Thames Tributary- Stream feeding to the Ingrebourne - Berwick Manor

Thames Tributary- Stream feeding to the Ingrebourne
The Stream flows south west into Berwick Pond

TQ 54335 83692

A bit of Essex country side.some of it previously used for gravel extraction. Now its all country clubs and carp fishing.

Post to the west Berwick Pond
Post to the north Hacton
Post to the east Gerpins

Berwick Pond Road
Berwick comes from Old English 'bere-wic' meaning a 'barley farm' but it can often mean "an outlying part of an estate'.
There was a pre-conquest manor named Berwick and from 1086 held by Robert Germon, passed to the Knights Templars and remained with the Hospitallers until their dissolution in 1540. It was then sold and passed through a number of owners, and was eventually dispersed and sold in the early 20th. North Lodge, later called Rainham Lodge, and South Lodge or Berwick House were part of the estate.
The first manor-house was north of the current Berwick House
The Hospitallers building in the 15th and 16th was south of Berwick pond and demolished by 1575
Berwick Pond farm-house on the site of an earlier house. It is an early 19th house
Berwick House is a timber-framed 17th and Restored after a fire in 1960 it was an old people's home and since 1970 it Berwick Manor country club. Berwick Manor Country Club. Ancient manor site.
Stables early c19
'The chapel of Our Lady of Berwick' was here in the 14th and still in use in 1535. It lay north of Berwick House and masonry and medieval tiles have been found in a field there.
Seed-pod shaped bollards at the car-park entrance to Berwick Woods
White Post Corner.

Berwick Woods
This was the East London Quarry, a gravel extraction site owned by Tarmac who have restored it and it has won a number of awards for thus. The site has scrub and woodland around pits and ponds. It overlooks the flood meadows along the Ingrebourne and there are many birds including some rare ones. It has the largest adder population in London. An arts and design project has produced the ‘Gabion seats' by Steve Follen and signage by Gary Breeze which stand around the site. A gabion is a steel cage structure which construction workers use for shoring up and the seats are curved above a metal mesh cage filled with blocks of grey stone. Two stand at the highest point of the park.They are intended as a reminder of the former quarry. Elsewhere there are log seats
Berwick Ponds. Used for carp fishing.

Sources
Berwick Manor Country Club. Web site
Berwick Woods. Web site
Evans. Bygone Dagenham and Rainham
Field. London Place Names
Victoria County History. Essex

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