Sturmer, Essex

Sturmer railway station was a station that served the village of Sturmer, Essex, England. It opened in 1865 on the Stour Valley Railway between Sudbury and Cambridge. The station and line closed in 1967 as part of the Beeching cuts. The station building still stands today as a private residence.

Stour Brook is a river that starts north west of the town of Haverhill, Suffolk just over the Cambridgeshire border in the parish of West Wickham. After leaving Haverhill, it quickly joins the River Stour by the village of Wixoe, Essex. During its course through Haverhill, most of the natural channel of this river has been replaced with a concrete channel.

Calford Green is a small hamlet situated 0.5 miles south of Kedington and two miles east of Haverhill in south-west Suffolk, United Kingdom.

Boyton End is a hamlet in Suffolk, England. Boyton was recorded in the Domesday Book as Alia Boituna.

Bumpstead was a rural district in the administrative county of Essex, England from 1894 to 1934.

Cotton Hall is a Grade II listed stately home in the village of Kedington, Suffolk, England. It is located on the banks of the River Stour and is one of the ancient notable manor houses in the parish. From 1742 it was the seat of the prominent Bowyer family of Suffolk. The present building is a timber-frame and plaster structure estimated to be built between the 15th and 17th centuries. It was heavily restored in the 20th century.

Haverhill Railway Walks is a 14.1 hectare Local Nature Reserve in Haverhill in Suffolk. It is owned and managed by West Suffolk Council.This is a footpath along a three mile stretch of a closed section of the Stour Valley Railway. Much of it is covered with scrub and large trees, and it provides a wildlife corridor for a diverse range of fauna and flora through the centre of Haverhill.

Birdbrook is a village and civil parish in Essex, England. It is located approximately 6 km (3.7 mi) southeast of Haverhill, Suffolk and is 34 km (21 miles) north from the county town of Chelmsford. The village is in the district of Braintree and in the parliamentary constituency of Saffron Walden. The parish is part of the Bumpsteads and Upper Colne parish cluster. It is 93 metres above sea level. According to the 2011 census it had a population of 397. There is a Public House, "The Plough" and a Church, "St Augustine of Canterbury". Nearby Moyns Park, a Grade I listed Elizabethan country house, is said to have been where Ian Fleming put the finishing touches on his novel From Russia, with Love.

Wixoe is a village and civil parish in the West Suffolk district of Suffolk in eastern England. Located on the northern bank of the River Stour, two miles south-east of Haverhill, in 2005 its population was 140. It consists largely of Victorian cottages along a narrow lane. There is a church of 12th-century origin, St Leonard's, much restored in the 1880s. It was recorded in the Domesday Book, at 600 acres one of the smallest parishes in the hundred of Risbridge. There are some 13 listed buildings, including a 19th-century bridge and a water mill.The Great Eastern Railway ran through the village, part of the Stour Valley line from 1865 until its closure in March 1967 under the Beeching 'axe'. The nearest stations were Sturmer to the west and Stoke-by-Clare to the east. The track bed and embankments remain clearly visible.

Kedington is a village and civil parish in the West Suffolk district of Suffolk in eastern England, located between the towns of Clare and Haverhill in the south-west of Suffolk. Known as Doomtown in the Domesday Book (1086), there were 280 people living there at that time. Part of it was formerly in Essex. Kedington's church, St Peter and St Paul, is one of the historical treasures of East Anglia, dating from the late 13th century. However, the church is built on top of a Roman villa, the remains of which can be viewed under small trap doors located in the pews towards the back of the nave. There is an Anglo-Saxon stone cross located above the altar on the east wall of the church. This was found near to the church and is believed to be from a church dating from Saxon times. Kedington comes in the top rank of small English churches and is renowned for its unmodernised interior and Barnardiston tombs. John Betjeman understandably christened Kedington ' a village Westminster Abbey'. The 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson was rector of Kedington prior to his elevation.

Birdbrook railway station was located 0.7 miles (1.1 km) to the northeast of the village of Birdbrook, Essex. It was 65 miles 74 chains (106.10 km; 65.93 mi) from London Liverpool Street via Marks Tey. It opened in 1863 as the replacement for Whitley station, and closed in 1962. Former Services

Moyns Park is a Grade I listed Elizabethan country house in Birdbrook, north Essex, England. The home of the Gent family, until the late 19th century, was once owned by Major-General Cecil Robert St John Ives, maternal grandfather of Ivar Bryce, the next owner. Bryce was a close friend of the author Ian Fleming, who stayed at the house in the summer of 1956. When Bryce's wife, Josephine Hartford, an A&P heiress and sister of Huntington Hartford, died in 1992, she left the estate to Lord Ivar Mountbatten and George Mountbatten, 4th Marquess of Milford Haven. Ivar Bryce's first cousin Janet Mercedes Bryce had been married to David Mountbatten and was the mother of Ivar and George Mountbatten. Lord Ivar Mountbatten lived in the house with his wife, Penelope Thompson, before selling it in 1997. It is said that Fleming made final changes to his novel From Russia, with Love in the house. The house was also the location for several Hammer Horror films. The house was also used as a residential Riding School in and around 1949, with courses in dressage, show jumping and short B.H.S courses. The chief instructor was C. Coombs MBE. The name Moyns is believed to have its origins in the name of the Le Moyne family who under Gilbert Le Moyne remained in England after the Norman invasion of 1066. The family ran through several major and minor lines of nobles and gentry such as the De Warrens, Gents, Darbys, Dalstons (of Cumberland), and many others. The family is now linked to many others by marriage, e.g. Speakmans, Boutflowers, Glasses, Chenevix-Trenchs, and more. The area in the Le Moynes once had lands that encompassed Hedingham Castle and other villages over a swathe of Essex. The Gents held their first court at Moyns in the early 16th century and the estate grew and continued to do so under Sir Thomas Gent (Queen Elizabeth's Baron of the Exchequer, Sergeant-at-Law and later judge). According to an article in The Essex Countryside of May 1965 by GC Harper, the house was once moated, and takes its name from its first owner who had it built, Robert de Fitzwilliam le Moigne in the early C14, but little but the SW wing remains from C15. It remained in that family for 200 years, then passed by marriage to William Gent. His son Thomas became MP for Maldon in 1571 and a 'trusted assistant' to Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth 1's Secretary of State & spymaster, whence he rose to 2nd Baron of the Exchequer. He sat in judgement at the trial of the conspirators of the Babington Plot to assassinate the Queen and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. His wealth & status led him to rebuild the west front, completed by his son Henry, as he died in 1593. Thomas signed a petition to Walsingham requesting he write to the governors of the Dutch congregation in Colchester & demand that 20-30 families return to Halstead to resume the cloth trade there, but to no avail. George Gent d. 1818 was a magistrate for more than 60 years. The right to appoint the headmaster of the school in Steeple Bumpstead belonged until c.1835 to the owner of Moyns. The Moyns occupancy ceased in 1879 when it was sold to Major General Cecil Robert St John Ives, whose grandson John Bryce occupied it in the 1960s. The gardens of the 200-acre estate had yew topiary, and the paths were said to be planted to a plan by Lord Bacon, with a bowling green one of the oldest.