I suspect the original medieval settlement of Mistley lay around the old church of St Mary the Virgin at what we now call Mistley Heath, south-east of the modern village centre originally known as Mistley Thorn. Just when a few fishermen and seamen took up residence down by the river we do not know, but it was almost certainly long, long ago. The development of Mistley Thorn really began in the 18th century when the Mistley estate came into the hands of the Rigby family following the death of the Earl of Oxford, previous owner of that estate, in 1703. However, the appeal of the area for trade was only made possible by the River Stour.

The navigation of the River Stour
An Act of Parliament was passed in 1705 to make the river navigable from Sudbury to Brantham, by the building of thirteen pound locks, or 'stanks', in the East Anglian dialect, and two flashlocks. These were at Great Cornard, Henny, Pitmore, Bures, Wormingford, "The Swan" Wiston, Nayland, Horkesley, Boxted, Langham, Stratford, Dedham, Flatford and Brantham. There were twelve toll stages. The river was twenty three and a half miles from the quay to Brantham lock, and twenty six miles in all, measured to Mistley Quay. The presence of flashlocks was strange, if all were built at the one time, and suggests that the flashlocks were part of an already-existing navigation over at least a section of the Stour.

One hundred 'proprietors' or 'Undertakers' were appointed to supervise and fund the operation. Work was started in July 1708, and was completed ahead of schedule, in 1713. There then commenced around two hundred years of successful navigation.

From the start, there was a good trade downriver in beans, wheat, barley, malt, and woollen goods, which were then transferred to larger vessels, usually Thames barges, at Mistley and Manningtree. depending on the state of the tide at Brantham. To this cargo was added flour from the various mills on the route, which prospered greatly by the trade. Increasingly, bricks from Cornard and Ballingdon, and both chalk and lime from Cornard was shipped by barge. For the return journey to Sudbury the barges carried large quantities of coal, which had been shipped to Mistley from the north, woad for the woollen industry, oil, glass, tallow, paper, as well as quantities of iron and lead. It was with this platform that the Rigby era flourished.

When Richard Rigby (1690-1730) made a fortune investing in the South Sea Company and selling his shares before the ‘bubble’ burst he spent some of that fortune on developing his estate in Mistley and on the building of Mistley Hall.

A Spa Town Vision
On his death 1730 at the early age of 40 he was succeeded by his son, another Richard, a swashbuckling politician who had the idea of making Mistley Thorn into a minor spa town and held spectacular parties at Mistley Hall attended by members of the government and even on occasion by royalty. When the young French aristocrat Francois de La Rochefoucauld visited Mistley in 1784 he found it ‘a very small place, fifty houses at most, which are so well built and so spruce that you see at a glance that they all belong to the same owner. Mr Rigby owns the whole town… All houses except one belong to him, but the owner of this last one would never sell it to him; and so that strangers don’t compare it with the others, he has painted his red, since the others are white.’

The French nobleman remarked on the trade of the port which he said was ‘created entirely by Mr Rigby’. His tutor and companion, Maximilien de Lazowski, was more precise in his comments, saying that ‘Newcastle ships bring coal which is either distributed by cart into Essex or Suffolk or carried on upriver by barge to Sudbury. The whole neighbourhood brings its corn here to be embarked or stored for the London markets and all the coastal ports. There are six ships at the quay – a fine sight.’

Oddly enough, that is just the number of ships shown at the quay in the plan shown here dated 1778. There is a seventh vessel, a sloop, in the ‘New Dock’ at the west end of the quay beside a large building described as ‘Store House’. Beyond that is a deal yard, and on the land behind the church (the Towers are the only surviving part of the church designed by the famous Robert Adams) is a series of nasty looking heaps described as ‘Repository for Manure’, presumably the stable and street sweepings brought from London for the local farmers as a return cargo in trading vessels; such a cargo was usually entered as ‘muck’. At the other end of the quay there is a ship on the stocks and along building labelled ‘Moulding House’, in other words the mould loft in which a ships lines were laid down at full size and in which the moulds were made. The influence of Rigby was no doubt responsible for the fact that orders for warships came to Mistley from the Navy Board. Beyond that, at the bottom of the road way that was in the later days known as Batter Pudding Hill, is a lime kiln and ‘chalk house’ – doubtless the lime kiln that was mentioned by Rochefoucauld, ‘clad in brick and given the shape of a fort’.

Richard Rigby was not the most careful steward of the fortune he had inherited from his father, and he was saved from the effects of his lack of thrift by his close friendship with the Duke of Bedford, who loaned him £5,000 – and immense sum at the time – and on his death in 1771 not only released Rigby from the loan but left him a further £5,000. Rigby was Paymaster to the Forces from 1768 – 1784, and when he died in 1788 it was said that ‘he left nearly half a million of public money’. However, much of the wealth he accrued was spent very much to the benefit of the village of Mistley and its inhabitants.

Rigby’s parties at Mistley Hall became famous both for there magnificence and for the eminence of many of the guests. It is said that local people used to assemble near the front of the Hall to watch the guests arrive, and that on one wintery occasion Rigby sent his servants to serve punch to the spectators.

Why not find out more and continue into the 1800's....
Next page or travel back in time to the 1600's.

For even more information we recommend the book
Manningtree and Mistley - The people, the trades and the industries by local author David Cleveland or a trip to the Museum in the Library found in Manningtree High Street.