Waltham Moot Hall - Market Square, Waltham Abbey, Essex, UK - UK Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

The engraved brass plaque reads:

Waltham Moot Hall

In 1189 King Richard I granted the manor and half-hundred of Waltham to the Abbey.

The Abbot held regular court hearings in the building to maintain law and order within the half-hundred which included Waltham, Chingford, Epping and Nazeing, and undercroft to the building served as a jail to those found guilty of breaking the law.

The building was demolished about 1670 and replaced by a timber market house which remained until its demolition in 1852.

Indicated in dar bricks in the Market Square is the position of the flint and stone walled Moot Hall.

The site was excavated in 1981 by the Waltham Abbey Historical Society.

Unveiled by Councillor F W Limer MBE
Chairman of Epping Forest District
Council to commemorate the opening
of the Sun Street pedestrianisation scheme
17th October 1983

An image of the timber market house is also engraved into the plaque.

The Unlocking Essex's Past website tells us:

Excavation (Huggins, 1988b) in the centre of the Market Square found a building which has been interpreted as the Moot Hall (mentioned in 1456). It was built after 1250 and remained in use until the post-medieval period. A rental of c.1235 also mentions the presence of a number of shops and The Cage (the Abbot’s prison) in the Market Square. Excavation on the ground adjacent to the Crown Inn on the east side of Romeland and at Reformation House on the west side showed that the area had been a swamp until the ground level was raised in the late 12th or early 13th century. Excavations in Sewardstone Street revealed medieval occupation beginning in the 11th century, with the town extent expanding southwards down Sewardstone Street in the 15th century.

The medieval Moot Hall was replaced by the Market House in 1670/80. The livestock market and butchers’ shambles used to take place in the market place and the yards of the inns along Sun Street. This portion of the market was moved to the Romeland area in the 1850’s, thus relieving the central area of the congestion and disturbance caused by the movement of livestock. Some of the buildings on the western and northern sides of the Market Square date to the 16th century. The abbey was dissolved in 1540, and by the 1550’s the demolition of the main portion of the abbey buildings had taken place, with the exception of the nave of the monastic church which was retained as the parish church. In the 1590’s Abbey House was built immediately to the north-east of the church. Some of the medieval farm buildings continued in use until the nineteenth century when they were supplemented by additional post-medieval structures.