Havering

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Broxhill Road

Round House, east of church and green. Oval building, c.1800 was owned by a tea merchant and modelled on a tea caddy. Owned by Pemberton, the rose grower, Alexandra Rose Well concealed. Built c. 1792 for William Sheldon, restored with much care in 1980-1. Convincingly attributed by Neil Burton to John of St Mary Paddington, who designed the circular Belle 1775 Sheldon was a subscriber to Flaw's rendered walls and a far-projecting roof with Westmorland slates.  The house stands on a mound, which cleverly conceals the service basement and an encircling outer passage lit by gratings in its vault.  This can be reached by a tunnel which starts close to the dairy

Dairy, a tiny building with rendered front, four pilasters, and pediment.  The room on the ground floor and the one on the first floor fill a half circle, the others are uncertain whether all the present subdivisions are original to the central stair, with slim straight banisters, winds to the top floor through a roof-lit oval drum with the chimney flues and is concentric with the outer further stair one can enjoy excellent views.  French panoramic wallpaper of c. 1820 is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.  The basement stair forms a separate lobby but in 1930 was relocated.

The Thatch, a one-storey thatched cottage

Havering-atte-Bower,

Palace there in the Middle Ages, Hilltop village green.  Used by medieval kings, Edward III invited Richard II there.  1465.  Library owned green.  Palace was called the Bower or Pyrgo  The village lies on a ridge of high ground, a few older houses around the green.  The Royal Liberty of Havering, which existed from the Middle Ages is roughly coterminous with the modern borough, and took its name from the palace, or royal hunting lodge here which was west of the present church.  It was used as a royal residence from the c12 to the time of Henry VIII.  Nothing remains. In the c13 Henry III embellished the chapel and the queen's lodgings. The palace was the official house of the English Queens and a dower house for the queen mother from 1273, and subsequently until Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour.  The infant Prince Edward had a household here in 1538; Elizabeth I and James I visited several times, but by the early c17th the palace was runinous. The buildings are shown on a map of 1578, an irregular straggle with prominent buttressing, suggests c13 and c14 structures.  in the early c19 nothing remained apart from a building in use as the parish church.

Some story that the name comes from Edward the Confessor who was asked for alms by a beggar and instead said ‘have a ring’. Then the beggar gave the ring to some pilgrims telling them to tell the king he would die within six months – and he did. The ring is on the borough coat of arms.  Thought the name comes from a landowner called Haefer.

Water tower

Green

Stocks. A rarity in Essex and a whipping post.  Restored 1966.

Cottages and forge: group of weatheboarded cottages of three and two bays, the eastern one with one-storey forge attached.

Garage of several dates, partly c18: front range with the parapet and early c19 tripartite window at the steep-roofed range behind, perhaps earlier.

North Road

Royal Oak

Rose Cottage, another carefully restored timber-framed weatherboarded cottage its subsisting timbers suggest a possibly early c18 date.

Ivy Hollows c19, rendered, with bay windows and an attractive along the whole front.

Dame Tipping School, with informative plaques: founded 1837, rebuilt again 1891.  The Tudor schoolhouse 1837: yellow brick with dripstones.

St.John the Evangelist, 1875/8 This Victorian church replaced a simple building with thatched nave, reputedly  On the site of one of the chapels of the royal palace.  By Basil Champneys early work of this Arts and Crafts architect. Flint with stone dressings with an aisle in the Essex tradition, and a surprisingly elaborate tower porch.  

Church Hall.  Two buildings now linked.  One’ attractive design of 1902, given by the Pemberton family.  Pale brick with stone dressings; round-arched.  The windows with wooden mullions and arched Stonework with delicately tooled patterns.