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Steeple Bumpstead is a village and civil parish south of Haverhill in Braintree (district), Essex, England. The parish church does not actually have a steeple, however the Congregational Church has a small Victorian one. It is believed that the steeple referred to was actually located on the A1307 close to what is now the Wixoe pumping Station. ==History== Bumstead or Bumsted is Anglo-Saxon for "place of reeds". The Moot Hall is recorded in the ''Domesday Book''. The Knights Templar positioned themselves on the river. There has been a long history on non-conformist belief in the village which continues to this day in the Congregational Church. A Bumpstead man was burnt to death in the parish for his beliefs. Along the Blois Road, leading from Bumpstead to Birdbrook, is a field that has been called the ‘Bloody Pightle’, and that is where he is believed to have been martyred. In 1527 John Tibauld and eight other village residents were seized and taken before the Bishop of London, charged with meeting together in Bower Hall to pray and read a copy of the New Testament. Although the non-conformists in the village were encouraged by the powerful Bendyshe family that lived at Bower Hall, even their influence could not save Tibauld. He was burned at the stake. Having fallen into ruin after use as a ‘concentration camp’ in the First World War, Bower Hall was finally demolished in 1926 and the materials sold off. The great staircase found its way to the USA. A Moot Hall, known as ‘the Old Schole’, symbolises Steeple Bumpstead. Built in 1592 by the inhabitants on land rented from the Crown, in the 1830s when it was ‘a school for farmers’ sons’ the villagers forcibly took possession of it, disputing the claim of George Gent of Moyns to have the right to appoint the headmaster. Eventually an Ecclesiastical Court upheld the villagers’ claim. Steeple Bumpstead was one of the first villages in the country to have its own village policeman when County Policing came into being in Essex. In 1840, William Rattigan was one of the very first Essex Police Officers to be assigned a village beat. There was a police officer stationed in the village for 160 years from 1840 to 2000 when the last 'bobby', Ray Howard, retired. For years the village was a hotbed of trouble with many 'riots' and unrest during the agricultural strikes in 1914 and the 1920s. In fact the national agricultural strike of 1914 was started nearby in Castle Camps and the troubles spread to Steeple Bumstead which became a stronghold for the strikers. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Steeple Bumpstead」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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