Finchingfield, Essex

This morning I went to one of the local libraries to tutor a student I've been working with for a few months. For a reason that will become obvious later in this post, I began musing about our trip to Finchingfield in Essex with Barbara and her husband.

Barbara had told us that Finchingfield was a picturesque town (no, it's a village, Barbara says! I have edited town to village. I can't believe how many times I wrote the word town!) and different from the usual country villages in the area. She was right, of course. We were delighted with Finchingfield and came away from our visit with an appreciation for the small English village at its best.

This sign stands in the middle of the village reflecting in metal and paint the scene in which it is standing as you can see from the photo below. If you look closely you can even see the sign in the green grass triangle in the middle of the photo.

As we strolled through the village, I took numerous photos of the cottages. I love domestic architecture and am particularly fond of English cottages.

Some of the houses share common walls.

Many of the cottages in Finchingfield have thatched roofs. Each thatcher/artisan has a signature method of decorating part of the roof and if you know the thatchers, you can recognize each one's work by the design.





Cottages often have names. I enjoyed reading the names and wondering about the origin of names, who chose them, how long they had been known locally by that particular name. Often the cottages were named after locations or flowers or occupations.

As I walked along the main road in Finchingfield I noticed a sweet little cottage.

The name plate by the door read Rosemary Cottage. This is the reason I was thinking of Finchingfield this morning. My student's sister's name is Rosemary and I took this photo just for her.

After I had the photo of Rosemary's namesake cottage, I looked for a cottage that would appeal to her brother. He raises chickens but I never found a cottage named after any kind of chicken. But I did find this cottage name: Green End Cottage~Duck End.

And I took a photo of the ducks on the green for him.

We ate a wonderful lunch at the Fox Inn Pub.

As we walked back to the car at the end of our visit to Finchingfield, I saw this little silver beauty. I snapped a picture of it for my brother.