Historic England

Historic England
not to be confused with British History Online

Historic England are the organisation that holds the records for listed buildings, and other historical information, in the UK. British History Online is a different website.

My primary interest in the Historic England website is the listing of Listed Buildings. While the note on their pages says that the information of the listings is from a "legacy" system they are not specific.
My assumpsion is that the listing text is public domain.

If you are viewing this on a computer you can select buildings from the zoomable intreactive map found on the Historic England website.

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Historic England is laregly funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Aerial Photo Explorer

This seems to be a newish venture on Historic England and now features on their home page. I was interested as there are some aerial photographs of Belchamp Walter

Attribution

In my quest to make sure that I give the appropriate attribution and that I don't violate too many copyrights, I started to look at the Historic England's policies in more depth.

The Historic England Website

The is https://historicengland.org.uk/

The listings for the Listed Buildings featured on this website are taken from the Historic England website. These have been reformatted and put into context with the other buildings and history of the village of Belchamp Walter.
The Historic England website does not make these connections.

The historical and heritage accounts on the Historic England website listings seem to be based on anecdotal reports from the owners of the properties at the time of their listing. An example of this is the listing for the Castle at Castle Hedingham, the listing states catagorically that Aubrey de Vere was one of William the Conqueror's knights and his half brother-in-law, there is no documented evidence of this.

Aubrey was one of William the Conqueror’s most important knights as well as being the husband of his half-sister Beatrice.

To me this casts doubt on other statements on why and when the Keep was built.

Aubrey De Vere III was created Earl of Oxford by Queen Matilda in 1142, and it is thought that the Keep may have been built to celebrate his elevation and to provide a suitably impressive setting for ceremonial occasions.

The besiegement by King John.

In the early C13 continuous disagreements between King John and his barons led to civil war; and in 1215 the barons, among whom was Robert, the 3rd Earl, took up arms against the king and invited the French dauphin to assume the throne of England. King John laid siege to Hedingham Castle and took it, although it was recaptured shortly afterwards by French soldiers. This is the only recorded military action at the castle.

The disagreements between King John and his barons statement also needs to confirmed by other sources.

The record of listed buildings in the UK