Finchingfield, cream tea, post mill and lovely cottages

Rural England, county Essex, Finchingfield

52 miles North from London

We ran away from the big city. We just parked our car on the street, there’s no car park here. We stopped next to the small pond lovely lit by the autumn sun. The ducks in the water were doing their things and didn’t look impressed by us or the apples in the water.

The pond in Finchingfield / Финчингфийлд

We like the beautiful village. The place is so quiet, stunning picturesque with its lovely old cottages arranged around the pond. We were in Finchingfield, Essex – the most popular village for photographers and painters in England. You can see this village on a lot of postcards, paintings and calendars. Someone called it “The postcard of England”.

The church in Finchingfield

This beautiful rural picture was dominated by the building of the church “St. John the Baptist” on the top of a hill. We walked up the hill and entered the church’s yard through an arc under the old Guildhall building. Stepping in the church yard we saw the old church’s tower that was built in the 12^th century.

Actually the lower two stages were built in 12th century, the third was built in 15th century. The church itself dates back to the 14th century. This beautiful tower was used by parishioners for defensive purposes and for worship. I believe there would be a great view to the whole village from its top but I didn’t have the chance to go up.

The graveyard – „Thy Way, Not Mine, O Lord“

The nicely mowed green yard is, like most church yards in England, a graveyard. The old tombstones looked scattered between the trees. The setting sun was shining on the leaning stones.

Duck End

We came down from the hill to the small pond and we went to Duck End. Duck end is a part of Finchingfield. There are many interesting cottages with thatched roofs to see there. We walked down the street and soon we found a small public footpath that brought us to the windmill, the main site of the village.

The windmill

The mill is an old post mill (some kind of earliest European windmills). The mill was built probably in 1756. It was functioning until the end of 19th century. Now the building is property of Essex County Council. The working time is a little bit strange: It is open on the third Sunday of each month, from April to September, between 2pm and 5pm. Of course it wasn’t open when we went there on a Wednesday and we kept walking along the path until we reached a beautiful house.

On our way back we met two people in the mill – Graham and Snod (James). Graham is working for the Essex County Council and takes care of the historical sites. Snod is just Snod, from Finchingfield. These kind men opened the mill for us and invited us to pick apples from the ground. Their task for that day was to check whether the mill is fine after the severe storm the previous day.

We picked apples and had a lovely talk with our kind hosts. I promised to send them postcards from Bulgaria and I did it today. Then we went back to Duck End. The best view in Duck End is still the one from the mill stairs.

Advices

During weekends the village is full of tourists. If you visit it in a weekday you may not be able to go in the mill but you will enjoy a great quiet walk with a lot of ducks.

Bosworth’s Tea Rooms & Restaurant

I cannot skip the afternoon tea with home-made carrot cake in that small café in the center of the village. If you go there – try it! There were other cafes too but we didn’t have enough time to visit them all.