A neighbourhood, run by its neighbours.

Harvard Place was built by Bellway on land off Station Road, on the edge of Earls Colne village. It's a scheme of 90 homes: 54 two, three and four-bedroom houses for private sale, plus 36 affordable homes for shared ownership or low-cost rent. It launched in November 2020 and Bellway completed construction of all 90 homes in May 2023. Existing woodland was kept within the site, alongside new public open space, footpaths and wildlife habitats, and the location was marketed as a quiet spot near woodland and the River Colne, within walking distance of the village centre. In practical terms the immediate plot was greenfield land at the village edge rather than a previously built-up site.

The name honours an aircraft, not the spot it stands on. Harvard Place was named after the Harvard Warbird training aircraft, which operated from Earls Colne Airfield nearby during the Second World War, and a 1942 Harvard can still be seen flying over Essex from the airfield, which offers flying experiences in it.

The airfield the name comes from

The wartime story behind the name is substantial. The airfield was built in 1941 for RAF Bomber Command but never used as such, then assigned to the US Eighth Air Force as Station 358. Its first operational tenants were B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 94th Bomb Group in May 1943; the following month B-26 Marauder medium bombers of the 323rd Bomb Group moved in and stayed until July 1944. Part of the site occupied land requisitioned from the Marks Hall estate, whose Jacobean mansion was taken over by USAAF headquarters units. In September 1944 the airfield returned to RAF control under No. 38 Group as a glider-towing station flying Albemarles and Halifaxes, and its squadrons took part in Operation Varsity, the airborne crossing of the Rhine, in March 1945. It was de-requisitioned in 1955, much of it returning to agriculture, and a golf course was built in the early 1990s. There's a memorial on the site, built around a B-17 propeller, dedicated to the units that served there.

The much older history of the land and village

Earls Colne is genuinely ancient, and the manor's history is well recorded. The village is named after the River Colne and the Earls of Oxford, who held the manor from before 1086 to 1703. In the time of Edward the Confessor it belonged to a Saxon noble, Wulfwine, whose estate was given to Aubrey de Vere by William the Conqueror after 1066. The de Vere family — the Earls of Oxford — were one of the great medieval English noble houses, and Earls Colne was their seat for over six centuries.

They also founded the local monastery. Colne Priory was a Benedictine house, founded by Aubrey de Vere I and his wife Beatrice in or before 1111 as a dependent cell of Abingdon Abbey. The founder himself became a monk there and was buried at the priory, as were a large number of his successors, including thirteen Earls of Oxford. The monastery was surrendered to Henry VIII in 1534 during the Dissolution. Earls Colne stayed with the earldom of Oxford until 1584, when Edward de Vere sold it to Roger Harlakenden — his estate steward. (That Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl, is the man some people put forward as the "real" author of Shakespeare, so the village has a footnote in that long-running debate too.) The parish church of St Andrew predates much of this; its earliest surviving detail dates to around 1340, with the west tower added about 1460.

Why "Station Road"

The road the development sits on is a reminder that Earls Colne once had its own railway. The station was on the Colne Valley and Halstead Railway and opened in 1882 as "Ford Gate", was renamed Colne in 1889 and Earls Colne in 1905, then closed to passengers on 1 January 1962 and to freight in 1964. The line itself had opened in stages between 1860 and 1863. The village was an industrial little place in that era too — the railway carried agricultural equipment from Hunts of Earls Colne among other local goods.