Car-free adventures aroundBraintreeEssex
Roman roads and Flemish weavers, nature reserves and discount shopping malls… Braintree has a long and varied history. Just over an hour from London, this Essex town has plenty to offer the car-free visitor. In the countryside nearby, you can find medieval barns with Knights Templar connections, disused railway lines, and gardens designed by Harold Peto.
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1. Braintree Village
Braintree Village is an outlet shopping centre. It is on the doorstep of the Braintree Freeport railway station, served by direct the line from Braintree, Chelmsford and London Liverpool Street. Locally, you can also catch the hourly bus 133 from Braintree bus station.
- The outlet village has more than 70 well known brands among its shops including BOSS, Polo Ralph Lauren, Radley London and Armani. They are all offering up to 60% off the recommended retail price, making this Essex outlet a magnet for shoppers.
- It’s great for a family day out too, with big name restaurants and a nearby Cineworld. The Namco Funscape Amusement Centre is next door, just five minutes’ walk from the station, with bowling, ghost hunts, ping pong and arcade machines, from shooter games to cuddly toy claws.
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2. Bus to Coggeshall
The National Trust’s Tudor mansion in neighbouring Coggeshall was built around 1500 for the cloth merchant Thomas Paycocke. From the orange half-timbered frontage to the arts and crafts garden, Paycocke’s is a feast for the senses.
- Open from March, Paycocke’s costs £7.50 to visit and the ticket also gets you into Coggeshall Grange Barn round the corner.
- There’s a tea shop at Paycocke’s too, with seats out on the sunny little terrace in summer.
- It’s just ten minutes on bus 70 towards Colchester to get there from Braintree bus station (Stand C)
- Get off after the bus leaves the main road, onto a smaller road signed Coggeshall. The first stop is opposite Coggeshall Nursery, a popular garden centre and tea room. Next door is the award-winning West Street vineyard.
- The next bus stop is opposite Paycocke’s and the third stop, in the colourful heart of the village is perfect for Coggeshall’s shops and cafes.
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3. John Ray
If you have any time to spare between buses, don’t miss Braintree’s colourful museum, just over the road from the bus station. The statue outside is naturalist, John Ray, who was born in Black Notley near Braintree in 1627.
- The museum has a John Ray gallery, where school groups can explore the natural world as well interesting displays on local history, from Celtic figurines to Flemish tapestries.
- The changing exhibitions are pretty diverse too, from figures out of Star Wars to artworks by Henri Matisse.
- John Ray’s work has had a lasting impact on the study of nature through the ages: he first used the terms like “petal” and “pollen” and worked out that the rings inside trees could tell us how many years old they were.
- The John Ray Trust has worked with Essex County Council and others to devise a John Ray Walk, which celebrates his life. Buttercup way-marks lead from Braintree to the town of Witham, via Black Notley and Cressing Temple (see 4 below).
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4. Cressing Temple
This group of barns and walled gardens deep in the Essex countryside is beautiful and free to visit. It’s called Cressing Temple because the buildings were given to the Knights Templar in 1137. The 13th century barns are some of the oldest timber barns in England.
- There’s also a Walled Garden, reconstructing a Tudor pleasure garden and a Tiptree Tea Room, serving up cake and coffee or – of course – locally made Tiptree jams with scones and cream!
- The nearest station is White Notley. Cressing Temple is about a mile away along a road or by footpath: for a relatively traffic-free route, turn left out of the station and left just before the bridge onto the way-marked Essex Way.
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5. The Flitch Way
The old branch line from Braintree branch line to Bishop’s Stortford was a single-track railway, opened in 1869, improving trade and travel across the Essex countryside. When it closed, a century later, the fifteen miles of tree-lined path gradually attracted a variety of wildlife. Today the Flitch Way is a popular route for walkers and cyclists. Bus 133 regularly connects both ends of the walk and the pretty town of Great Dunmow (see 6 below).
- The route passes railway relics, thatched cottages and a variety of natural landscapes, from bluebell woods and butterfly-rich grasses to boardwalks through marshland. In spring the banks are sprinkled with primroses, in autumn overhung with rosehips and crab apples.
- Follow signs near Braintree railway station to reach the café in an old booking hall at Rayne two miles away, an excellent place for refreshments (and there is Flitch Way museum in an old railway carriage).
- The Flitch Way takes its name from a local tradition: a flitch (side) of bacon is awarded to happy married couples in “trials” that are still held every four years. The 133 bus also passes the gourmet Flitch of Bacon pub in Little Dunmow and the museum in Great Dunmow, where you can learn more about the Flitch Trials.
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6. Forgotten Gardens of Easton Lodge
Near the town of Great Dunmow, on the cycle-friendly Flitch Way or the 133 bus route (buses seven days a week from Stansted Airport and Braintree), are the Gardens of Easton Lodge. A sunken Italian garden, with colourful borders and stone balustrades round a lily pond, is one highlight of this ten acres of parkland, the work of Edwardian designer Harold Peto. A devoted group of volunteers has worked hard to restore the old glories of the gardens, which now include a tree house, walled garden and glade. The gardens are an energetic couple of miles walk from the town, a chance to enjoy the local countryside. You will need OS map 195 and can follow the crocus-motif way-marks of the Saffron Trail for part of the way.
- Frances Maynard (known as “Daisy”) who commissioned Peto to create the garden, had a long affair with Edward, then Prince of Wales, became a legendary social campaigner and inspired the popular music hall song “Daisy, Daisy”. Among her celebrity friends was the early sci-fi writer HG Wells, who lived in a brick house across the fields nearby.
- The gardens are generally open to visitors about one Sunday a month.
- February sees the annual Snowdrop Sundays, when visitors can enjoy delicate white carpets in the woods and along the lawn.
