Battleswick Farm, East Donyland, Essex Historic Asset Assessment Leigh Alston MA (Oxon), Architectural Historian Leigh Alston MA (Oxon) 4 Nayland Road Bures St Mary Suffolk CO8 5BX Tel. (01787) 228016
[email protected] May 2017 Battleswick Farm, East Donyland, Colchester, Essex (TM 025 220) This report is based on a site visit of 20th April 2017 and is intended to supplement an assessment made by Dave Stenning, formerly Essex County Council’s Historic Buildings Officer, whose sketch is included. The property’s postal address is Battleswick Farm, Rowhedge Road, Rowhedge, Colchester CO5 7JP, but it lies in the parish of East Donyland (of which Rowhedge forms the principal settlement). The building is omitted in error from the Schedule of Listed Buildings but is currently subject to re-evaluation (Historic England case no. 1441357). Summary Battleswick Farm occupies the site of the medieval manor of ‘Battleshall alias Battleswick’ in East Donyland, which bears the name of its 13th century holder Richard Battle of Wivenhoe. For much of its existence the manor appears to have operated either as a grange or a tenanted farm belonging to the larger estate based at Wivenhoe Hall which it overlooks on the opposite bank of the River Colne. The picturesque weatherboarded and largely timber-framed farmhouse is a building of considerable historic interest that evolved in a highly abnormal manner. It consists of five principal structures, all of which were shown on the tithe map of 1839: a small late-17th century central hall of 1.5 storeys is flanked on the east by a much larger parlour of two storeys that dates from the early-16th century and on the west by a single storeyed kitchen of the late-16th or early-17th century.