HALSTEAD  , a

market-town in the Maldon parliamentary division of Essex, England, on the Colne, 17 M . N.N.E. from Chelmsford; served by the Colne Valley railway from Chappel Junction on the Great Eastern railway . Pop. of urban district (1901), 6073 . It lies on a hill in a pleasant 'wooded district . The church of St Andrew is mainly Perpendicular . It contains a monument supposed to commemorate Sir Robert Bourchier (d . 1349), lord chancellor to Edward III . The Lady Mary Ramsay grammar school dates from 1594 . There are large silk and crape works . Two miles N. of Halstead is Little Maplestead, where the church is the latest in date of the four churches with round naves, extant in England, being perhaps of 12th-century foundation, but showing early Decorated work in the main . The chancel, which is without aisles, terminates in an apse . Three miles N.W. from Halstead are the large villages of Sible Hedingham (pop .

1701) and

Castle Hedingham (pop . 1097) . At the second is the Norman keep of the de Veres, of whom Aubrey de Vere held the lordship from William I . The keep dates from the end of the r1th century, and exhibits much fine Norman work . The church of St Nicholas, Castle Hedingham, has fine Norman, Transitional and Early English details, and there is a black marble tomb of John de Vere, 15th earl of Oxford (d . 1540), with his countess . There are signs of settlement at Halstead (Halsteda,Halgusted, Halsted) in the Bronze Age; but there is no evidence of the causes of its growth in historic times . Probably its situation on the river Colne made it to some extent a local centre . Throughout the middle ages Halstead was unimportant, and never rose to the rank of a borough .