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This will help:
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ESSEX-UK/2004-07/1089417045
Hi Ruth, Colleen and listers
There is a photo of St Aylotts on this URL and some of its history etc.
Some nice shots of the interior also.
I have wrote to the current owners the Braithwaites a few weeks ago, but
to date have had no reply.
The URL is http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/ppom022004.htm
It was once the home of my Gt grandfather Esau Medcalf.
Esau died at St Aylotts Farm, Saffron Walden aged 77 years he was
buried at Saffron Walden Cemetery on 24 Dec 1919 compartment 16 Grave
space 44 beside his wife Hannah.
His brother had lived and farmed there for a short time and then my
Grandparents and his brother etc. It appears to have been lived in by my
Medcalf family from about 1901-1906 to 1930's or maybe mid 1940's as far
as i can determine.
Ernest Edward MEDCALF is listed as a farmer at St. Aylotts (Saffron
Walden) he is listed in Kelly's 1922 &1929.
My grandfather Mortimer Medcalf later moved to Copt Hall Farm which they
farmed to late 1940's or early 1950's as far as i know.. I am still
looking for more info on them all... Almost all ten my grandfathers
children were born at Copt Hall farm.
I found this description from the book "Discover Walden" written by
Jacqueline and Peter Cooper in 1996 which describes the countryside
around the town and gives detailed routes for historical and wildlife walks.
Here is what they say about St Aylotts, which is beyond Copt Hall which,
as the name suggests, is on a hill. It lies on the north east edge of
Saffron Walden by the road to Ashdon. The walk begins from Sewards End
which is south west of Ashdon about halfway between Ashdon and Radwinter.
"Glimpsed through a hedge to the left, isolated from all intrusion, lies
the old house of St Aylotts, where legend has it that in some distant
era 'Saint Aylett was martered at a place bearing his name'. Could this
be why the Abbot of Walden chose this distant spot, assorted out of
Hales Wood in the mid-thirteenth century, a moated retreat, for his
country home and chapel? As monasticism declined from pious to more
secular needs, a later Abbot cut down 400 oaks to build the present fine
house, precisely dated by dendrochronology to 1500, but retaining the
old moat. A recent survey has confirmed the importance of this grade one
listed building, which was a farm from 1572.
St Aylotts, surrounded by beautiful ancient countryside of little
fields, old hedges, pasture, meadow and woodland, must have abounded in
wildlife. Gibson, the Walden botanist, recorded the now rare
Green-winged Orchid as common here in the last century. Stretching away
into the distance, at the bottom of the lane is Hales Wood, a Site of
Special Scientific Interest and the first National Nature Reserve to be
established in Essex. Once it reached up to here, but is now slightly
smaller. Great oak trees from Ashdon Hales were bought by the King from
the Abbot in 1480, and used for rebuilding work at King's Chapel,
Cambridge."
hope this helps
best wishes
/\/\onique
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