle is commemorated by a nearby information board at Melba Court – named after Dame Nellie Melba who made Britain's first publicised entertainment broadcast from Marconi's New Street factory – unveiled in 1997 by Marconi's daughter Princess Elettra Marconi. The site was sold off and the land used for housing development in the 1990s. A significant part of the original Writtle hut is now preserved at the Sandford Mill Museum of Science and Industry in North Chelmsford, where it forms part of a wireless and broadcasting historic exhibit.

Chignall St James is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Chignall, in the Chelmsford district in Essex, England. The village is situated 3½ miles northwest by west from the county town of Chelmsford. In 1881 the parish had a population of 224. On 24 March 1888 the parish was abolished to form Chignall, parts also went to Broomfield and Writtle. The spelling of the village name is open to discussion. Sometimes it is spelt as "Chignall St James" at other times, as "Chignal St James" or "Chignal Saint James". Businesses providing employment in the area include Ashdown Engineering, Gardening Express and local farms. The area once included a Roman villa, the site of which was discovered in the 1970s. Originally the village was a settlement for farmers and their labour force that worked the land, but as mechanisation took over the farming population left. The village is now partly a commuter settlement, and partly resident to remaining agricultural workers and retired people.The village had a public house, The Three Elms, thought to be over 500 years old, which has passed through many hands over the years, but has proved to be unviable financially. The last incumbents took over in March 2019, but closed again in September 2019, after the premises had been closed for an extended period prior to this. The owners of the property have attempted to sell it on the open market since this time, but to date a new owner can not be found since demand and patronage of such premises has declined over the years. In 2009 there was a planning proposal to create a quarry close by to the village, but this was turned down by the planning authorities.Notable village landmarks include an old brick-built farm barn with a dove-cote thought to be the oldest and only example of its type in Essex, an old red brick school (now a dwelling), the former church, and the Old Rectory.

Chignall is a civil parish in the City of Chelmsford in Essex, England. The civil parish has 311 inhabitants (2011). The villages were recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086 as Cingehala. The parish was created in 1888 from the parishes of Chignal St James and Chignall Smealy.

River Wid is a river in the county of Essex, England, a tributary of the River Can. It runs to the south of Chelmsford, following the A1016, previously the A12 out of Chelmsford at Widford.

Cooksmill Green is a hamlet in both the civil parish of Roxwell and Highwood in the Chelmsford District of Essex, England. It is situated approximately 4 miles (6 km) west from the centre of the county town of Chelmsford. The A414 road is less than one mile to the south. Cooksmill Green is partly in the civil parish of Highwood at the south, and Roxwell at the north.

The Forest of Essex was a royal forest that existed from around 1100 and was disestablished in the 13th century. Forests were legal institutions introduced by the Normans to denote an area where the King or another magnate had the right to keep and hunt deer and make Forest Law. Initially there was a very weak correlation between the extent of the legal forest and what might be termed the 'physical forest', the often wooded common land areas where the deer lived. In later centuries there was a much stronger correlation, so much so that the word forest is now taken to mean the same as woodland. The Forest of Essex covered nearly all of the traditional extent of Essex, but that is not to say the majority of Essex was wooded. The naturalist Oliver Rackham carried out an analysis of Domesday returns for Essex and was able to estimate the county was 20% wooded in 1086. The area covered by Forest Law excluded the least wooded areas of the county along the Thames and North Sea coasts so the percentage for the Forest of Essex was a little higher. Over time parts of the country were disafforested, removed from Forest Law. In 1204 the men of Essex paid the King 500 marks and five palfreys for the 'forest of Essex which is beyond the Causeway between Colchester and Bishop's Stortford to be disafforested. In 1327 Edward III confirmed the Charter of the Forest (originally granted by Edward I in 1304) removing most of the rest of the rest of the County from Forest Law, ending the Forest of Essex. Forest Law now applied only to royal manors and the heavily wooded areas in the south-west Essex.This disestablishment of the Forest of Essex led to the creation of four new smaller Forests which concentrated on areas with a greater proportion of woodland cover, namely: Waltham Forest (which included the physical forest areas subsequently known as Epping Forest, Wintry Forest (north of Epping) and Hainault Forest), Hatfield Forest, Writtle Forest and the long lost Kingswood Forest near Colchester. Hatfield and Writtle were royal manors while Kingswood was attached to the borough of Colchester, but the king owned the trees and grazing there.