Dedham

"DEDHAM, a parish in the Colchester division of the hundred of LEXDEN, county of ESSEX, 4 miles (W. by N.) from Manningtree, containing 1651 inhabitants. The living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Colchester, and diocese of London, rated in the king's books at £10. 0. 2½., endowed with £200 private benefaction, and £300 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the King, as Duke of Lancaster. The church, dedicated to St. Mary, is a spacious structure in the later style of English architecture, having an embattled tower at the west end, and crowned with octagonal turrets richly pinnacled. .................Dedham is situated in a picturesque valley on the river Stour, over which it has a good bridge, and consists chiefly of one street: it had formerly the privilege of a market on Tuesday; there is a fair for toys on Easter-Tuesday. The clothing trade flourished here so early as the reign of Richard II., but has wholly declined,.......... A free grammar school was built by Dame Jane Clarke, prior to 1571, when it was endowed by William Littlebury, with a farm of one hundred and eighty acres, for teaching twenty boys, in aid of which, William Cardinal, in 1503, bequeathed land, now let for £60 per annum, for the maintenance and education of two of the boys at St. John's College, Cambridge, born at Dedham. or Much Bromley; the governors of the school, twenty-four in number, were incorporated by charter of Queen Elizabeth, in 1574, The same William Littlebury, also founded and endowed an English school, and some almshouses. John Marsh, in 1642, left an annuity of £6 for teaching two boys in the grammar school, and one in the English school, with a house and land to the English master, in farther augmentation of whose salary a bequest of £4 per annum was made by William Burkitt, in 1698, which the vicar holds in trust." [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) - copyright Mel Lockie 2016]