Finchingfield Guildhall Project History

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About Finchingfield and the Guildhall

Finchingfield Guildhall is homed in the small village of Finchingfield, northwest of Essex around 8 miles north of Braintree and slightly 6 miles west of Halstead.
The village itself houses much history; much of the building within the village is packed with history. The village is home to Essex’s smallest and last standing windmill of its kind, period houses such as cottages and small shops.

It is also known to play a part in the ‘Poor Law’ brought out in 1834 when it became part of the Braintree Union sending many of its poorest village members to work houses within Braintree.

Guildhall Project

The Finchingfield Guildhall Project is run and managed by a trust of volunteers; these people are responsible for maintaining and managing the property. The trust itself has been around since the early 1500’s and has had many connections in the past with other charity organisations and foundations but the Guildhall itself has always played an essential part in the charity organisations.
The Charity Commission is allowing the development of a new charity that will be run by the local villagers. The charity itself will be granted a lease on the building and will act as the management committee taking on ultimate responsibly.

History

In 1470 the Guild of the Holy Trinity was responsible for the foundations of the Guildhall. The Guildhall used to play a vital part within the village as it was used as a school room and on the upper floor the in the main hall it would be used for feasts such as saints days.
Soon after a law was passed resulting in the ban of Guilds, this resulted in the Guildhall falling into disrepair. It was soon pick up by a gentleman named as John Mildmay. He also has a current building within the village that is named after him.
Later on in the 1600’s the Guildhall was sold and another gentleman named as Robert Kempe purchased the Guildhall and invested money for the building to be restored and the possibility of it being extended. Once he had completed his project on the building it was eventually sold to the villagers for a tidy sum of £50.
Here the deeds can be seen below. This proves ownership of the Guildhall by the villagers and has remained in the ownership of the villagers ever since.

The Guildhall was to later be used as a school and sections as almshouses, studies also reveal that the school established was done by Robert Kempe and endowing land to support it. Unfortunately it was not until 1658 that almshouses were recorded in the Guildhall so it cannot be for certain what happened to the building during the period between 1630 and 1658.  
Throughout the centuries the Guildhall has always played a role within the village. this ranges from a variety of functions, civic administration, poor relief and education such as school teaching. 
Education continued to be taught in the guildhall right through until the 20th century but in the early years of this century the building began to fall back into disrepair. There was only one occupant within the building at this time resulting in the building falling into this condition, a possibility in the lack of finance. It was at this period of time that the building required another investment of finance to bring it back to restoration once again.
The building lay in disrepair until the late 1930’s when it was decided by the villagers to put matter right. Members of the village decided to write to the charity commission and this lead to a new scheme being devised. This grew into a number of small charities one being the United Charities of Finchingfield. The Guildhall was vested with the Official Custodian and now is held in their trust even today.
The war played a large contribution to the disruptions of the schemes to the Guildhall and soon after later in 1954 a small museum room and library as allocated on the ground floor. Also on the upper floor the main school room became the ‘Parish Room’.
5 Years later the almshouses on the ground floor became homes to new residents and a further 2 more were created on the upper floor for the first time.

Findings

Coming up the currently restoration period today, in preparation the Guildhall was cleared out by the local charity trust. On clearing out the property they came across mounds of old brown paper and within this brown paper were several paintings reflecting the life of Finchingfield.
“Paintings of life in north Essex over 100 years ago have been discovered in Finchingfield's Guildhall”
“Works by local artist Arthur Legge were found in a locked chest whilst it was being cleared in preparation for a forthcoming restoration project. Over 20 paintings and sketches of the local area were wrapped in brown paper”.

Article from the BBC Essex News.
Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/essex/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9019000/9019486.stm
Together with the sale of these paints, donations and the lottery fund contributions the restoration projects will be going ahead within the next year 2012.

Restoration

This restoration project is an essential part of the life of the Guildhall. As for over 500 years the Guildhall has played a vital role in the village of Finchingfield and to the villagers themselves. This restoration project will not only continue to serve historic history with the villagers but also on a much wider community. It will hopefully bring in other financial support as visitors from all over will be brought towards the village in the interests of seeing the museum and its history.
Unfortunately before this can go ahead there are some complicated restoration proceeds to be carried out. English Heritage have declared the Guildhall to be at risk. The roof, walls and flooring all need to be restored. This is little to no water amenities so new facilities within the building will need to be developed including the adaption to some of the rooms for access to all. At current, the building has very restrictive access and only to the most abled-bodied.

