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Finchingfield is a village and civil parish in the Braintree District in northwest Essex, England, primarily a rural area. It is approximately 6 miles (10 km) from Thaxted and further from the larger towns of Saffron Walden and Braintree. Nearby villages include Great Bardfield, Great Sampford, and Wethersfield. The parish was part of the Braintree Rural District from 1894 until 1974. The village of Cornish Hall End (redirected here; see below) is in the civil parish which had a population of 1,471 at the UK census of 2011. The ecclesiastical parish covering Finchingfield includes Cornish Hall End, Shalford, and Wethersfield. Finchingfield is often called the most beautiful village in England, a "picture-postcard" village and one of the most photographed, with a duck pond and village green surrounded by Georgian and medieval cottages; St John the Baptist Church on the hill; an eighteenth-century windmill and three public houses. It has often appeared in television programmes, films, and commercials, as well as on chocolate boxes, biscuit tins, and other products. [edit] HistoryThe village was an official stop for horse-drawn coaches travelling from London to Norwich. Spains Hall, the nearby Elizabethan country house, was built in the early fifteenth century. The hall is named after Hervey de Ispania, who held the manor at the time of the 1086 Domesday Book. Since then, the land has been owned by three families: the de Ispania family, the Kempe family, who acquired it when Margery de Ispania married Nicholas Kempe in the early fifteenth century, and the Ruggles family (later the Ruggles-Brise family who reside there today). The hall was the hub of the community, those families owning much of the village, and employing most of the villagers. [edit] Cornish Hall EndCornish Hall End is on the B1057 road road three miles north of Finchingfield and 4 miles (6 km) south of Steeple Bumpstead. The main part of the village is a ribbon development of about 60 houses on either side of the road with many outlying farms, hamlets and individual houses. [edit] Research Tips
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