What is in line for the project restoration?

• Cement render, concrete floors and modern partitions will be stripped out
• Roof tiles will be removed, saving as many as possible for re-use
• Repairs will be made to the oak frame and roof timbers
• The walls will be coated with lime render, repairs made to the original wattle and daub, internal floors replaced with limecrete and brick
• Modern partitions removed
• Insulation, heating, kitchen and WC facilities will be installed
• A greatly improved internal layout will make the best possible use of space

To use the project to its fully potential the project restoration will:

• The original guildhall on the upper floor will be restored, offering a dramatic, intimate and historic venue for meetings, exhibitions, performances and functions
• The library and museum will occupy the ground floor offering an exciting and vibrant interpretation of this ancient settlement
• Works by local authors, including Dodie Smith and Norman Lewis, will be featured
• A pneumatic lift and new staircase will permit access to all

Group Meeting 3

(Blogger post created and uploaded by: OLIVER DOLTON)

Today the group met and arranged on who will be creating sectors of the building. After viewing the 2D plans for the construction of the house it was decided as follows:

Oliver: Will build the construction of the entire top floor.

Jo: Will build the construction of half of the lower ground floor.

Elliot: Will build the other half of the lower ground floor.

The final rendered animation will begin with a preview of the outside of the building. The camera showing the viewer’s how the building looks todays and circulating again to show what the building will look like from the outside in the future after construction of the museum has finished.

After circulation of the house the camera will locate its way to the roof and go through to show a 2D complex of the building on each of the floors. With the technique of viewing into each sector of the map it will revile what each room looks like today and what it will become in the future through an animated transformation.

It was decided that each of us would work on sectors of the building individually, what way our work would be our own and would be easy to identify who created particular sectors of the building.

The outside of the construction and animation of the building will be a participation of each of the group members to assist in the development of the outside circular animation.

Group meeting 2

In this group decision we decided to choose what assignment we were going to do. We had the choice of animating the history and how the guild hall was used in history and how it affected the community or animating how the building will change over the renovation work.

We decided to show how the guild hall will change from the derelict state it is in now to how it will look when it is finished.
To do this we decided to show the building in sections as it changes. For example; the animation will show a map of how the guild hall looks now and the camera will zoom into a section. The animation will then show how the walls will be knocked down and the new walls built. Any furniture or fittings in the room will slowly fade in. Some angles may be from above looking down on the rooms and some will be from inside the room depending to the visual effects.

We discussed and decided that the first thing we had to do was to draw the before and after 2d plans of the guildhall so we were able to split it up into sections and decide who will work on what.

We decided that the 2d plans has to be draw before we could go any further.

Meeting No1

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Meeting No1

Today the group met for the first time since the visit to Finchingfield. In the meeting today the group deciding on creating a name for the group and setting up a blogger account for our data to be recorded onto during the period of designing and animating the project.

The group deciding on a basic role for each of us but these roles were not certain as this was not an official meeting due to the team members having to continue with alternative work before the group project could go ahead. The continuation of this meeting would be on the next arranged meeting where roles and designs for the construction of our project work would take place.  

Visit to Finchingfield and the Guildhall Building

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First Group Meeting 30^th September 2011

The class today visited the Guildhall which is located in a small village outside of Braintree in Essex called Finchingfield. This town alone holds lots of history but within all of this history is this particular building, The Guildhall. This building was once used as a school, but after abolishment of the Guilds the hall fell into disrepair. During a period of history it was unclear what happened during its disrepair but in 1620 it was purchased in Robert Kimpe and restored to a statutory level. 10 years later it was sold to the villages and for a few generations it was used for various occasions. The teaching of education within the building continued as a school. Once advent state education was introduced the school closed. This caused the building to once again fall into disrepair.

Up until this year it has finally received a funding from the national lottery and after extra efforts to gather a few more thousand pounds restoration work will go underway and turn this amazing building into a museum.

Today the group got together to work our way through the village and construction of the site in order to take notes and pictures of the buildings.

This data would then be used in order to construct an animation of the building once it had been finished. While walking around the building one of the team members followed the guide to listen and take notes on how the building would look in the future after renovation work had been completed, also to note on placements of the structure interior components and their placements within the building.

The other two team members photographed important areas of the building while the other collected video data footage. All of this information would then be used to create a design that would be integrated into a 3D animation of the building of how it looks today to the finished restoration of final construction of the Guildhall Museum.